What is (or was) your biggest roadblock to starting a farm?

This was my first poll question of choice for you readers.

How to get enough money to start

Lack of farming know-how

The time it takes when you’re still working an off-farm job

Other answer…

Those were the options I provided for your polling pleasure.

I know that many of you saw the poll in our sidebar because, so far, 63 of you answered it.  And, of those 63, 57% said that how to get enough money to start their farm was the biggest issue.

So, now I have a question about poll etiquette.  Because, really, is it bad form to ask about someone’s challenges without at least a bit of knowledge that might help them over the hurdle??

How to get enough money to do anything is a sticking point for a lot of people and farming has a lot more ‘junk’ surrounding it than most businesses.

For one thing, there is a whole societal belief that food is cheap.  And, yes, crappy food is cheap – at the initial outlay.  The true cost of crappy food, or pseudo-food, as I like to call it, comes when you look at the health care bills it causes and the environmental damage it does.  When you’re producing good food, naturally the cost is going to be higher.

So, I guess step one to getting enough money to start a farm is to clear society of some old, mistaken beliefs about food and install some new ones.

If that’s step one, it kinda sounds like there might be a lot of steps before you get to the money part, doesn’t it?

But wait, there’s more than just cheap food ‘junk’ that makes it difficult to make a living farming.  As a fascinated observer of humanity, I have noticed that it isn’t only long time farmers who have the ‘Life is hard,  please notice me struggling’ mindset.

It seems that a lot of new farmers getting into sustainable agriculture have that same mindset and, honestly, it’s a killer.  This is the ‘Poor Dirt Farmer Junk’.

(John used to say that he was a poor dirt farmer.  But he has learned that to say this is to invoke the wrath of the wife.)

If you want to repel abundance, this is the way to do it.  Don’t get me wrong, farming is not Easy Street financially.  Yes, we struggle too.  But if you’re into farming because your identity is about struggle, well, a bucket of cash could fall on you and you’d still figure out how to make it hard.

So, do I have any new useful answers for those who are in the ‘not enough money’ category?  I’ll do my best, but it might not be what you’re expecting.

Three Financial Thoughts For Planning Your Farm:

1. Do it yourself:  Do what yourself, you ask?  All of it.
   Yes, the goal is to pay yourself a reasonable wage; $15 or $20 per hour, say.  But start where you are.  If you have little financial capital, make it up in hourly capital.
2. Sell first, then produce:  A lot of farmers (especially conventional farmers) have gotten into the habit of producing something and then trying to sell it.  Don’t do it!  Sell it – or, at very least, market it – first so you know you can sell it.If you don’t know how a C.S.A. (Community Supported Agriculture) program starts yet, find out now.
3. Know yourself:  (and your spouse/partner/family)
   Make no mistake, you will be short of cash and/or time – likely both.  Unless you save A LOT of money before starting your farm, you will have a farmer’s lifestyle for some years.

   Know what need motivates you to farm and be able to tell when enough is enough, for you and for your family.  Because, yes,  everyone can survive with nothing but second hand clothes, old cars, “No, we can’t rent a movie”, “No, you can’t play hockey”, “No, we can’t have a vacation”, without cable TV and “No, Daddy won’t be home to tuck you in”.

   But, can they thrive in the conditions you’re planning on foisting on them?

I know, number 3 doesn’t sound like a financial thought but it applies directly.  If you’re going to make hard financial choices for your family, make sure the individual personalities you’re dealing with can thrive despite them.

Even better would be to make the financial choices that help your family thrive.  But don’t ask me exactly how to do that.  When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, here is an unofficial number 4:  Starting a farm is like having kids.  You’re never really going to be ready or have enough money but that shouldn’t stop you.  Follow numbers 1 through 3, then jump in.

Your options are sink or swim and, in the case of farming, neither one is likely to kill you.

For some comedic relief to start and to show that I don’t only read about farms, check out this great daily comic.  Today’s strip is about ear wax.  How does that entice ya? 

Here’s meat – or rather the veggies – of my reading, though.  And oh!  The inspiration to be had in the gardening department!

Click here for Winter Planting Plans on the Observer Organic Allotment Blog

• Check out the beautiful produce pictures at one of my favourite blogs, Throwback at Trapper Creek.
• If you’re interested in extended season gardening specifically, click on the winter garden plan picture to read about this piece of useful art.

• For those of you who get a little overwhelmed with the task of gardening to sustain a family,  (we’re just starting to attempt to grow enough to avoid the grocery store), I found this great resource.  It’s a gardening calendar specifically for hardiness zone 5b but I’ve got to think there are more helpful bloggers out there in other zones.  (Potential future post: compilation of gardening calendars?)

On the livestock front, I had the pleasure of reading about a shockingly smooth pig loading session at Tylerfarm Homestead’s blog.  Yes, it is that time of year.  The cold weather meat producing animals have reached full size.  The freezer will be full soon.

Our pigs are not yet ready for the freezer as they are on the slow, mainly grass-fed plan. Here John is enticing them back to the barn after a successful attempt to escape. Our three year old sounded the alarm while I was cooking lunch: "Mom! The pigs are on the road!"

My pig loading experience stems from long ago and was not that smooth.  When my sister and I were small, our family lived on a small farm near on Blue Mountain.  My mother has been known to tell the story of one loading day when a somewhat coarse talking neighbour came over to help out.  I would have been 3 or 4 years old with my sister a couple of years older.

I guess my sister, Gena, and I sat on the edge of the log enclosure the pigs lived in and observed the proceedings.  Later in the day, the weather had turned and we went in to play in our living room while mom worked down the hall in the kitchen.

As she tells it, her ‘mom-sense’ went off and she started listening more closely to us playing.  Finally, certain that she was hearing our attempts at some of the worst language you can think of, she came in to ask us what we were doing.  My sister, always bold and sure of her right to do as she pleased piped up:

“We’re playing ‘load the pigs’, Mom!”

Neighbours.  You take the good with the bad.

On the topic of pigs, click on this lovely Large Black to visit the site of a great little farm that I have recently

Click on the photo to check out Upper Canada Heritage Meat.

discovered not too far from us.  I have yet to approach them about it but I’m dreaming of some of these beauties for our farm next year.

For anyone yearning to hold onto summer just a bit longer, here is the one and only flower on our new hydrangea bush from this year.  It took all summer to brew.

I took this picture two days ago and it is still sitting there, though slightly less fresh.

On a final note of what has been, for me, a leisurely, random post, our co-op student, Kenley, was here on Saturday for what was her last full day.  We did some puttering around in the garden, shelling dry beans, taking down the pea trellis, bundling the last of the herbs for drying and generally enjoying the beautiful day. 

We have enjoyed having her here and are thrilled that our local highschool has seen fit to run an agricultural co-op program that actually give the students the chance to learn from experience.  What a novel concept!

Kenley’s last few hours will be spent next Saturday, preparing our meat CSA packages for delivery.  After that, we’ll be back on our own and richer for having had her with us.

Now, I can cross ‘Sanity saving’ off my to-do list and move on to the marketing. Happily, that is a task that I enjoy, not only because I know that a small farm like ours would never fly if someone didn’t SELL IT!

There are people who lead and people who follow.  Someone famous said that, I’m sure.  I don’t know who it was, but I do know that they were right. 

Each roll is appropriate to certain situations.  Leaders initiate action and make changes.  Good leaders make positive changes and improve something about the world around them.  But they don’t do it alone.  In fact, leaders couldn’t change much without followers.

Followers are perfect for getting jobs done and for keeping things going long after the initial action to get them started.  I’m sure we all can figure out which one of these characteristics we embody more, leader or follower.

(Even among these laying hens there are the leaders who jump out every time I open the door initiating the search for the greener grass outside their ‘condo’.)

How does this apply to starting a farm?  Well, the clue is in the word ‘starting’.  Like I said above, it’s the leaders that initiate action.  And you’re trying to initiate some serious action in the shape of changes to every area of your life if you’re trying to start a farm.

I’m sure this applies with all start up small businesses.  If you can’t summon and inflate the leadership qualities that you have, you’re going to struggle during the start-up phase of your farm.

Why?  Because initiating action requires certain leadership characteristics such as:

• Finding being in charge exhilarating, not stressful
• Being driven and having the desire to create

Being in Charge:  Exhilarating or Exhausting?

There are those who feel on top of the world when they’re the ones who get to call the shots, motivate the team and carry the lions share of the responsibility.  These people feel more alive when they’re coordinating a project or focusing on a goal.

This is not something that I have that much experience with.  While I don’t mind being in charge and do find it mildly exhilarating, I also find it mildly stressful.  Call me a fence sitter when it comes to being the boss.

There are those, however, who cringe at the thought of having to make decisions and be responsible for the outcome of a project.  These people will have a hard time starting a farm.  Starting a farm is a project and you, along with any partners you have, are completely responsible for making it run.  There are opportunities to be farm employees, but there is no space for someone starting a small farm to have an employee mentality.  Someone has got to be in charge.

Being Creatively Driven

I spent a few years working on setting up a Teen Room in our public library while I worked there.  Everything about the creation of this new space, the fine tuning of the guidelines for it’s use, the rearranging of attitudes around the need for it was exciting to me.

I was inspired and driven to make the new Teen Room a success.  And it was.  The only problem was, when the room was established and things were running on autopilot, I started to get board.  The challenge to create was gone.  The creation phase was over and someone more suited to maintenance needed to step in.

Granted, there are projects that inspire me enough to keep me interested even in the maintenance phase but this wasn’t one of them.

Farming needs to be one of these dual inspiration projects if you’re going to make it successful.  You need to be the leader in order to get the ball rolling and, even while you’re doing that, you need to be of a follower or maintenance mindset.

Both at once, you ask?  Yes.  Farming has to be done every day.  You need to maintain your animals even while you’re driving the marketing aspect of the business from your office.

A couple of quality follower or maintenance characteristics that will help in your farm business are:

• Enjoying routines
• Thriving on seeing physical results of your labour

Routines-R-Us

This one is mandatory:  In order to not go crazy farming, you need to be able to stomach the same routine seven days a week for months at a time.  I’m not meaning that you’ll do the exact same things from sun up until sundown.  But you will have certain tasks – chores – that remain pretty much unchanged everyday for a whole season sometimes.  And they might take you a few hours a day.

If you’re interested in a dairy farm, you’re looking at many hours a day, no changes but the normal farming surprises that come with animals and weather, 365 days a year.

If you don’t have a routine bone in your body, you don’t have a farming bone in your body.

A Result You Can See

For me, this is what makes chores do-able repeatedly.  While I don’t do our daily chores these days, I have been an everyday chore-er in the past and know that this is what makes it rewarding for me.  Standing back and seeing the turkey curtains on the barn all cleaned out, looking back at the row of cows that are milked and seeing that it is longer than the row yet to be milked.

Daily chores are much easier and more rewarding if you can take joy in the small details and if you feel accomplished when you see the results of your labour.

These are only a couple examples of how the leader and follower in us all need to be tapped into when starting – and running – a farm.  Now I’m turning the challenge over to you:

Post a comment below with your thoughts on what characteristics you have that will help you towards your farming goal.  And, by all means, share your thoughts on the things you have to work on.

Maybe we can help each other get a balance that will start a farm!

]]> http://jcnymanfarms.com/2008/08/20/how-to-start-a-farm-5-farmers-need-to-be-leaders-and-followers/feed/ 2 JNyman http://jcnymanfarms.com/2008/07/28/how-to-start-a-farm-4-farming-is-more-than-half-marketing/ http://jcnymanfarms.com/2008/07/28/how-to-start-a-farm-4-farming-is-more-than-half-marketing/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:18:33 +0000 J Nyman http://jcnymanfarms.wordpress.com/?p=104 ]]> This is Part Four of a series called: How to Start a Farm: 6 Things All Would-Be Farmers Should Know Before Getting Knee Deep in Sheep (or any other farm venture). See Part Three here.

There is some confusing language used around farming.  Even the word farming doesn’t really convey what the job entails.  (A lot of jobs have this problem, though.  When we say police officer, we don’t think paperwork, but I understand that they do a lot of it.)

I think the business of farming suffers more acutely from this confusion, though, because of the romanticism that it stirs up in people.  When people – even farmers – think of farming, they’re imagining sunny afternoons planting crops, late night barn checks watching and listening to their peaceful animals and all of the outdoor, in-touch with nature tasks that farmers do.  Even the less desirable tasks that come to mind are of the outdoor, hands on variety.

How many people picture paperwork, computer time and a long list of phone calls when they think of farming?  Not many.

And what on earth could farmers need to spend that much office time for, you ask?  Why, marketing of course.  Let me elaborate.

Marketing wasn’t always a task that the small family farm had to engage in, for sure.  In fact, at least since the Barley Days (1860 to 1890) here in Prince Edward County, marketing has been done by out side bodies.  Export to other countries and continents has been going on for generations.

My own Great Grandfather was a grain buyer for Pioneer Seed in Alberta around 1900.  He would travel from farm to farm buying up all the grain to export and ship to cities.  Similarly, nowadays, farmers can simply haul all their grain to the elevator or all their animals to the auction hall and wait for a cheque to arrive in their mailbox.

So why, you ask, do farmers need to do marketing if the systems for it are already so well established?  Why, if you can simply transport it to the right place and wait for a cheque, should farmers do anything else?  The long answer to that could be another post altogether to discuss the ethics of certain production models, start-up costs and more.

The short answer is this ‘Mailbox’ business model sees the farmer getting about 9¢ per retail dollar.  So bread, for example, you’d make about 14¢ for the wheat it took to make one loaf.  The ‘Do your Marketing’ model of small farm businesses can see you making 60, 70, 80, 90 cents on the dollar.

Hmm… a lot less work to get the same money.  Or a lot more money for the same work. Marketing looks pretty good, all of a sudden.

For those who have read the previous posts in this series, you already know that keeping your pencil sharp is essential.  The difference is that, on John’s Opa’s farm, the main use of the pencil was the math required to spend less than you make.  Your pencil will have more varied work.  It still has to do those expense calculations, but it also has to plan how best to market what your farm is producing.

For anyone seriously looking at farming for a living, I give you yet another set of questions to ask yourself:  Do you like dealing with people?  Are you a planner?  Are you self motivated?  Basically, do you want to do the marketing?

Because, farming really is more than half marketing.  Said another way, the success of your farm is based at least 50% on the quality – and possibly the quantity – of the marketing you do.

You might want to get a second pencil.  It’s going to be busy.

Is the organic and sustainable food movement complacent about pricing?

Over breakfast, John and I were discussing organic milk. How we got onto that topic, I don’t know. Maybe it was the carton in front of us. However it came about, our conversation hasn’t yet left me. What has caught my attention was something that John read in a newspaper he found at the bottom of our firewood box. I’m trying not to dwell on the fact that we’re still lighting morning fires in May.

This article, possibly a year or more old, left John with a sense that there was soon going to be an oversupply of organic milk in Ontario. (Having looked into it a bit, there doesn’t seem to be consensus on this.) From this jumping off point, we started to speculate what would happen to the price premium and allowance for organic dairy farms to ship more milk than other producers.

(A basic overview of the Milk Quota system: Farmers purchase units of quota that allows them to ship milk from one cow per unit of quota and be guaranteed a steady price for the milk. Quota currently costs around $30,000.00 CDN per unit. Organic farmers get to ship more milk per unit of quota than conventional, giving them more return on investment.)

Presumably, if there were no supply shortage for organic milk, the price would go down for the consumer and the premiums that the dairy farmers are getting would disappear. In theory, organic milk would cost the same as conventional milk. As someone who buys organic milk, this would seem strange in a ‘Yeah! The Grocery Bill Fairy has been here!’ kind of way. I’m not sure the organic milk producers, who spent the time and energy to struggle through a long and expensive learning curve, would feel the same.

While I don’t know if this will happen anytime soon, it did bring up the idea that organic producers in general seem to be complacent about price. If they are concerned about the future of pricing, I’ve never heard tell. I have heard some not-certified, sustainable, ethical farmers getting vocal about the true cost of food, but rarely.

And why should they worry? Organic farmers are getting a premium over conventional farmers for everything from soup to nuts. Sustainable farmers generally are, as well. And, while part of the premium they get goes into more costly production in many cases, at least some of the extra cost is a result of an unbalanced supply and demand. There isn’t enough to go around, so the price goes up.

This is precisely why we should be concerned.

To think that once supply of ‘alternative food’ (I’m lumping certified organic with sustainable ethical production under that label) catches up with demand, the prices are going to level out somewhere near to conventional produce should strike fear into the hearts of anyone affected. Sure, in the entire food industry, it doesn’t seem likely to balance out in the near (or possibly distant) future. That’s not the issue. The problem is that the current price for conventionally produced food doesn’t represent the cost of production that the farmer bears. This is why so many farmers work full time off the farm. Their full time on-farm job doesn’t make enough to pay even minimum wage.

So, if producing food alternative food is often more expensive for the farmer, you’d think there would be widespread panic at the thought of prices going down to a level that can’t sustain those who are there now. As a producer of non-certified, more organic every year, ethical food, I’m forever putting energy into educating people about the true cost of food. I’m frequently telling people that a wheat farmer makes $0.14 per loaf of bread.

Sure, alternative producers are getting a premium price compared to conventional food prices but try comparing the cost of alternative food against the cost of producing it. Suddenly, what looked like a tidy income for the farmer looks pretty meager.

And look further to the bargain basement food in our grocery stores. Somebody want to speculate on what kind of corners have to be cut to get prices that low? Anyone want to consider the health and animal welfare results of drastically cutting corners on food production? (Think about what has to happen in to production phase of cheap clothes and the level of quality that results and you’ll have a fair parallel, I’d say.)

So, yes, I’d say the alternative food producers are somewhat complacent. To be happy with prices inflated by a supply and demand discrepancy is like driving in the dark with your lights off. You might be cruising along now but you won’t see the ‘Bridge Out’ sign until you’re in the drink.

At some point, supply of good clean food will match demand. Ideally, by then, consumers will be aware that, though they thought they were paying premium will realize that what they were really doing was meeting cost of production. Including a wage for the farmer. Sounds reasonable to me.

In the paper, you have some time to make sure you got your ideas across. For example, if you forgot an important detail, you likely have a few hours at least to inform the reporter of your mistake. My experience with TV has been that they check with you ahead of time regarding the questions they want to ask you.

I was interviewed live recently concerning farming and the Canadian Young Farmer’s Forum I was attending and they did a ‘pre-interview’ on the phone. One of the producer’s asked me questions for about a half an hour the week before I was scheduled to be on. Talk about thorough! (I guess they we’re making sure I could speak French well enough as it was on a Quebec station).

My other recent TV interview had John and I talking about our sugar bush while standing next to the sap evaporator in our sugar shack. This on was pre-recorded and we had a little pre-game discussion about what the interviewer would ask each of us.

So, TV has been easy and print media is inherently fool-proof if you’re paying attention. Radio, not so much for me.

So, here are some tips on how to make a radio interview successful:

Tip #1: Remember that the radio announcer is also producing the show

I’m sure there is someone else actually producing the show but the announcer is in charge of making sure things happen when they’re meant to. They turn themselves on and off, so to speak and, I believe, they start and stop their own ads. (I’m sure there is a technical way to describe this. I’m just reporting what I’ve witnessed.)

What I’m trying to say is, these folks are multi-tasking BIG time. So, try to be an easy guest. Sit there and take direction.

Tip #2: Take a gift

I don’t mean a new set of barbecue tools. There is no such thing as a Radio Announcer Gift Registry at Sears. I mean, if you’re promoting a food item, for example, take them a sample.

We’re making maple syrup and using syrup to make other goodies. I took a bottle of freshly bottled syrup and some of my Great Granny’s shortbread made with syrup.

He was happy. A happy announcer will do a good job of promoting you. And, it’s a nice thing to do.

N.B. Dis regard the ‘no barbecue tools’ comment if you’re promoting your new line of barbecue tools.

Tip #3 Know what you want to say

This is where I’ve fallen down on the job. Twice.

The announcer knows that you’re there to talk about fill in the blank. I’m sure some of them are more conscious of your needs than others but, to be safe, don’t rely on them being aware of your message.

Do everyone a favour and ask yourself: “What is the point of my going on the radio?” Then write a list.

Next time, my list will look like this:

1. Maple syrup festival this weekend – both days
2. Teens get free baked goodies
3. Teens from our entrepreneurial program are giving tours to the public
4. Yes, despite the weather, we have maple syrup and other farm fresh goods
5. Our website and farm name
6. We’re number 35 on the map
7. Baby lambs to see

In actual fact, it would have been more bare bones because you don’t want to be reading your detailed list while talking on the radio. I added some details for you, the reader, as you don’t live in my head and likely wouldn’t get much from a cryptic ‘Note to Colleen’.

The things on this list may seem obvious. They should be no-brainers. In my experience though, when you get into a new situation like talking on the radio for the first (or second) time, it is possible to go into ‘no-brain mode’.

The first time I was interviewed, I didn’t mention how people could get a hold of me to register for our teen program. D’uh. Today, I didn’t mention the name of our farm or our number on the festival map. Thankfully, the host mentioned my name repeatedly and that gives a clear hint as to farm name.

Despite the learning curve, being on the local radio station is great free publicity. And it really wasn’t that hard to get into. I simply thought about what I had to offer the public that was more than the farmer next door – a teen entrepreneurial program – and sent an email to the station outlining the program and asking to get on the air.

For anyone trying to grow a customer list, I strongly encourage you to go ‘on the air’. All you need is something a little bit different that the public might be interested in. And the tips above won’t hurt either because once you go to commercial, there is no changing what listener’s heard.

If the announcer was frazzled because you distracted them from their work, if you didn’t bring even a coffee in case you’ve caught them on a bad day or if you forgot to tell them your farm name, you’re out of luck. This time.

Next time, I’ll be armed with my list.

My, how I was mistaken. The Lada of my youth was never a car in the way a BMW M3 is a car, for example. Similarly (and yet very differently), the Lada’s I have known were not cars the way, say, a ’68 Camero with gold pin striping is a car.

Why, you ask, am I bringing up painful vehicular memories from my family’s sordid car history? It may seem unrelated but to my mind these cars are relevant to the struggle of pricing what we produce here at the farm.

Lost yet? Bear with me.

Very simply put, trying to determine a selling price for our meat gives me a head ache. Any way we do the math, the delicious, healthy SOLE food we produce is a BMW. And high end vehicles cost more to produce. So does high end food. Working a living wage into the equation is the challenge.

We’re working at whittling the cost down as we progress and, not insignificantly, we don’t have to buy grain at the exorbitant prices of late because we produce our own. But, at the end of the day, J. & C. Nyman Farms lamb, for example, is still a BMW of lamb. And that’s where the head aches start.

See, people go car shopping and expect to get what they pay for. If you pay for a Lada, you know what you’re getting yourself into. Something that will be cheap to buy, easy on fuel but cost a lot to maintain and have a short road-life.

If you choose a BMW, you’re expecting – and getting – something that delivers performance, pleasure, fuel efficiency, low emissions and a long driving life ahead.

Unfortunately, when it comes to food it doesn’t matter that the produce cost a top quality dollar to produce and is truly quality food. The average consumer is conditioned to be able to pay a Lada price and believes they’re getting the BMW product. (The fact that they’re not actually getting the quality of the BMW is one of the great crimes of the big food machine, but that’s another story altogether.)

Where does that leave me with my calculator in one hand and my head in the other? It leaves me trying to explain (to people who are open to the idea) that they’re not actually getting the BMW for the Lada price. It leaves me needing to be informed and sincere enough to be able to show them that they’re eating Ladas. Yummy.

Realistically, I’m not going to be able to convince very many people to stop buying their bargain food and pay a lot more for our top of the line variety.

So I’m using my calculator to cut out a large part of that living wage I mentioned. And I’m selling what we produce to the customers who are willing to pay a little bit more for quality food.

And, most importantly, I’m sleeping well (possibly not as well protected as my husband John here, but well) and I’m reveling in my days.

I get to do something that is good for the Earth, my community and my family. And, I love to do it. Living wage? Who needs it!

Okay, so my house is a brick and vinyl siding, severely non-eco-friendly ten year old box. But my home - the way Canada is my home, Prince Edward County is my home and any windy, fresh aired, agricultural space is my home – my home is a maple syrup destination from on high.

I guess I have a lot of good maple resources in my immediate vicinity. I can think of at least 5 reasons that my area (our farm included) is a superior sweet spring harvest area.

#1: The Obvious

We run a sugar bush. We have made maple syrup for years. My husband built his first outdoor, uncovered arch for boiling on when he was ten. All by himself. He needed something to do while the ‘rents milked cows. And it was too early to plant his vegetable garden. Ten, I tell you. (I was being a latch-key kid rushing home to catch the last half of CHiPs on TV).

#2 The Decadent

This county I refer to above – Prince Edward County – is a wild and wonderful place located only two hours from Toronto. With agri-tourism getting big and the winery business here getting bigger, there are a lot of people with a lot of money parading around looking for good food to eat. Currah’s, Harvest, The Waring House to name a few…

I’m not sure what came first, the chicken or the… I mean, the hungry upscale consumer or the renowned and brilliant chefs and restaurateurs but, somehow, this small community boast an inordinately large number of places to eat decadently.

Though I’m always in the sugar bush on our big maple festival weekend, I’m sure you can get gourmet stacks of pancakes dripping with the golden goodness at any number of our fine local establishments. Something like the ones featured in this post over at The Food Pornographer.

#3: The Everyday

Probably not the best idea to eat maple syrup slathered pancakes, french toast or waffles everyday but you could if you wanted to. During our local maple syrup festival, you could go to more than one sugar bush and have them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Or – and this might qualify as decadent to some – you can go any day of the year to one of the local down-home diners and, for a small but worthwhile extra charge, get the real thing along with your home fries and bottomless coffee.

#4 The Award Winning

There is more than one maple related award wining aspect to my ‘home’.

For one, we have a festival called Maple in the County that has won awards. I daresay it should be called the Tastiest Fun Thing to do with The Family. Check out our J. & C. Nyman Farms profile for the festival here.

Also, the marketing organization that supports the businesses in the county has won awards. And so they should. I can’t believe how much press we’ve had since signing up with them. Check out Taste the County if you’re wondering how to brand your area and get consumers to spend their money locally.

#5 The Feel-Good

This is really a personal thing. Not everyone will agree that this is a maple-related benefit. Those with teenagers at home might think it sounds more like voluntary torture.

The truth about me, though? I really like teenagers. And, this year, I’ve been able to get back to working with them through our sugar bush. I had been too long away from the all encompassing energy of the rare beast known as ‘the enthusiastic teen’ and I wanted to get back. So, I created a leadership project that involved running our event at the Maple in the County festival. Fun and learning for all.

And, better than that, MAPLE SYRUP FOR ALL!

(Just don’t ask me about it after I’ve spent a 72 hour stretch feeding wood into the evaporator. That post will be about syrup hell…)