If you take over someone’s farm, as we did, to one extent or another you also inherit their treatment of the land, their reputation, and sometimes even their name. You represent the next chapter in the story of that place. If the previous owners did a great job and you’re just taking the baton for the next leg of the journey, then your branding strategy (as long as you keep up the quality) might be straightforward. If you are taking over a failing farm business, you might have some work to do to rehabilitate its image or relationships. If you start your own farm or land-based business, you have the opportunity to write the first chapter of its story, and that’s not without its challenges either; in fact, it can be overwhelming. The good news is that in the age of social media, it is easier than ever to define yourself. Unless you’re a commodity farmer or selling only to wholesalers, like it or not, land-based enterprises require storytelling, and you need to take seriously the job of using all the elements of your farm’s identity—name, physical space, reputation, online presence, and real-world behavior—to support that identity.
Once Cecilia and I realized we needed to continue calling our farm what everyone in town was already calling it, the Pieropan Christmas Tree Farm, the rest of the brand identity we wanted to create flowed from that name. We worked with a graphic designer friend of ours to create the initial logo, font, and website. While it is easy enough to build your own website these days, it’s worth working with a graphic designer if you are not clear on exactly what you want. Our instructions to Seth were to use a font that evoked Art Deco, with a bit of 1950s-era diner thrown in, a mix we both loved in its own right but also felt would help build on the nostalgia people have around our farm and around Christmas more generally. We came up with a logo that took the one Al used (a straight line for the trunk of the tree with a squiggly line denoting the branches) and updated it to show the stump bearing two trees, one little and one big. The new logo emphasizes our growing method, which is what sets us apart from other tree farms, while at the same time giving a nod to Al’s legacy. We first made some pencil sketches of this idea, then a number of drawings with marker until one of them was clearly better than the rest. I gridded out this drawing and transferred it to a linoleum block, then cut away everything but the lines of the drawing. I sent this linoleum cut to Seth, who digitized the print the block made and then cleaned up some of the lines to make the image less cluttered.
Al Pieropan only ever had one sign with the farm name on it.
The original sketch for the logo, inspired by Al’s logo.
The sketch turned into linoleum cut prints.
Our own sign where Al’s used to hang. Note the way the colors echo those of the road sign and the trees.
For colors, Cecilia and I wanted something different from the classic white-lettering-on-dark-green-background motif that is the standard choice of all Christmas tree farms. We liked the idea of using naturally occurring color combinations found in the balsam groves (something we had done with our tiny house, painting the door pale green with a scarlet doorknob in homage to a species of lichen that is pale green with a scarlet tip). We went to the paint store and got a couple of different shades of green, some dark and some light. I fell in love with a pale, bluish green that reminded me of the color of blue spruce, but Cecilia quite rightly pointed out that it felt cold. The best color combination juxtaposed the dark green of branches with the much brighter, almost yellow color of the new growth each spring; after painting test sticks to see which color we preferred for either background or lettering, we ultimately settled on a dark green background with yellow-green lettering.
While this color combination does not stand out much from late spring through the summer when the leaves are on the trees, by the end of November, and especially when there is snow on the ground, these colors make our signs really pop out. If we were selling a different main product at a different time of year we would likely have chosen a different color combination, and it is important to consider not just how your color combination looks in isolation on a computer screen or business card, but also how it looks against its likely backdrop in the larger world. Will most of your customers see it on a sign in front of a green pasture? On a business card at the bottom of a cardboard box? On a grocery store shelf, competing for attention with a dozen other brands? As a logo on a plastic bag?
Fonts are also important toward conveying the story you want to tell the world about what you do. Seth selected a handful of fonts that felt similar to the main font on our signage to create a website and flyer that were both evocative of the past and modern at the same time. In particular, the font he chose for our name perfectly evokes the feeling of early twentieth century that I wanted to pay homage to. It is eye catching, immediately identifiable as us, and easy to lay out and paint freehand. The fonts Seth chose for the secondary text work similarly, and just as well. It would have been easy to assume that you should choose one font and stick with it, but Seth showed us that the right mix of fonts can be much more effective at communicating discrete pieces of information while at the same time building a textured world for the identity than any one font alone. Choosing a strong mix of fonts can be tricky, but start paying attention and you will see them everywhere, particularly on well-made websites. Take note of combinations you like and write down what you like about them, or the font names if you can figure that out.
Seth built our first website using these fonts and our general color palette of greens and white, and for a number of years it was our main way of presenting ourselves to the world. After four years the information began to feel dated (although the look and feel did not) and so we replaced it with a less well-designed Wordpress site that we can more easily update ourselves. Ironically, this website now feels dated and needs an overhaul, which will happen before this book comes out.
Identity Basics
The basic components of your visual brand are: name, logo, font, and color scheme. All four of these should be rooted in the emotion you want to evoke in your customers. Before choosing anything, ask yourself what assumptions you want someone to make about your business. Do you want them to think of you as traditional? Modern? Classic? Do you want them to feel invigorated by your identity? Challenged? Comforted?
Many names are forgettable. Many names are not easily searchable online, an important consideration these days. Sometimes a name just makes the most sense (like in our situation) because the farm you’re taking over has a history that you want to honor. Other times you are forging something new. Choosing a name that can grow and encompass a changing farm identity can be important (not something we did), but so can choosing a name that is highly specific so that people remember what you do. A good name combines unexpected words to surprise and delight. A good name suggests a logo. Some of my favorite local farm names are Queen’s Greens, Atlas Farm (with a fantastic logo of Atlas bearing up under a load of produce instead of the world), and Town Farm (so called because it is in town). Remember that customers who visit your farm (if your farm allows visitors) will often leave out the word farm when referring to it. So when we say that we’re going to the Atlas Farm Store, we just say that we’re going to Atlas. Make sure your name works under those circumstances.
The lantern color, the shingle siding, and even the type of hook the lantern hangs from are all carefully chosen to evoke a certain feeling and support a certain color palette.
When colors, materials, fonts, and textures come together to support a consistent tone, you create a unique and memorable experience for the customer.
Logos can be challenging to conceive and create. Sometimes you don’t even need one. In this age of smartphones with their tiny icons, many logos are too small, too detailed, too spidery. They are easy to ignore. It’s best, especially if your business will do a lot of online business, to either choose something extremely simple and geometric or hire an artist, graphic designer, or illustrator to distill the essence of your idea using as few lines as possible. When a friend and I recently started a project on Instagram called @spoonesaurus, I asked a cousin of mine who is a cartoonist to create an avatar for the account, of a T. rex carving a wooden spoon with a goofy grin on its face. I also asked her to use bright colors. She captured the absurdity I was hoping for—the big dinosaur using its teeny tiny little arms—so wonderfully that I have been asked numerous times if we intend to make T-shirts. That is the power of a good logo. People want to wear it.
Font and logo often work together hand in hand, so that the name of the business is always written in that font, to the point where the words would look funny in any other font, and the arrangement of the logo also feels sacrosanct. With our farm, for example, we almost always position our logo to the upper right of the name.
For me, the simpler the color scheme the better. Choose two colors, or occasionally set the darker of those two colors against white if you need to change it up. Make sure the lettering contrasts enough to really pop out from the background. Unexpected colors for a farm are a good bet: pinks and oranges and yellows and pale blues and greens—there’s a reason neon signs are eye catching. Often, using two tones of the same color but different shades (like our dark green and light green) is a lovely choice. Eyes are sensitive to contrast, so if both of your colors have the same degree of darkness (like primary colors, for instance) then they won’t stand out as distinct from one another. But navy blue with pale blue lettering? Heavenly.
Consistency
Ultimately you want your name, logo, color, and font to work together in such a way that people associate the font and color scheme with your brand, recognize your logo even from a distance, and easily remember your name when they think of your product. You can achieve this by being consistent with your presentation. Every time you display your farm name, use the font, colors, and if possible the logo. On our farm, the best example of utilizing this combination is our road signs.
Because our farm is in the middle of nowhere (I used to be quite proud of the fact that from our house, you could drive through two intersections in either direction without encountering a stop sign), road signs are crucial for helping people find our place during the Christmas season. We post signs at every intersection out to a radius of 4 miles (6.4 km), all featuring our name, logo, and a large arrow pointing people in the appropriate direction. Over the years I realized that these signs needed to be bigger and bolder than I had at first imagined, particularly the ones that weren’t at intersections where people would be coming to a stop. In order to effectively communicate something to a person driving 40 miles an hour (64 kph), a sign (and its lettering and arrow) needs to be about four times larger than you are probably envisioning right now. It is also important that the font, logo, and coloring be consistent across all of your signage, because those physical cues create a gestalt that is identifiable from much farther away.
Almost all of our signs employ the same background and font colors, and the lettering is consistent among our website, signs, and literature.
We have twelve such seasonal road signs. When possible, they are bolted with carriage bolts and wingnuts to existing signposts, taking advantage of the holes drilled along the length of these posts. Where a street sign isn’t available, we screw signs into trees or telephone poles or mount them on stakes. We also have two giant signs that stay up year-round that identify our farm and the You-Cut grove in particular, five signs directing You-Cut customers away from our wholesale groves and down to the You-Cut grove, and three signs posted at the grove that feature a legal disclaimer required by law to protect us from someone suing if they get hurt. We have signs for wreath pricing, signs that give directions for paying if we aren’t around, signs that we take to festivals and markets, and signs that stay at our house where we sell trees and wreaths off our front fence. On all of these, the coloring and font are consistent. One of my proudest moments of the past year was when a man came up to me at the grove and said that he was a marketing consultant and that our farm was the best example he had ever seen of signs being obviously handmade but also beautifully done and consistent.
A hand-painted sign where just the right amount of care is taken with the lettering has an energy to it that no printed sign can emulate.
The handmade aspect is important. While it is certainly possible to buy banners and print out signs for a reasonable price these days, there is something simple and authentic about a hand-painted sign that a slicker alternative could never achieve. I strive for a crisper presentation than the classic spray paint on a piece of plywood approach, but I also want to keep my signs looking unpretentious. I take most of the signs down each year and store them under cover, but even so some of them are starting to look beat up. Rather than touch them up each year, I embrace this weathered aesthetic. When I paint new signs, I pencil in the letters quickly so that they are relatively evenly spaced but don’t look fussed over. My painting style has also gotten looser as I have gained a better mastery of my chosen font, where lines should be thick and where they should be thin.
Painting Signs by Hand
I am not a professional sign painter, but here are the tricks I’ve learned over the years from having painted several dozen signs with a wide range of sizes and content. While I started out using a stencil that I cut out of cardboard to pencil in the first batch of road signs, I quickly became comfortable enough with the font and spacing to do everything freehand, and I would recommend anyone do the same as quickly as possible. Stencils are time-consuming to use, and can prevent you from making the signs you need on the fly because the process seems too long to be worth it.
First, determine the size of the sign you need and what it’s going to say or convey. A good rule of thumb is to make it four times bigger than you initially think it should be. As much as possible, strip the wording down to the bare minimum, even if it’s in a situation where you think people will stop and read it. No one reads a long sign.
If you use plywood, knock down the edges a bit with coarse sandpaper, as paint won’t stick to a super-sharp edge. Paint the background color at least two coats on each side, and hit the edge grain each time, making for a total of four coats on the edges. This will help the signs last a lot longer, as the most common failure of plywood signs is delamination from water getting into the edge. I have also found it invaluable over the years to keep some blank sign bases kicking around, so I can whip up a quick sign as needed without painting the base first.
Make a small mockup on a sheet of paper at roughly the same proportions, to get a sense of where the lines of text should fall on the sign. Then draw these lines in pencil on the sign as faintly as you can. This is another reason to avoid white signs with dark lettering, as these pencil lines will be invisible on a dark background but will be apparent at close quarters on a white sign. Also, white signs look great at first but get grungy quickly.
Practice writing the sign’s wording in your chosen font, both small and to scale. Over time you will understand the ins and outs of your font and won’t need to do this every time, but for a while at least, this practice will keep you from making a mistake that stands out like a sore thumb. Where are the lines thick? Where are they thin? If you haven’t studied typography, you may be surprised how many details go into creating a distinct and recognizable font. Practice how each letter is formed until you can close your eyes and envision it accurately.
Our hand-painted OPEN sign. Photo by Meghan Hoagland.
Letter in your sign, starting with the middle words on each line and working out to the edges to help ensure they are centered. Again, your paper mockup is your guide to determine where the words fall. Pencil in not just the bones of the letters but also where they are thick and where they are thin. Pencil in any serifs, the small lines that some fonts have at the ends of each stroke, if appropriate. A word on fonts: The more minimal the font, the trickier it is to paint, as their simplicity makes every wiggle and inaccuracy stand out. On the other hand, fonts with serifs and other flourishes can be a pain in the neck. Choosing a font that has enough complexity to mask imperfection but is easy to paint is an important consideration if you anticipate needing more than a handful of signs.
If you are right-handed, paint the sign as you would write normally, from left to right. If you are left-handed, as I am, paint from right to left, so that your hand can rest on the sign without smearing any paint.
Use a thinner brush than you think you will need. It is much easier to use a tiny brush and make the thickness of the lines exactly what you want them to be than it is to use a wider brush, at least at first. It would take a lot of practice to get better results with a big brush than what you can achieve the first time around with a smaller brush.
Own Yourself
If you’re leveraging farm income into side businesses, you may need to create a brand identity separate from your farm name, as I did when I started carving wooden spoons year-round. I briefly tried another business name that could encompass not only spoon carving but anything else I wanted to do, but it was unsuccessful. When I eventually paused to analyze branding within the spoon-carving field, I realized something. All the top spoon carvers are known by their names: Barn, Jojo, Robin, Yoav, Jogge, Fritiof, Anja. When a carver uses a separate business name (and many of them don’t), it usually goes completely unnoticed. Furthermore, there appears to be a subconscious distinction between how we think about businesses versus craftspeople. If you go by a business name, the baseline assumption is that your primary identity is commerce; if you are known by your own name, on the other hand, you are much more likely to be seen as a teacher or independent artisan, someone who is in some way defining the conversation about the craft, not just selling it.
Now, I have always shied away from using my name professionally. Emmet Van Driesche is a mouthful, usually misspelled, often mispronounced, and generally impossible to remember accurately. But I knew I wanted to teach and to have a voice in the philosophical canon of the field, not just carve spoons. Thankfully, the internet has made the accurate propagation of my name much easier, as people link to things and can take advantage of autofill in search engines to find me even when they can’t remember how to spell my name. So rather than come up with another generic-sounding business name, I decided to bite the bullet and put myself out there as just me.
One of my daily spoon photos. A coffee scoop carved from birch.
I didn’t have my epiphany about business names versus personal names until about a year in, so for a while my Instagram handle (or name) was @pieropantrees, because our farm website is www
After a year of struggling to gain traction as Anchor Goods, I had the epiphany, dropped it altogether, and changed my Instagram handle to @emmet_van_driesche. The effects were immediate. While my follower count was already gathering momentum and did not experience a spike, people’s sense of who I was finally clicked. Sales increased. Interaction increased. I felt like I wasn’t hiding behind a company name anymore, and as a result both my photographs and their posts became much more personal. Not inappropriately so, but I started portraying myself honestly as a person, and I found to my astonishment (although I really shouldn’t have been surprised) that people appreciated that much more than the “professional” image I had been trying to project before. My posts started telling the story of my journey as a farmer and craftsman. I had stopped faking it till I made it and was instead sharing my path. That turned out to be a much more powerful paradigm.
Having a smartphone and taking pictures every day for my Instagram account has been my single most important business development in the last two years. The direct business it generates aside, the discipline of taking photos every day has meant that I have become a much better photographer, and I now have a large trove of photos that I can use on my website. Instagram’s chronological portfolio of photographs is ideal for showcasing handmade tools and crafts, and like Twitter, it also effectively employs hashtags for greater searchability. Because the platform is image-based, captions can seem like an afterthought, but they shouldn’t be. Most users go for short and snarky, while others go for long and earnest; I tend to fall somewhere in between but definitely hit those extremes. Hashtags can also add commentary themselves, either funny, more to be laughed at than to be followed as a link to similar pictures, or earnestly, used to add your picture to a body of other work that you feel matches your aesthetic or philosophy.
I use hashtags primarily as a way to be found by other people. Social media is a numbers game; the more followers you have, the easier it is for more people to discover you. One of the most important ways to grow your base of followers when starting from zero (as I did) is to use multiple hashtags on every single post. That way, anyone browsing the pictures for that hashtag will be able to see your post, link back to your feed, and decide to follow you if they like what they see. Pay attention to how your feed comes across to someone checking it out for the first time. Are all the photos good? Do you have something to say? I regularly go back and edit my feed, removing the weakest photographs to improve the quality of this first impression.
About six months after this change, I created a website with my name for the domain (emmetvandriesche.com), something I thought only writers and politicians did. Because my identity as an individual was easily understood, as opposed to a business name, it could cover any pursuit I wanted to undertake, including those not directly related to the farm. Now people can find out about me, buy spoons, and arrange for lessons without needing the backstory of the Pieropan Christmas Tree Farm. This isn’t to say that the farm isn’t important, or that its identity doesn’t carry meaning, just that it is equally important to know when to separate some of what you do from the farm name. If you’re a farm, and also producing goods that are not strictly agricultural (like the spoons and scythe handles I make), then it can be an awkward fit to sell them under your farm name.
However, your farm identity is still important, especially when you’re starting out, because it gives you a base of expertise from which to speak, teach, or create. The farm can lend you initial legitimacy, before your name has any of its own. But at a certain point, you may find it appropriate to reclaim your own name as the source of your authority.
Taking Photographs
I am not a professional photographer, nor have I done any training or studying of it other than taking lots of photographs for the last couple of years. For the first three years, I used my smartphone exclusively, because it’s always in my pocket, allowing me to capture moments that would otherwise pass unnoticed. These tips are, accordingly, just notes about composition and process based on my experience of what has worked for me. These are intended to be general principles, not just how to photograph a product in a way that grabs the eye, but also how to capture moments.
I have recently started using a Sony a-6000 with a simple manual lens, and would recommend that once you get your feet under you with the smartphone you take the leap. The ability to achieve a tight depth of field can sometimes be duplicated by in-phone apps, but few phone cameras can generate the number of pixels of a real camera, and the more pixels you have, the more options you have for how you use the image.
Less is usually more. The number one thing that makes a photograph memorable for me is a stripped-down composition and color palette. This can be achieved by zooming or getting closer, cropping, or choosing a frame that naturally has only a little going on. If in doubt, frame in closer.
Don’t be afraid of color. Wonderful color is everywhere. Often it is crowded out to the point where we don’t appreciate it. Use the techniques above to focus in on one color and let it be felt. A photo where someone’s amazing red sweater fills the frame and all you see is that and their hands is more striking than a shot of them in the red sweater against a parking lot of cars. The more you can strip away, the better what is left stands out.
Light is key. While phone camera technology is getting better and better at handling low light conditions, harsh midday light is still tricky to navigate. The time of day dictates what I take pictures of, and the key is to tailor what I’m photographing to what the conditions of the moment will allow. If there is a picture that can only be captured at a certain time of day, see if you can remember to take it on an overcast day. Early morning also makes for good pictures, which works well for farmers or anyone working outdoors. Artificial light never looks as good as natural light, so if you are shooting indoors, turn off any lights or lamps, even if you don’t think will make any difference.
Lead the eye. Farms are full of wonderful geometry, from the rows of crops to the geometric spacing of seedlings to the arches of greenhouses. Use some naturally occurring structure or geometry to format the picture for a stronger impression.
Use the rule of thirds. If possible, frame landscape-style photographs such that the focus takes up one-third of the space, with the rest of the background taking up the remaining two-thirds, or by lining up the horizon at an angle across the shot. For some reason, our eyes like to see things in threes, including spacing.
Embrace imperfection. Luckily for farmers, imperfections look great in photographs, whether it’s weathered wood siding, rust on a tool, or a kale plant succumbing to winter. Use weathered surfaces as a background to make your produce or other products look more perfect by comparison.
Anticipate the moment. With action shots, the time to have your camera out and ready to go is the instant before something awesome happens, not as it occurs. It will take some time to develop the knack for knowing when to get ready. Taking too many photos can ruin the moment and inhibit the natural action of others. But quietly observing some human encounter, pulling out the phone, and discreetly snapping one picture? Often totally worth it. I find that my first one or two pictures of something are usually the best, and if I keep taking pictures after this point, they become increasingly contrived and stiff. Do your best and then move on.
Keep it real. Using photography as a means of noticing what is rather than contriving a scene usually results in better photos than I would otherwise take. The discipline of leaving things as they are is a creative constraint that has led to some of my best pictures. If I’m photographing an object, like a spoon, I put it down in the middle of some scenario or surface, and take the picture. This brings to the picture all the energy of a real situation that would immediately be lost if I brought in props. Cropping, choosing the light setting, and framing in thirds are all important, but this rule keeps me open to some strange experiments that often work quite well. It also breathes life into pictures by giving little glimpses and clues about the life around me, what one of my daughters is reading or what we will have for dinner. These real moments have a power that a contrived moment never could.
Reputation
Identity is inextricable from reputation. This has always been true and it is only more so now, with the internet’s tendency to make reviews, comments, and articles linger. Make sure that your daily actions match the identity you want to have. Be kind to your customers. Be kind to everybody. Give them the unexpected deal. Go the extra mile to help them. Show up when you say you’re going to show up. Keep to your deadlines. It is tempting to think of your identity as just what you put out into the world, but in truth your identity is the sum total of everyone’s experiences with you and your farm. You never know which one of those voices will be amplified, so the best course (and the right course) is to do the best you can every time.
For me, this means walking up into the grove with a lantern in the dark to help a lady who arrived super late from Boston select a tree. It means inviting countless kids and elders into my hut to thaw out by the woodstove on bitterly cold days. It means harvesting balsam greens in the snow and ice even when it’s miserable out because I gave someone my word I’d have them ready. It means always being honest with everyone. It means giving someone a price break from the usual flat rate for a tiny tree, without them asking.
Running a farm or business involves balancing a lot of details. Maintaining a sense of humor is crucial under all circumstances, because you will inevitably drop things. Photo by Meghan Hoagland.
Being consistent about putting the customer first earns moral capital that helps perpetuate itself. For example, last year I totally dropped the ball and forgot about an order for some bales of balsam. Not only was the woman’s order not there when her husband showed up, but I had left for the day. She called me, understandably disappointed and upset. But although I couldn’t help her that night, and her husband had already driven back home, I was able to arrange for another customer, a florist who was picking up some bales that evening, to grab some from a third party’s order that wasn’t going to be picked up until the next day. The florist lived near enough to the woman that she could easily go pick them up from him. The florist is not a big customer of mine, but I’ve known him for years and we have a good relationship. He was happy to help me in my time of need because I had built up the moral capital over the years, not through some extraordinary act, but just through charging fair prices, keeping my word (as best I can, obviously, as this story points out), and being respectful. In this case, instead of telling the woman that she was out of luck, I apologized and then solved the problem that I had created.
Maintaining your reputation as a seller online can be trickier. For instance, a fellow spoon carver on Instagram recently accused me of stealing his idea; instead of confronting me directly, his approach was to call me out publicly, again and again. Two things helped me weather this situation: how I responded in the moment, and my existing reputation. I responded as respectfully as I could, reaching out to him privately to explain how I was not stealing his idea, but that what I had carved was a customer request. I also acknowledged the fact that I carved and posted a photo of a spoon very similar to his and not long after his post, but since I hadn’t stolen anything I stood by my work. When my private communication didn’t get anywhere, I stated my position publicly in my own feed, on his feed, and in the several large discussions about plagiarism that built up on the feeds of several other colleagues. In all of these I was respectful when he was not, even though I was upset.
To my surprise, most people came to my defense, both privately and publicly, so much so that he deleted his posts with the original accusations. He then demanded that I similarly remove all the posts I had made discussing the situation. This I refused, on the grounds that since it was my reputation that had been smeared, I wanted my defense to remain public.
My reputation prior to the incident is what inspired people to reach out to me with their support, and my calmness and respectful attitude during it helped to cement that reputation. Ironically, the whole thing was a positive, though painful, experience for me. I found myself thrust into the center of an argument about ideas and ownership, design and plagiarism, sharing and reputation. On the one side were a small group of professional carvers who were more established and had created an atmosphere of territoriality, where they claimed certain design elements as their own and jealously guarded against anyone else using them. On the other side were the masses of amateur carvers and younger professionals like myself who viewed these design elements as common wealth, basic shapes that were fair game. Largely because of being accused by this fellow spoon carver so publicly, I found myself championing the ideals of sharing, respectful discourse, and equal rights to designs in a way that I would never have sought out otherwise. You might think this sort of ordeal will never happen to you, that you don’t need to plan for it, but you never know what is coming around the bend. Live as though this type of conflict is inevitable, and you will be in a much better position if it happens.
__________
It is inaccurate to say that we can “choose the identity” of our business, because we define and redefine both ourselves and our businesses every day, with every act. It is the accumulated form of these actions that creates an identity. Identity is the opinion of your neighbor and the image someone has in their head halfway around the world. It is your reputation with your customers and your reputation online. It is your own name and your farm’s name. It is the way you portray yourself online and the reality on the ground. It is the sum of the relationships you build and the grand idea in your head. It is forever a work in progress.
The ability to tell your story is as important as any other tool for your land-based business.
Whenever you start something, whether a farm or some other business, it is easy to feel paralyzed about how you want to portray yourself, what you want to be called, what you want to do, even. The great thing about thinking of identity as simply telling your story is that it takes the pressure off. You don’t need to have it all figured out before you begin. You don’t need to feel stuck with the name you have chosen, what your farm is already known for, or how you have positioned yourself. Just tell your story. Change things up. Toss stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Articulate these changes and give them context using social media. Telling your story keeps you tuned in to yourself and what you want and need out of life, and it keeps you tuned in to the needs of your land.
Farming is inescapably land-based (even if you think it’s not, because you have a concentrated animal-feeding operation or a hydroponics greenhouse, don’t fool yourself; all of life is land- or ocean-based), and the story of your land precedes you and will continue after you. Having both of these ends of the time line in mind as you make your choices will help guide you to where you want to be. What is the story of your land and how does that inform your options? What do you want your own legacy on the land to be? What do you want your legacy to be as a person? In the next chapter, I discuss how the answers to these questions guide your future moves.
Commonsense Reminders for Gaining and Maintaining Your Reputation
Reputation is not static. It can change in an instant, and yet it is also the sum of your words and deeds. While it might seem trivial to articulate some of these basic things that build a reputation, in this day and age we can probably never read or hear or talk about these things enough. Your farm’s success and your success as a human will lean heavily on your reputation.
- Treat everyone with respect. Even rude people. Even people deliberately trying to harm you. Respect is the foundation of all peaceful relationships.
- Keep your word. If you say you are going to show up, show up. If you say you will deliver something, deliver it on time. It is always better to underpromise and overdeliver, so don’t make promises you can’t keep.
- Tell the truth. Sometimes this means saying something when it needs to be said. Sometimes this means acknowledging your own mistakes or wrongdoing.
- Be a champion. Use your unique advantages to be a voice for those who are voiceless. Stand up for what you believe.
- The right thing to do is always the right thing to do.