When you’re a small farmer with a small team, every little bit of time counts. Your team should be able to move smoothly from one task to the next without requiring micromanaging. In order for that to happen, you need to set clear expectations and have good communication.
Beyond that? It’s often in the small, day-to-day tasks that efficiency is lost.
So, here are some of the things we try to do at the Farm on Central to avoid wasting time and energy:
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Carry a radio (walkie-talkie). This is one of the biggest timesavers on our farm! Walkie-talkies make it easy for my team to reach me whenever they need, as well as coordinate with each other. Especially when I am working in my office, it’s much faster for my team to reach me over radio instead of constantly making trips back and forth from the fields or tunnels to my office.
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Create corner or ‘C’ workspaces. You might be surprised how much time is wasted by simply walking back and forth between workspaces. When working in the same area for several hours, we set up 2 tables (or a table and cart) at a perpendicular angle, to form a corner or ‘C’. The idea is to be able to set up our workspace so that we have everything we need on either side, within reach by simply turning, instead of having to walk back and forth between several tables or surfaces.
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Pick by area, not by crop. It’s highly inefficient to go harvest a little bit in greenhouse A, then go harvest one crop in greenhouse B, then go back to greenhouse A to pick something else. Instead, it improves efficiency (and prevents crops from getting skipped) if we harvest by field or greenhouse. So if there are six crops in greenhouse A, and three currently need to be harvested, we try to have our team harvest all three before moving on to the next field or greenhouse.
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Work one project at a time. This is a big one! Nothing kills productivity like multitasking. We go one project at a time, and as much as possible, we try to clean up our workspace before moving on to the next project. A messy workspace is another productivity killer, so the ending step should always be cleanup.
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Choose appropriate harvest buckets. Usually, this means carrying large harvest buckets so we don’t have to make many trips. But for small berry crops, like raspberries and blackberries, we use belly buckets instead. This allows us to pick much faster without having to bend down or drag a large container around. The point is, use whatever is most efficient for the crop you are harvesting.
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Carry a knife or other tools. We advise all team members to carry a knife with them…because you never know when you might need it! Depending on what projects they are working on, our team members might wear belts with other tools as well, so that everything they need is within reach.
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Use wheeled carts. Whenever transporting seed trays, big bins, transplants, or other items it saves us a lot of time to use large wheeled racks instead of making multiple trips. We use several different types of wheeled carts on the farm, including some that double as a table or working space.
Figuring out how to maximize efficiency is not an easy task. These are just a few of the areas we have been focusing on recently, but there are endless ways to boost productivity.
At the end of the day, what’s important is that you keep an eye out for new ways you can make tasks easier and faster for your team. You don’t want to get stuck in the mindset of “this is the way we do things.” Instead, be open to changing your habits when you find methods that work better than what you are currently doing. There’s always room for improvement!
