Why We’re STILL Optimistic

I wrote a newsletter a couple years ago about why we were optimistic here at Alden Hills.

It was right before the US election, and we were interviewed along with a few other Wisconsin farmers. The surprise to me was at how negative the other farmers were at the state of things. Now, I am not the most optimistic person in the world (you can ask Emily about that one, but I like to think it’s realism!) but I was surprised to see the overall negativity from the farming crowd. At the time there were a lot of unknowns in the world… raw materials prices were crazy, labor was hard to find, feed and gas prices were starting to climb and there was a lot of uncertainty everywhere. We were feeling all those things then too, but I had a much different outlook than the other farmers. I revisit that moment in my mind a lot…

Do I still feel optimistic?

I think so (full disclosure though this is usually the time of year where I’m somewhat recovered from last season and ready for another season of farming… that’s probably why I don’t write this newsletter in August aha). I felt optimistic back in 2020 and I still feel optimistic now. A large part of the reason we’re optimistic is the mindset that we carry here at the farm. We came to the realization years ago that there were always going to be difficulties in owning businesses (and especially a farm being one of those businesses.)

So we weren’t going to be surprised at hardships.

Mindset is very important because the challenges never go away! We’ve also changed our farm and honed our focus each year too… with focus comes clarity. We spent a lot of years chasing different aspects of farming, but I think that we’re much clearer on what Alden Hills is now than even 3 years ago. Another focus for us as a farm in the last 2 years has been organizing ourselves. When the farm started we were very run and gun (and we still are too much) but we’ve worked hard to pull ourselves out of that. We’ve also come to focus on the things we think we do the best… raising pastured meats for you. Focus combined with clarity is a powerful thing!