On pricing and castration

As part of being a new farmer, I know I need to change some of my attitudes. For example, at a farming conference, when people were standing around trading tips about castrating hogs, I felt the blood drain from my face. “Clearly, you just need to get over this,” I told myself. Then, I tried to rearrange my gaping mouth into a pleasant expression, nod at the right times, and soak up some good advice in case we ever raise hogs.

A similar uneasiness settles over me as I think about what to charge for our chickens this summer. Experienced sustainable farmers all say the same thing – don’t under charge for your product. Most people don’t go into farming to make money, they say, but without money there is no farm. Also, people who are making a living in sustainable farming have to work very hard to educate people about why their prices are higher, and then if someone undercuts their prices, all their work is lost, and nobody wins.

I do not want to make my farm truly “unsustainable” by failing to make money on it. I certainly do not want to do anything to make life harder for other sustainable farmers. I also want my husband, who is a schoolteacher, to be able to sell chickens to his coworkers.

As we consider one potential price, it seems like I will be charging both much and too little at the same time. I worry that I might somehow be letting down friends by charging slightly more for our birds, but at the same time we will not be able to pay ourselves $10 an hour for our work after covering the costs of raising the chickens.

“No! No!” clamors the cumulative voice of more experienced farmers. “That means you’re undercharging! That means you’re not sustainable!”

In so many areas of my life, I find things work best when I listen to my heart, but maybe this is a situation where I need to go about things differently. Just look at the numbers on our cost of production spreadsheet and proceed very rationally. Clearly, I need to steel myself as I consider pricing, just as I would need to steel myself if I were ever getting ready to castrate a hog.