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Start Young

8/20/2012

 
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Today my wife is bottling salsa.  This year our little garden has done well.  There's nothing like a BLT sandwich with fresh tomatoes and lettuce (no, I don't raise pigs - I go to the store for that).  Although our tomatoes have done well, she needed a few more than were ripe in our garden.  So, I stopped by the local fresh produce stand, Harward Farms. 

They operate a well-run business that has developed and maintained a great reputation throughout the local region they serve.  As she was carefully moving my purchase from the display basket to a box I asked Traci, their cheerful produce stand operator, if the people who started the venture were still around. 

I was delighted to here that Jake and Lenny began operating the produce stand business when they were just youngsters after their father gave them charge of a small piece of farmland.  Two generations earlier their grandfather had started Harward farms, but now their once-little produce division has expanded to nearly thirty roadside stands throughout Utah.

Lesson: Start young.  I love this lesson.  I started a business when I was 15 years old and was dabbling in entrepreneurial ventures even before then.  I work a lot with businesses in remote, rural communities and have learned that long-term, stable growth typically comes from within - meaning local startups.  The key: teach kids (beginning in elementary school) to value innovation and entrepreneurship.  Of course, it also doesn't hurt if they know how to work.

Lesson two: Business models are adaptable.  With the right business model, even as other family farm operations are threatened by the move to large-scale, commodity-style production, the small agriculture business can thrive.

Congratulations Haward Farms!


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