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Partners Lauren and Killion Dun Runn Oft! (They look and talk honest… but why don’t they have integrity to follow through?????) |
| For anyone who has seen the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? you will recognize the spelling of the phrase to “run off”. It did happen. Last night, in the middle of the night, we are guessing between 12 and 2 AM, our apprentices packed up and moved off the farm. Why??? We are guessing they couldn’t handle the work load; although when we interviewed them we told them that farm work is long, hard hours and not much money, to which Lauren’s reply was something like, “We really want to farm and are willing to do whatever it takes. We will work extra when it is needed.” This is the first time we have had our apprentices quit during the season so now we must ask ourselves; “How do we better screen our applicants so that we are pretty comfortable that they are capable of handling the tough growing season. Lauren and Killion do have a passion for fresh food because they put in a lot of hard work on their short stint at the farm. We thought that Killion was pretty honest with integrity but he definitely let us and our CSA down by leaving in the middle of the night. Lauren has some type of integrity, in that she works hard while she is at the job, but she would occasionally just disappear not telling us, then show up again and work really hard. We think that Lauren is definitely motivated by what she desires at any given moment, while Killion is somewhere in-between doing what “he desires” at any given moment versus following through on his commitment. Our first clue of this integrity issue was their first day of employment when they were supposed to begin work on the farm, Killion showed up, but Lauren was Mountain Climbing or something…. Killion had no idea (we think) where Lauren was and he wasn’t even sure she would show up at the farm. (Even though she promised to do “Whatever it takes..”) Finally, couple weeks later, Lauren showed up. We all then had a sit down conversation in regards to farming being a hard job and one must be committed to it. We gave them the option of leaving and following their hearts desire before commiting to the growing season. Lauren decided she would work part time while Killion would work full time. We are trying to profile their personality just so we can prevent this issue in the future. The question becomes can we profile their personalities and if so how? Oh my… We sound like our governments “Homeland Security” when talking about “profiling; we hesitate to think that we would try to profile personalities but it is sometimes needed. We think perhaps neither of them have ever spent more than three months in any given location or job based on their life experiences at just 24 years of age. We don’t know this for certain because we didn’t request a resume in writing. So in the future we will require a resume and at least a college degree which indicates that someone is dedicated to a passion OR references indicating that they have been at a job for more than a few months which will help prove that they have some kind of integrity in fulfilling a commitment. Email us with suggestions… |
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