Giving Grace To Your Employees

Giving grace to your employees is a privilege and a responsibility. However, some employees will not appreciate it. They will act like you owe them all you have. Some will disrespect you so badly that you want them out immediately but your compassion kicks in and you end up keeping them. Some of your team members will be grateful. Others don't think they have done anything to merit your grace and will continue to be rude to you for a season. Then they are let go and everyone can breathe easier.

Giving Grace To Your Employees 7/19-7/25/2021

Monday, July 19, 2021

Matt & Dawson took out the wall A/C units and put up cardboard last week.

Eddie put up drywall where the cardboard was. Our contractor will put the outside walls up.

Good hot Monday morning! Today, we have Eddie the dry waller here to repair the holes left in the farm store from the wall unit air conditioners that were removed and given away last week. Eddie dry walled our business buildings last year and he does a good job and cleans up when he is through. Mike still needs to come out and put boards up on the outside of the walls since we still have cardboard there.

The walls look great. We couldn't find the green paint but it is here somewhere!

Giving Grace

Giving grace to our employees is something we have to do every day so we can continue to conduct business here at David's Garden Seeds®. Everyone of us makes mistakes. Some of our mistakes are deliberate and others are not, but either way, we need to give grace or get rid of our employees if they keep on making the same mistakes. It is like when we sin, God forgives us when we ask him. He is always giving grace to us so we need to give it to our people. If we did not, we would have to keep on firing and hiring.

Today is payday which adds to the busyness of Monday. I like getting paid but I don't like having to write out all of the paychecks and deposit slips. It is a lot of work.

We are having our birthday luncheon for June and July this week. We did not get to have one in June because David had his surgery so we are combining both months. We have seven birthdays to celebrate. We will be closed this Wednesday from 10:30am until 2:30pm for the birthday celebration.

Baby Chicks

The 2 eggs next to the blue one are new from our new chicks. I have not seen either color before and look how small and cute they are.

Our baby chicks are almost 19 weeks old and two of them are laying eggs already. I found a dark chocolate egg and a milk chocolate egg, both of which I have not seen before.Isn't that interesting? They are laying eight weeks earlier than they should be. The eggs are small compared to the regular chicken eggs I am getting and the dark colors are so pretty.

David ordered more of the snake repellent from Amazon but it did not get delivered. Amazon says it is undeliverable. Not sure what we are supposed to do. David now got some sort of snake repellent solar stakes to put in the ground. We haven't tried them yet but we need to get them in the ground this evening.

This morning, we found out that our expensive riding mower is once again broken and has been broken in various places but we were never told by those who used it. Neither one of our outdoor crew told us anything about a wire being cut under the mower so it won't mow. They were using it to ride on around the farm. David called all over today trying to find a place that has some riding mowers but no one has any. The earliest we can buy a new one is September so from now until then, we have to use a push mower or pay to have folks come out and cut for us. I don't think giving grace is an option in this case but it doesn't matter as they no longer work here.

The mower which we don't get to use has been broken more times than I care to count over the past two years. We bought it brand new when we bought the property two years ago this month. It has been in the shop over and over. It is a John Deere so it is a good one but people have not taken good care of it.

Personally, I think we should forget about an outside crew now and just concentrate on our seed business. I do not want to hire a bunch of new people now who are not right for us and who do not share our core values but just need a job. Everytime we hire people who need a job, they don't work out. When we hire those with good core values, we get good people who last. Then they are giving grace to us and to their coworkers. We are giving grace to everyone because everybody is happy, happy, happy in the words of Phil Robertson of Duck Commander and Duck Dynasty. I love that family and that show.

Me with Jase Robertson at his church in West Monroe, Louisiana. He is a very nice man and we enjoyed worshiping at Whites Ferry Road Church while we were there.

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

See the solar panel on a stick? It gives off beeps that warn snakes not to come around.

I put 4 of these solar snake repellent things up that make noises so the snakes will stay away. I sure hope they work as the snakes have eaten 5 fish so far. That is a lot at $39.99 a pop.

Good Tuesday morning. So we got some type of solar snake repellent sticks that make sounds yesterday in the mail. David put them together last night and they were making noises at me in the kitchen. This morning, I took them out to the pond and put them around it. Hopefully they work.

My zinnias are starting to come up in front of the farm store so I am excited about that.

The zinnias that I planted last Friday are already coming up in front of the farm store! So exciting!

Giving Grace

The mailman dropped off a priority package to someone named Michael at an address 15 miles away while I was away from the store the other day. I wrote on it and put it in our outgoing mail. When the mailman showed up, I told him about it and where to find it. He apologized. I said it was fine and it happens. Giving grace is much easier when you realize that we all make mistakes. The ones who point the most fingers when something goes wrong think they don't make mistakes, but they do. Stop pointing fingers and start giving grace to everyone.

This is our business slow season. We are still making a lot of internet sales but it will start to pick up at the end of August when a lot of warm weather folk realize they get to plant a fall garden. Frost may not hit in the warm areas until November, December, or January. In San Antonio, we would not get frost most years until January. Out here, we get frost in November. This gives us plenty of time to grow delicious fall veggies.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Our poor riding mower has been through so much abuse in the two years we have had it. We just don't get it. This is the 3rd seat and it is ripped again. Going into the shop for many repairs now.

Today was an extremely busy day. Nacho, who does a lot of construction and lawn work for us, showed up to haul our riding mower over to Pleasanton to be repaired. The lawn team busted it up in places we did not know about. They also ruined the third seat we bought for it. It is only two years old. I started out by printing a lot of orders, after feeding everyone, of course. Then I got ready for the day and went over to the store.

Happy birthday to our June and July team members. We had 8 to celebrate today!

I cleaned up our grow tower because we will replant it soon. The lights were installed incorrectly, so we have to fix that. We also have to drain the water from it because it is old.

We left the farm at 10:34am, headed for Salt Grass to celebrate our June and July birthdays. We had eight! We give each of our employees a crisp, new $100 bill in their card at Salt Grass along with some birthday cake after a delicious meal. We had a good group of 20 at Salt Grass.

About 1:45pm, we left for David's surgeon's office in the Medical Center. We had not visited this office before. It was crowded and not as nice as his others. They got us in pretty quickly and the doctor said that it is healing nicely. Then he took two wooden cotton swabs and shoved them in and turned them to make the wound bleed in two places. He said he was making it angry. Of course, this made for a bloody clean up this evening. I guess maybe it makes the wound heal faster.

Fulfillment where orders are done is on the left and production where seeds are counted and packaged is on the right. David's Garden Seeds®

After that, we went back to the farm. We beat Matthew and Jay back. They went to pick up another one of our seed machines that was in the shop. Supposedly, it works better now. Seeds are not getting counted as fast as they should be and I think it is because the people doing the counting don't see huge piles of seeds so they are going slower. Their production numbers are pathetic. Honestly, we have too many people for the work there is to do right now over in the production and fulfillment areas.

Shortly after we returned to the farm, it poured but just for a short while. Then some customers came into the store and we had a nice visit.

Giving Grace

Now that we cannot do regular canning for sale due to state health department regulations, there is not much else for them to do. We can still pickle and make jelly according to what we have been told, but we have no cucumbers or okra to pickle because all of our crops were not taken care of properly. They are dead.

We have 15 gallons of fertilizer that were not used. At the beginning of spring, David bought 16 gallons and explained to our outdoor crew how to use it. At the beginning of July, he discovered just one gallon was gone when all 16 gallons should have been used. It is upsetting because we planted a lot and we should have had a lot of produce. David was too sick to go check constantly. We were giving grace to our employees for months but they still would not do the important things that David told them needed to be done. This affected not only the outdoor department, but everyone else because there is no produce now. We invested thousands of dollars and got a broken riding mower and nothing to eat or sell except a few tomatoes.

Giving grace is hard in these types of situations, yet we continue with giving grace. The bottom line is that we have to do what is best to keep our company going.

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Some of the baby chicks are roosting along with some of the older hens. They are not babies anymore.

Good Thursday morning.It is going to be another hot and humid day. The sky is blue and so far, we have had no customers. That is okay because I am still trying to figure out how to use the new website to add things and change things. It looks better and easier to use for customers, but the back end of it is way more complicated than it needs to be. It is certainly not easy like SBI is easy.

Around 1:30pm this afternoon, it started raining again. It came down hard just as the mailman pulled up. He came in the store all wet and got some drops of water on our handouts that we give to customers when they buy our seeds. Since this page is about giving grace, I decided that giving grace to him was best so I did not say anything...

At 4:15pm, the rain started again. At this point, almost everyone was gone so I made the executive decision to close up and go home. I closed up and it poured harder. I ran across the compound with my computer bag. By the time I reached the house, David was laughing at me from the dry living room where he was smart enough to go to before the rain started. I changed and then when the rain stopped, I went out back to take care of the animals and collect the eggs. The skies were black.

I took care of the guineas and I was watering the rabbits when the rain started. I fed them and then made a run for the chicken coop in the rain. I got inside, fed them, collected the eggs and got them all put away. The rain just kept on coming. The cold rain hit me hard and I dropped and cracked eggs going to the house. By the time I got to the house, I was more wet than at 4:15pm. I mean, I don't even get that wet in the shower!

It is now pouring for the fourth time today but no way am I going out in it again. Glad I put the chickens away the last time I was out there. There is not much dry land in there again.

Friday, July 23, 2021

The grow tower has now been cleaned up and replanted. Also, the lights in this photo are wrong. We fixed them.

Good Friday morning. Today is the day we completely cleaned and drained the grow tower in the store. Then I put all new wool medium for the seeds and I replanted. Hopefully, the seeds will start coming up soon. We spent hours doing this. I had help from Matthew.

We had no customers, which was good, because we had to take the large lighting pieces off of the grow tower to drain it and they were all over the store.

Everyone who does orders was off today so I had to fill and ship the orders myself.

Saturday, July 24, 2021

The gazebo lights and the pond pump were off yesterday due to the fuse blowing in the rainstorm. We got that back on!

This morning is hot and humid. I harvested tomatoes and many of them were cracked or rotten on the vine. We just don't have enough people to harvest everything that is growing...

I found two fish in our fish pond this morning. Hopefully, the other two were just hiding amongst the waterlilies so I will check back later. Once we can see that the solar snake repellers work, we will get more fish again. The chickens, bunnies, and guineas are doing fine. I have been working on the website and printing out orders as well as doing dishes and laundry.

This morning, I ordered feed for our farm animals from Morales Feed Supply in Devine. I got an email that said they received my order but it did not say when it would be delivered. It was not delivered today. They close at 1pm on Saturdays and they are closed on Sundays.

This afternoon, one of David's friends suggested someone to mow our property since our lawnmower is broken and in the shop. The guy who does our property from time to time is in San Diego because his son graduates from Marine Basic Training this week.

So all of a sudden, there were three men on three riding mowers all over the property. They did a good job, but just like everyone else, they did not get it all. They did not move the hoses and electrical cords so we still have patches all over that need to be cut. I just don't understand. Also, the whole section by the gazebo was not touched.

Giving Grace

Giving grace is something we try to do as often as we can but sometimes we have to lay off employees. We always feel bad when we have to terminate someone but sometimes, there is nothing we can do about it. Summer is always our slow time. Orders are down so income is down. Those not giving 100% while they are here need to go find employment elsewhere. Everyone is looking to hire right now since so many don't want to go back to work due to the ridiculous covid unemployment money.

Every restaurant and store we have gone to this year has desperately needed good workers. The problem is people have been home and now they don't want to go back to the work force.

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Good morning! Let's make it a golden day.

Good afternoon! We have had a good Sunday so far. We got up and I did the farm chores. Then we got ready for church and drove into San Antonio. Yesterday, David found a Red Lobster gift certificate in his drawer that he had forgotten about so we had a delicious lunch at Red Lobster after church. Then, instead of getting groceries, we came back home because I was too tired. I dozed off several times during the drive home. I did not get enough sleep last night.

Now I am trying to get caught up online. The medical chair that we rented for David last month is supposed to be picked up today at 4:30pm. On Friday, I told the guy to come then so he would have help getting the chair out of the house. David cannot help him and my shoulder and arm are still injured so I cannot help. Last month, Matthew happened to be here when the guy got here because it was a work day.

Also, one of the guys who mowed yesterday left his riding mower here but we have no idea why. He said he is coming sometime this afternoon to get it.

When we got home from church, I searched all over and could not find a riding lawn mower anywhere on the property. My guess is he came back last night and picked it up before our gate timer closed our gate. We texted him twice today but never got an answer.

Giving grace to anyone, not just those who work with you, is the best way to live. Sometimes, giving grace doesn't come easy but practice makes it easier.

Return from Giving Grace To Farm And Business Life

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