It’s Not Easy Being Seasonal
Daylight Saving Time just ended, prompting many of us to ask those familiar questions that we find ourselves pondering twice a year: “What is the point of Daylight Saving?”, “Is it because of the farmers?”, and “Whose idea was this, anyway?”. But, in addition to adjusting our clocks, a lot of us are struggling to adjust to shorter days, less sunlight, and a change in pace when it comes to our workday. Whether or not we work in a seasonal industry, the changing seasons can be extremely impactful to us on a personal level, and there’s even evidence that seasonality affects our physiology by influencing the way our genes function at different times of the year. While many of us love the cooler weather, vests, fall colors, and pumpkin-flavored everything, the prolonged, reduced exposure to sunlight that we experience in fall and winter can have devastating effects on our energy levels, sleep patterns, and mental health.
I’ll admit that this topic is an especially personal one for me. I’m finding that each winter is more challenging when it comes to pushing through the cold days and long nights. And to further complicate the problem, our industry suffers from multiple personalities. Spring and summer are intense: between potting plants, updating inventory, answering emails and phone calls, and checking outgoing orders, each day is a blur. I know each of us has our own version of this typical spring day. It’s the type of day that leaves you with no time to think. It takes everything out of you, but is, at the same time, utterly satisfying.
And then there’s winter. Compounding the often gloomy weather is the fact that winter comes at a slower pace. That’s not to say that we don’t have as much to do in the winter. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite. Between planning budgets and production schedules, trade shows, and customer visits, winter is often in the rearview mirror before we have time to finish all those projects we’ve been postponing for when it “gets slower”. Yet, for some of us, as much as we may fantasize about the slower pace of winter during the height of our peak season, making the transition from the dizzying pace of summer to our winter routine can be fraught with mental and physical hurdles.
Aside from any personal obstacles we may face when it comes to the changing seasons, working in the green industry, or any seasonal industry for that matter, comes with its own set of unique challenges, and labor is at the top of the list. In the latest Nursery Management State of the Industry Report, 59% of growers listed “Labor” as their top concern for 2024, pushing “The Economy” to the number two spot. While many of us aspire to automate as much as possible, we can’t implement that type of change overnight, and the nursery industry is still a very labor intensive one. Much of the work is physically demanding, and filling openings from dwindling local, domestic labor pools is becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible, depending on your location. But once openings are filled, retaining employees is just as much of a challenge. In our industry, we rely on a workforce that can ramp up quickly in spring, go full steam ahead for three to four months, and then adapt to our summer labor needs, which can vary based on how our season is going in any given year. While some of us have found ways to extend the selling season through the holidays, winter layoffs are still a reality for the majority of businesses in our industry. Then the challenge becomes ensuring that our seasonal employees return in spring.
When you consider the added pressures of managing seasonal cash flow and coping with the effects of increasingly unpredictable environmental fluctuations on plant growth, it’s clear that we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to the complexities of being successful and staying sane in a seasonal industry. Having said all that, why do we choose to persevere in an industry that poses so many challenges? Ultimately, I think we have to conclude that it’s because we love what we do, we’re passionate about our industry, and because the good outweighs the bad. After all, there are many rewards that come with living in a climate with seasons. To quote John Steinbeck, “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
