We Won an Award!

I’m very proud to share that a project I’ve been quietly working on called Harmonize was selected as a winner of this year’s Small Farm Innovation Challenge sponsored by Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF).

For those unfamiliar, CAFF has long supported small farms across California — especially when it comes to helping farmers thoughtfully adopt new technologies. They sit at a unique intersection of tradition and innovation in agriculture, and I’ve admired their work for years.

The Innovation Challenge began in 2019, but it gained serious momentum during COVID, when small farms were suddenly forced to figure out online sales, digital systems, and new distribution models almost overnight. Since then, CAFF has continued investing in farmer-led innovation.

Several impressive businesses have come out of the challenge. One of them, GrownBy, I personally used last year to manage our CSA program here at the farm. Others, like farm_ng, have gone on to build substantial ag-tech companies.

I don’t necessarily imagine Harmonize ascending to those heights (though I’d happily be proven wrong).

But I do feel validated.

The Early Days

Harmonize began with a simple frustration:

I would be standing in the field, clipboard in hand, trying to write down harvest numbers that I knew might never make it into a spreadsheet.

If small farms are going to survive — and thrive — we need better visibility into our numbers. Yields. Labor. Expenses.

And yet the tools available to us are often either:

• Too manual
• Too expensive
• Or too complicated

So I started building something that would allow farmers (and other field workers) to log data as easily as sending a text message.

No clipboard No forgotten notebooks. No “I’ll transcribe that later.”

Just send a text message and trust that your data makes its way into a spreadsheet.

I started building it back in September. And I built it while still working two farm jobs.

I’d wake up at 5am to get a couple of hours in before heading to the fields. Sundays became build days. During harvest, I’d test Harmonize in real time, logging our own data as we moved through beds.

Honestly, I became a little obsessed.

I even remember spending part of Christmas morning — before heading to see family — polishing core features.

Not glamorous work (though it did often feel like play).

Just quiet, persistent tinkering.

Submitting the Application

Early on, I had my eye on submitting Harmonize to the CAFF Innovation Challenge. I knew the deadline and worked toward it deliberately.

I submitted the application on New Year’s Eve.

Then I stepped away.

January was farm season. Plantings. Harvest. Events. CSA logistics. As February approached and I hadn’t heard back, I assumed it simply wasn’t our year.

Then, the week of Valentine’s Day, I received the email.

I felt a wave of joy.

Followed almost immediately by mild panic.

I hadn’t touched the code in nearly a month. Would I even remember how everything worked?

Thankfully, the muscle memory came back quickly. Within days I was fixing bugs, shipping improvements, and refining the core flows.

The product got better in a short burst — partly because I returned to it with fresh eyes.

What This Means

The cash prize will help cover scaling costs as we onboard more users. But more than the money, the recognition feels meaningful.

It’s confirmation that small farms deserve better tools.

And it’s confirmation that the frustration I felt standing in the field with a clipboard wasn’t just mine alone.

Harmonize is still early.

But it’s alive.

I’m committed to continuing to maintain and improve it — steadily and thoughtfully — in service of farmers, field workers, and anyone trying to keep better records in the midst of real, messy work.

I’m deeply grateful to CAFF for selecting Harmonize and to the other innovative farmers building tools to strengthen small-scale agriculture.

Yesterday was memorable and fun to celebrate.

But you can be sure I’ll be back in the field — and back at the keyboard — today.

✌️