Carrot Cashflow

Shane and his wife started with two 8×12 plots as a hobby. Nine years later they own a 50-acre property in Sarnia, Ontario, market garden on 2.5 acres, and crossed $200,000 in revenue last year — up from $173,000 the year before. Minimum 30% year-over-year growth every year since they started in Ontario. Click here to learn more about farmer Shane and Aslan Organics! Watch the episode here! Intere...

$130,000 in farm revenue. $30,000 take-home. Where does the other $100,000 go? That gap is the most useful part of Chef Mikey Russo's story. Watch the video on our YouTube Channel!   Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our YouTube Channel!   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!    Get market farming tools, seeds, and supplies...

A hundred and thirty thousand (yes, $130,000) in farm revenue sounds great until you see what stays. Chef Mikey Russo took home $30,000 from his farm last year. He paid $40,000 in labor. The rest went to reinvestment: compost, tools, YouTube equipment, coaching, infrastructure. That's not a failure. That's a deliberate strategy.  Watch the video on our YouTube Channel!   Interested in watching the...

Michael Russo spent 20 years as a chef working 80-hour weeks, sometimes 100. He walked away at 40 with no farming experience, no degree, and no business background. First real growing season: $2,100 in his best week ($600 restaurant, $1,500 farmer's market). Even off weeks with groundhog damage, he pushed $1,000. He spent $30,000 on equipment in year one...all cash from his previous career, no deb...

Michael Russo spent 20 years as a chef working 80-hour weeks, sometimes 100. He walked away at 40 with no farming experience, no degree, and no business background. First real growing season: $2,100 in his best week ($600 restaurant, $1,500 farmer's market). Even off weeks with groundhog damage, he pushed $1,000. He spent $30,000 on equipment in year one...all cash from his previous career, no deb...

Chef Mikey Russo left a 20-year kitchen career to start a market garden in Tennessee. We first talked in 2023 during his first full-time season. Now he's in year four with no job, running $130,000 in annual revenue across 80 fifty-foot beds on two properties, selling to roughly eight restaurants, and paying himself $30,000 after $40,000 in labor costs. Click here to learn more about Chef Mikey and...

After 10 years of analyzing crop economics, one crop keeps scoring a perfect five out of five on every profitability metric I track. It's not lettuce. It's not microgreens. It's carrots. Watch the video on our YouTube Channel!   Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our YouTube Channel!   Subscribe for more content on sustainable farming, market farming tips, and business insights!   ...

Neil Robinson spent 20 years designing dishwashers and ovens for factory assembly lines. Then he quit and started a market garden. When I asked what transferred, he didn't say growing skills. He said: the way factories think about movement, waste, and process. Click here to learn more about Neil and Garden to Market. Watch the episode here! Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our Yo...

35% profit margin. Your accountant says bravo. Your spouse says we're not losing money. But 35% of not enough is not enough. This is the profit margin trap — and it catches more farm businesses than bad weather ever will.  Click here to learn more about Neil and Garden to Market. Watch the episode here! Interested in watching the series?  Hop on over to our YouTube Channel!   Subscribe for more co...

$400 a day. That's where Neil Robinson started his first year at a farmer's market in New Zealand. The vendor two stalls down selling nearly identical product had a line out the front. Neil was standing there, wondering what was wrong with his carrots.  Nothing was wrong with his carrots. The other vendor's carrots were familiar. Click here to learn more about Neil and Garden to Market. Watch the...

He spent 30+ years in product design and manufacturing. Then at 55, Neil Robinson left his desk job in New Zealand and started a market garden from scratch. This interview covers the unfiltered first-year reality: 15 weeks of showing up to a farmer's market before sales felt consistent. $400 was a good day in those early weeks — now a good week is over $800, pushing past $1,000 with the right prod...

Salanova is the most common lettuce crop in market gardening. But how many growers actually know their profit margin on it? Most are guessing. This episode breaks down the real economics using production data from Ray Tyler's book The Farmer's Guide to Growing Organic Lettuce — numbers from a working farm in Tennessee, not theory. The scenario: 100-foot bed, 30 inches wide, landscape fabric, 4×6 i...

A parking lot, a tent, a pack of scissors. That's the entire retail infrastructure for a farm that grossed $158,500 last year.  Watch the video on our YouTube Channel!   Click here to check out Megan's book,  Pick Your Own Farming  by Megan Neubauer (Acres USA).   Online course + monthly live calls:  purelandorganic.com     Click here to learn more about Pure Land Organic Farm.   Check out their T...

Twenty-two people spending $45 each. That's $1,000 a week. That's a neighborhood. Megan Neubauer built a $158,000/year pick-your-own operation at Pure Land Organic in Texas — with no walk-in cooler, no wash station, no farmer's market booth, and no harvest labor. The customers do the picking.  Click here to watch the video version of this episode. Click here to check out Megan's book,  Pick Your O...

Megan Neubauer runs Pure Land Farm in McKinney, Texas with her dad. They switched from a year-round market garden (peak revenue: under $50K) to a 100% pick-your-own model — and haven't looked back. This is my third interview with Megan...and the numbers have climbed every time. Click here to check out Megan's book, Pick Your Own Farming by Megan Neubauer (Acres USA). Online course + monthly live c...

Join Derek as he shares his inspiring journey from cannabis caretaker to DJ to regenerative farmer at Rosemary's Oasis. He shares how he and his wife balance multiple income streams as they lay down the foundations of a sustainable farm focused on microgreens, herbalism, and permaculture principles...all while building a family.

In this episode, Russell Loughmiller of Muirhead Canning Company sheds light on how small-scale farmers can turn excess harvest into premium shelf-stable products that sell for twice the price of commercial alternatives. Learn how value-added processing can create year-round revenue streams and build customer loyalty through a CSA-style pre-order system that eliminates guesswork and stabilizes cas...

Join Dallas Half Acre Farm owner Michael Bell as he shares his practical, low-pressure approach to building a profitable part-time farm business. Michael, a full-time PE teacher with retirement on the horizon, reveals his simplified CSA model that focuses on just 3-4 high-value crops while requiring minimal infrastructure and startup costs. Learn how he serves 35-40 customers weekly with a flexibl...

In this episode, host Diego welcomes returning guest Jill Duncan as she embarks on the journey of moving her farm a little ways away from an urban center outside the city. She shares how she's moving her farm operations, the challenges of the move, how she's maintaining her customer base, and how she's planning and laying out her new farm given her market garden experience.  Click here to learn mo...

In this episode, host Diego welcomes Kelly Dafor, a farmer-to-be at the beginning of their farming journey. Kelly is looking to transition out of the oil and gas industry and into agriculture. She shares the reason for the transition, her plans and goals for her farm, the challenges she expects to have, and the gains she looks forward to.  Get time and labor-saving farm tools at  shop.modern growe...

Dustin LaBat of Specklebelly Farms in Weimar, Texas shares their you-pick farming model that includes not only vegetables but also cut flowers and blackberries, which is the biggest draw. He talks about the labor, economics, and marketing strategies that go into running their farm, as well as how blackberries can be an incredibly profitable crop for market farmers. Lastly, he touches on plant sale...

Tony Barlow of Barlow Roots Market returns to the show to look back on their 10-year market gardening journey. He shares the practical financial mindset with which he ran Barlow Roots, as well as how they manage their finances both inside and outside the business.  Sign up to Tony's newsletter here! Click here to learn more about Barlow Roots Market! Get time and labor-saving farm tools at  shop.m...

Jay Tracy of CucumberShop.com shares his interesting journey of starting a hobby, which later turned into a business of breeding and selecting the best of over 70 different varieties of cucumbers and selling cucumber seeds online.  Click here to learn more about Jay Tracy and Cucumber Shop! Get time and labor-saving farm tools at  shop.modern grower.co Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower...

Brian Sakurada of Shiwa Green Farm in Iwate, Japan joins host Diego to share his interesting farming journey and how he began selling organic produce not just in his local area but all over Japan. He also talks about the differences between farming in the US and farming in Japan, as well as the reality of organic farming in Japan.  Click here to learn more about Brian Sakurada and Shiwa Green Farm...

This is the audio version of my newsletter Seeding Thoughts. Subscribe and read previous issues of the newsletter  here .   Time slips away quickly, especially when raising children, leaving parents wishing they could relive precious moments. The key is to proactively manage your present by implementing "Sacred Time" - non-negotiable slots in your schedule dedicated to important relationships and...