Farm Small Farm Smart

Farmer and consultant Michael Kilpatrick joins me to talk about improving farm productivity and profitability through better processes. View the show notes for this episode and all previous Farm Small, Farm Smart episodes . Learn how to start a microgreens business in Chris Thoreau's Build Your Microgreen Business Workshop . Keep learning with these two great audiobooks: The Market Gardener by JM...

Author and farmer Ben Hartman talks about his farm and his book, The Lean Farm . View the show notes for this episode and all previous Farm Small, Farm Smart episodes . Learn how to start a microgreens business in Chris Thoreau's Build Your Microgreen Business Workshop . Keep learning with these two great audiobooks: The Market Gardener by JM Fortier The Urban Farmer by Curtis Stone   Increase far...

The benefits of building a microgreens business, and how to keep improving it. View the show notes for this episode and all previous Farm Small, Farm Smart episodes . Learn how to start a microgreens business in Chris Thoreau's Build Your Microgreen Business Workshop . Keep learning with these two great audiobooks: The Market Gardener by JM Fortier The Urban Farmer by Curtis Stone   Increase farm...

Today we are going to Ojai California to talk to a farmer who's more than just a farmer. Max Beecher was inspired into farming by Joel Salatin and Joel's entrepreneurial spirit inspired Max to get created when ti came to his farm based businesses.   Max started out his farm journey in 2013 with wife.  At the time they weren't farmers though, they started out as aggregators...   He describes the ex...

Today's episode is a different type of episode.  It's a consult style episode with new grower Eddy Gilmore and long-time microgreen grower Chris Thoreau. The first part of this episode will be Eddy and I talking about what's going on with his farm, and then later in the episode Chris will join us to answer some of Eddy's questions about growing his microgreen business. Eddy's at a point in that bu...

Given summer heat growing certain crops can be really tough, especially greens.  Given the tendency of the normally cool weather lettuces to bolt quickly, turn bitter, and have their foliage burn, many growers simply pass on trying to grow summer greens.  The challenges are too great and the returns are too low. But not for all growers.  Over the past few weeks I talked to a lot of growers and I t...

Sam's taken a perspective that he gained on hiking the Appalachian trail and he has used it to help navigate the equally hard journey into being a full-time vegetable farmer. Like the trail, Sam's career as a farmer has spanned a lot of land going from 1/8 of an acre in town to two fenced acres a few years later. Today Sam and I will talk about some of the challenges of growing crops on two acres,...

For today's show we are going down to the State of Arkansas to talk to Brandon Lyons of 5 Acre Farms. Brandon is someone who transitioned into farming from the nursery trade way back in 2010. Since then he's grown his farm to 1.25 acre, and during that same time he's also grown his family getting married and having kids. It's a farming journey that started out with a single farmer who could put in...

Everyone enters the world of farming for different reasons. Reasons spanning from environmental concerns to bringing high quality food to their local market to creating a path to a more independent future… For my guest today, Travis Schulert, farming became a mode of a change, because prior to farming Travis described his situation as… "I was stuck in a dead end lifestyle, living in a trailer park...

When it comes to this world of farming small, what is this world? Is it a bunch of small farms each operating independently? For the most part, I think the answer is yes. Given that, what's the next step. Is it more small farms operating independently or is those small farms growing to be larger small farmers. Now I am not talking 1.5 acre farms scaling to 100 acres, I am talking about 1.5 acre fa...

What's the organic inspection process really like? It's probably a big hassle, right? Let's find out straight from the source, in this episode with independent organic inspector Laura Murray Last episode with Scott Murray covered the topic of why organic and what goes into getting certified. Today's episode builds on that episode and we go a rung higher on the ladder taking on questions such as: O...

Organic certification. We all know what that is, seeing that green stamp on products in the grocery store and on signs at the farmers market. But, is it worth it? Is it only for large farms? I use organic methods, do I need the stamp? What goes into getting certified? Should I get certified organic? These are all common questions that I hear being asked with the small scale farming community. They...

When you are only growing a 10 day crop, how much of an affect does light quality and temperature have on the crop? A lot. Chris is in Vancouver where he sees day lengths change from 8 hours at the winter solstice to 16 hours at the summer solstice; a large change which affects how much light crops get to grow. Less light in winter means slower or no crop growth. If you are a farmer, you get this....

To celebrate episode 100 I take a look back at the 100 combined episodes of The Urban Farmer and what is now Farm Small, Farm Smart focusing on the highlights, some backstory, and where the show is headed in the future. See some of the highlights from the first 100 episodes at  www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart Support the show at www.permaculturevoices.com/support Thanks for listening...

There's one event that happens in many people's lives which instantly changes their life forever. Overnight, instantly, everything is different. Your life, your approach to life, how you view life, and how you go about living life all change. It's an event that some people aren't ready for and one that others are ready for, but one where no one is ever REALLY ready. It's the birth of a child. A be...

While the prospects of starting a small market farm that grosses over $100,000 is lucrative and attractive, it's not for everyone or possible in every location. And that's the topic of today's episode with Blake Cothron of Peaceful Heritage Farm.... A lot of what you hear about in the small scale farmer movement are the uber-successful small farmers that are grossing 1, 2 or $300k per acre.  They...

Today I'm talking to a grower who's admittedly "I'm a little bit obsessive about growing high quality produce." It's an obsession that's fueled his farms growth, and an obsession which is a bit necessary to fuel the farm's growth to bring his fiancé onto the farm full-time. And while Elliot Seldner of Fair Share Farms' obsession may be on growing high quality produce, it's not only on growing high...

If customers keep asking if you have certain crop, and you don't, should you grow it? It depends. And that's the focus of today's show: When, How, and Why to Start Producing A New Microgreen Crop Today microgreen grower Chris Thoreau and I are talking about new crops - specifically how do you start growing them? On the surface that may seem like a simple and straightforward question, but there's a...

Today it's back to Kelowna and Green City Acres as Curtis and I take a look back at his experiences with inter-planting, planting multiple crops in the same space . It's something that he's done for a few years now, and something that he's doing again this year with his tomatoes. We first stated talking about this subject back in 2015 when we did an episode touching on the subject in Season One, t...

Today I'm going to be talking to another small scale farming making a go of it as we go to Sebastopol, CA to talk to Caiti Hachmyer of Red H Farm. Caiti's a farmer who started out her farming career on the advocacy side of things.  She was living the Bay Area advocating for farmers and looking to play her part in changing hte food system.  But after a while she felt something was missing.  And she...

Today I'm going up to Vancouver to talk to Microgreen Farmer Chris Thoreau with the goal of focusing in on 10 base principles for growing high quality microgreens. Think 10 things that are critical to growing a good crop regardless of where you are growing them, when you are growing them or how you are growing them. These base principles help ensure that you get a successful crop that is free of d...

"Farming is as much about growing yourself as it is about growing vegetables." One of the big lessons shared in this episode with farmer Chris Gilbert from Bettendorf, Iowa. Listen to past episodes at: https://www.paperpot.co/podcast Increase farm efficiency with the Paperpot Transplanter and Other Small Farm Equipment  at https://www.paperpot.co/  

Today farmer Taylor Rogers talks about how he started his farm and sells to restaurants - his primary market. He currently grows of 20 different crops, and it's that variety that has been one of the keys to his success.  In this episode he'll also talk about some of the other things that have made him successful such as growing what chefs want, how they want it, and bringing it when you say you're...