Farm Small Farm Smart

If you are a single worker farm then you only have so much time and energy to spend on the farm. If you spend a massive amount of that working with weeds then that's time take away from other farm tasks or other non-farm tasks like spending time with your spouse or kids. What are the weeds worth? For most people, they aren't worth enough to deal with when you zoom out, and take all of the factors...

Farming, it truly is a lifestyle. And one that a lot of people seek out. This leads people down the road of thinking about how can they start or transition into small scale farming. And when they go down that path they inevitably run into issues. Because startup isn't always clear, or easy, and there are always unique challenges. Today we will take take a look at one listeners plan to transition i...

This is Part 2 of that series and today we specifically focus on the pro's and cons of selling to restaurants taking into account high maintenance versus low maintenance. Given that this is Part 2 it probably makes more sense to listen to Part 1 first, Episode 17 - All Customers ARE NOT worth Selling To, An In-Depth Look at High Maintenance versus Low Maintenance Customers. But you won't be totall...

"Put another way, you are more upset about losing $50 than you are happy about gaining $50," the paper states.  In addition, bad events wear off more slowly than good ones." Hopefully know this can help you do a few things. Try to force yourself to really think about the positive things more and have more gratitude for them, bounce off of the negative situations quicker, and rid yourself of the ne...

Heat causes issues on the farm. Not just with the farmer, but with the crops. Crops bolt quickly, pest pressure increases, water usage goes up, seeds dry up, transplants fry. How do you deal with those issues? How do you raise the crops that your customers want in a way that works and gets you a saleable product, and in a way that doesn't cause you to burn out? There are a whole bunch of active an...

Today's show is all about farmers markets. And a big part of the conversation is dedicated to free samples. Are the beneficial or are they a waste? Do samples work in every case, with every product? No, but they are one way of tackling issues that every product has. Highlighting product quality, unique product attributes, getting feedback, and telling your story are all things that you need to fig...

We all have this great chance to go great places.  Yet we all don't take it.  Today's episode is a look at the opportunity and why some people squander it, and why some people don't. 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/ Follow PaperpotCo on Instagram: http://bi...

Think about an established farmers market with an established customer base. Everyone shopping at that market has their preferred vendors.  They buy lettuce from this guy and they buy tomatoes from that girl week after week.  They don't switch it up. If you then enter that market as a new vendor, how do you knock someone out of the preferred vendor spot in a customer's mind? How do you get the cus...

Today we will be looking at 17 different things that you think you might need or might need when you start your business. Even though we will be looking at each of the items on this list through the lens of someone in their first 6 months of farming, this information extends to established business owners. Maybe you have been in business for a while and you are thinking about redesigning your webs...

It seems like a lot of people that get into farming and starting their own business are busy, all the time. Is that a good thing? Is busy a sign of success or is busy a sign of planning? I think it's more the later, than the form. "To me, 'busy' implies that the person is out of control of their life." - Derek Sivers Some of you might here that and think, what, that's crazy. I am in control and I...

Most people don't get into farming to get rich. Does that mean that you can't get rich farming, no it doesn't. But if you only motivation to farm is to get rich, then you better buckle up because you have rocky road ahead. Because when it comes to amassing monetary riches the road hasn't historically been paved by good soil and a tractor. That's not to say that there aren't rich farmers, because t...

What if you are already selling at farmers markets, but you don't have enough of a diversity of products to design a CSA around? If that's the case one option might be create a collaborative CSA. The collaborative CSA allows you to expand your crop variety with competing with other farms and without diluting down your efforts on your farm. You grow what you grow best in your context, and source ev...

To set the stage... Curtis had a next door neighbor.  That neighbor used to own Curtis's house, and he rented that house from them and farmed in the back yard.  When his neighbor decided to sell the house, Curtis then purchased the house from his neighbor.  Subsequently that same neighbor went on to move to another house in the neighborhood, and began renting out the house next door to Curtis. In...

Most of the tomatoes that Curtis grows fall into the cherry and saladette category - the smaller tomatoes.  These types of tomatoes offer several advantages - they are pretty vigorous, they have a relatively short DTM, and because chef's like them.  And when much of your sales are for restaurants, you grow what they want to buy. Over the years Curtis has evolved his system for tomato culture.  And...

Greens are big business for Curtis' farm.  Both in terms of volume of product, and dollars generated for that product. His customer base, which is mainly made of restaurants, buys a lot of greens.  And they pay good money for them.  But like many things on the farm there is a seasonality that goes along with restaurants and the products that Curtis sells to restaurants. Typically spring is a slowe...

What would the 2000 sq.ft. farm, let's call it a micro-farm, look like? How could you best utilize that space and take many of the techniques that Curtis uses on his current 1/2 acre urban farm, to make the micro-farm generate some decent cash flow. How much could you make on a micro-farm of just 2000 square feet? Really it depends on what you are growing and who you are selling it to. But grossin...

It's currently April 12, 2016. We start off today talking about whether you should start farming with a greenhouse or not. The conversation quickly turns into reasons why people succeed and don't succeed. Hopefully this episode is a welcome kick in the ass for those who need it.  And motivation to keep kicking ass for everyone else. Listen to past episodes at: https://www.paperpot.co/podcast Incre...

It's currently April 5, 2016. Today's episode focuses on starting and transplanting Salanova via micro soil blocks. Curtis will talk about how he starts Salanova lettuce using the blocks and the advantages for doing so. We also run a quick time and cost analysis of starting lettuce in blocks versus cell trays to show the comparison. At the end of the episode I go over a recipe to use for the micro...

It's currently March 30, 2016. And over the past few months Curtis has literally been all around the world. I today's episode we'll look back at some of the places that he visited and what he took away from those visits. From the high tech innovation being done at Jean-Martin Fortier's Le Ferm de Catra Taaamp in Quebec to the low tech soil building techniques used by Jodi Roebuck to build soil in...

If we go back to where we left of Season One of the show, it was December and there really wasn't any crop production happening on the land itself for Green City Acres. At that time some of the land was sitting fallow waiting for future planting in the spring, and some of the land was occupied by dormant crops that had been planted a few months earlier in the fall. Let's find out how much Curtis'...

All of the guests for this episode are listeners of the show.  Listeners just like you.   A few months ago I asked for feedback on the first season of the show , and I received a ton of it. Today, I will share some of it with you. If you submitted feedback for the show and gave me the OK to read it, thank you, this episode is yours.   As humans I think we live in a guru culture.  A culture that pu...

Today's episode is actually a rebroadcast of a presentation that Curtis gave in January in San Francisco. The presentation is called Farming in the City. In this presentation, Curtis will take you on a tour of his one third of an acre urban farm, where you will get an inside look at the day to day operations of the farm from vegetable production to sales. Curtis will show how he farms commercially...

In this episode Curtis and I dissect an article that was published on Alternet on January 1, 2016 by farmer Jaclyn Moyer.   An article titled.... What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living - People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable This one is a good one and we cover a lot of business basics such as... Who is yo...

Scott Hebert started farming in June 2015 when his family business shut down. At that time he didn't have anything to fall back on. But he had always had an interest in farming, and within a few days of getting the income shock warning his wheels had been put in motion and he was putting a plan into place to transition into a career as a farmer. He contacted Curtis to visit his farm, so he could s...

While Curtis and I were on tour we made a stop at Singing Frogs Farm in Sebastopol to visit with farmers Paul & Elizabeth Kaiser. It's a pretty remarkable farm. The Kaisers are farming just over 2 acres and grossing over $100,000 an acre. They come from an agroforestry background and approach farming systematically as a business. This episode is some of our thoughts from our visit. Listen to past...