Farm Small Farm Smart Daily

Ethan Soloviev will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3 . In today's show I'm joined by Ethan Roland Soloviev.  Ethan is an international expert on sustainable agriculture, permaculture, and eco-social entrepreneurship, and as co-founder of Terra Genesis International he consults on these topics for individuals, organizations and corporat...

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. To learn more v...

Greg Judy will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3 . In the late 90's Greg was down to $9 in the bank. The way that he was farming, wasn't working. Greg was grazing cattle using conventional methods at the time. And the costs were killing him, or should I say the debt was killing him. Cattle loans, equipment loans, feed costs, seed costs,...

Gregory Landau will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. If the current current method of business isn't working, then something more regenerative would be better right? Then it's up to us to design it. Only we can't. Because a truly regenerative web is a living whole systems awareness of all of the decision makers.  Something that's a pr...

"You have to be willing to fail. You have to be OK with failure." That's what entrepreneur Jack Spirko told me. He's built a variety of businesses in his career. Some of which have been very successful and some of which have failed. One of his successes has been the hugely popular Survival Podcast. You can learn a lot of Jack. Jack is a permaculturist, small scale farmer, and he knows a lot about...

Mary Johnson will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. What does success mean to you? Hopefully you know, because if you don't you might be chasing the wrong things. Success is different for everyone. For some people it's money and fame and for some people it's freedom of time and freedom of place. How do you define it? Once you define it...

Mary Beth Storjohann will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. My guest today, Mary Beth Storjohann, is a certified financial planner and is the Founder of Workable Wealth, specializing in financial planning for Gen Y. She works as a writer, speaker and financial coach with individuals and couples in their 20s and 30s across the country t...

If you want to be better off in December 2016, then the planning for that starts now in December 2015. The biggest leverage point which for the farm season next year is right there in front of you. You just need to tease it out. That's what today's show is about. Doing some End of Season Reflection - Thinking about How Things Went This Year, to Alter Course and Plan for Next Year I hope that you c...

In today's episode Curtis and I will take a look back at the season of this show and talk about what's in store for the future for Curtis and this show. In regards to the future, you listening to this hold a bit of control on that in your hands. Because we want to hear what your thoughts are on this show - The Urban Farmer. This season what's resonated with you? What do you want to hear more about...

On today's show I am talking to Rob Kippel. Rob's not your typical permie. He's a paramedic, a real estate investor, and he owns a profitable franchise business that has nothing to do with farming, but his values align with the values that permaculture supports. And Rob likes the idea of regenerative agriculture, but he doesn't want to be the farmer. And when you hear this interview, I think you w...

How much work should you put into something before it gets to the point where it isn't worth it? At what point does the money, the effort, and the headache justify not doing it? With everything in business and farming, there is always a trade off, an opportunity cost. If you are doing one, thing, then it's at the expense of something else. Because you can't do it all, and regardless of the return,...

If you are going to succeed in any business then you need to be able to tell a good story. Your skill, services, and product are only going to get you so far. You need to be able to tell the stories that get people to get behind you and pay for your products and services. If you can't do that, then you won't succeed. This is where marketing comes in. And for right or for wrong, marketing has a sle...

In this episode, I want to talk about this idea of growing wings and flying. Not limiting ourselves from becoming who we are and maximizing our true potential. Because we live in a society where everything is comfortable, too comfortable. Where you more or less just plug into the system and get pulled along with it from grade school to college to job to social security... A society where today, if...

All in Curtis produced about 17,500lbs of product off of his farm this year. That's a lot of food coming from a small space. Remember Curtis is only farming off of 15,000 sq.ft. which is spread out over 5 plots. And this year he made the most of it producing over 17,000lbs of produce on those 5 plots. And we aren't talking corn and potatoes here. For the most part many of the crops which he produc...

Dan Brisebois will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. Today’s episode takes us to Quebec, where farmer Dan Brisebois is doing some amazing things at the Tourne-Sol farm…. Dan Brisebois started out like a lot of other small scale growers, growing market vegetables intensively to sell to CSA customers. But unlike most other growers, Dan a...

Christian Shearer will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. Hopefully this episode will help shed some light on the long term design process, so you can approach you own long term project with the right mindset, expectations, and goals. Christian as has a lot of experience working on projects that have taken years to complete and evolve....

In this episode we will be talking about real world issues and troubles with restaurant customers. How Curtis has dealt with customers who haven't paid in the past and how he has changed his procedures to help make sure that it doesn't happen again. Because Curtis has learned the hard way, when you're in the real world and restaurants don't pay, you can lose a lot of money. Learn more at permacult...

Jean-Martin Fortier will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. Basing his farm off of the French bio intensive market gardens JM has kept his farm small and intensive relying mostly on hand labor. He has focused on developing and following on farm systems that work and growing crops that pay. And the results have been a farm pays well. Jea...

Where do you draw the line between this isn't working, but I can figure it out, and this will never work? Let's just accept the fact that farm start-up is going to involve it's fair share of struggles. How long should those struggles continue? Because there is no sense wasting your time, your life's energy, sacrificing the relationships in your life, as you pile on monumental amounts of stress if...

Erin Axelrod will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. A lot of people within the permaculture are visionaries. We imagine a better world. One that's more regenerative, versus depletive and consumption oriented. But sometimes it's hard to align those grand visions with how the world operates today, specifically when it comes to business....

Zach Weiss will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016. Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3. Zach's going to give you a realistic view of what starting out as a designer is really like. And he is going to answer the big questions of can you actually make a living as a designer and how much opportunity is out there? If you are looking to go into the permaculutre design field, pa...

It's currently November 2015 and the main farm season for Curtis is pretty much over. And along with, so is this season of the show. For the remainder of the episodes we'll be wrapping up everything that happened on the farm this year with Curtis and tying up a few loose ends. With things very slow on the land, Curtis is taking a few weeks off from the farm. Given that today's episode is Q and A e...

Today's episode takes us north of the American border to the city of Vancouver. It's the story of how urban farmer Chris Thoreau started his microgreens farm. Like Darby Simpson's story this is another one that very relatable. Chris started his farm at what on paper looks like an in-opportune time. He started this part time while in school full time and 2.5 months into his first semester his son w...

If you think about your life, and you never made a dollar doing what you were doing, would you keep doing it - forever? Regardless of whether you are making money doing what you are doing or not, take a second to think about that. If you never made a dollar doing what you were doing, would you keep doing it - forever? Do you like it enough to keep it up? My goal for this episode is to try to get y...

What's your time worth as a farmer? How much should should you be charging yourself to do tasks on the farm? That's an important metric to think about when you are a small operation. Because for a lot of farmers in this space, the labor force is a force of one, you. And you only have so many hours in a day to get everything done. Your time is very valuable. Knowing that, are you spending your valu...