Stay ConnectedDaily farm and garden talk. All about growing vegetables profitably and efficiently on small farms and in gardens.
Each episode focuses on one specific topic – growing practices, how-to, farming challenges and struggles, sales and marketing, soil preparation, weed management, farm startup, market selection, and work-life balance.
Hosted and produced by Diego Footer’s Modern Grower Podcast Network.
Copyright: © Modern Grower
When you set out to start a business is there a road map you can follow or a recipe for success? A set of steps you can take to go from where you are to where you want to be. Simply do them, and success follows. It's a nice though. And that's about all it, a nice thought. Because when it comes to business there isn't a roadmap to success, but despite that, we all want the roadmap to success. Maybe it's just human nature, the just tell me how to do it approach. It's a dangerous approach because no two approaches are the same. There are too many variables at stake to create a recipe. But again, everyone wants the recipe. As someone once said on a podcast that I did the danger of following a recipe is that you if you buy into the recipe then you become the recipe, a really, really pale copy of what you are trying to emulate. In life and in business, there are recipes, but recipes rarely lead to success, but also in life there are base principles, universals which recipes are built on. Today, we aren't focusing on the recipes, we're focusing on the base principles when it comes to starting a business. It's a topic which I will take on with that aforementioned someone, being Javan Bernakevitch, along with our friend Rob Avis. Javan and Rob have developed a set of 12 base principles of business and join me to talk about the first 6 of those principles. This episode is Part 2 of a multi-part series with Javan and Rob. Learn more at www.permaculturevoices.com/229
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, how Sam has to design his market streams to his land base, working with limited labor, and the trade- offs between growing niche crops and a wide variety of CSA crops. We'll also touch on some of Sam's big takeaways from his days on the trail and how that's helped him as a farmer. Learn more at http://www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart
When you set out to start a business is there a road map you can follow or a recipe for success? A set of steps you can take to go from where you are to where you want to be. Simply do them, and success follows. It's a nice though. And that's about all it, a nice thought. Because when it comes to business there isn't a roadmap to success, but despite that, we all want the roadmap to success. Maybe it's just human nature, the just tell me how to do it approach. It's a dangerous approach because no two approaches are the same. There are too many variables at stake to create a recipe. But again, everyone wants the recipe. As someone once said on a podcast that I did the danger of following a recipe is that you if you buy into the recipe then you become the recipe, a really, really pale copy of what you are trying to emulate. In life and in business, there are recipes, but recipes rarely lead to success, but also in life there are base principles, universals which recipes are built on. Today, we aren't focusing on the recipes, we're focusing on the base principles when it comes to starting a business. It's a topic which I will take on with that aforementioned someone, being Javan Bernakevitch, along with our friend Rob Avis. Javan and Rob have developed a set of 12 base principles of business and join me to talk about the first 6 of those principles. This episode is Part 1 of a multi-part series with Javan and Rob. Learn more at www.permaculturevoices.com/228
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 crazy hours on the farm to make it work, but one that's now changed to a husband and father farmer, who absolutely can't put in crazy hours on farm. As a result Brandon is now focusing on crop selection, seasonality, and processes to make the hours he does spend on the farm pay, and pay well.
One of the processes that Brandon has focuses on over the years to help save time and labor is no-till. He's employed that strategy on his farm seeing great results both in terms of soil and reduced weed pressure. In this episode we'll find out why he did it and how he did it, today it's all about running a high intensity vegetable operation in rural Arkansas with farmer Brandon Gordon.
Learn more at www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart
The latest trend in marketing is story marking. Telling your story in a way that unique, honest, and in a way that resonates with your target market. But not all stories are created equal. And not all stories should be told by anyone. Because a good story told poorly is in affect a bad story. So what makes a good story? It's a bit like pornography; you know a good story when you hear it. But at it's core good stories take us on a journey. They are easy to follow and resonate with us emotionally. Good stories are often concise and have a clear theme, which also makes the stories shareable. Which is something that benefits you as a brand, if your customers can easily retell your story to their friends. In today's show I am joined by marketer Marty McDonald to talk about story marketing. Marty is Creative Director and Founder of egg in Seattle, a 12-year-old (and the first) communications firm focusing exclusively on sustainable brands. He has over 20 years of national ad agency experience, and he knows his stuff. You'll like this one. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/marty
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, no savings, no plans, and between 24 and now (28) I started a CSA on leased land, funded the infrastructure of the farm and gave myself the money to build a tiny home. My wife and I lived in the tiny home and saved what we could, started doing markets and learning to sell and grow. " Farming has been a means to get Travis and his wife out of that lifestyle which wasn't working. But it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Between production issues, CSA issues, and trouble with land tenure, it's been a bumpy road. Travis has been able to navigate that road so far and is now in his 4th year of farming, but one which is also a new beginning as he starting his first season on a new plot of land currently dominated by grass. As you'll hear in this episode, like all things in farming, Travis is taking it in stride and doing his best with it, and now realizing "farming is only romantic until you start doing the work." Today it's all the trials and tribulation of slowly scaling a farm on the side with farmer Travis Schulert. Learn more at http://www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart Support the show at http://www.permaculturevoices.com/support
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer
Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
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 am busy.
Are you really?
After all, what is busy in the first place.
Is busy really a think or is busy a state of mind or is as Derek Sivers says the inevitable result of losing control and poor planning?
If you consider yourself someone who's busy a lot think about that.
Are you busy because you actually have a huge list of urgent and important things to do, or are you busy because you are just doing a lot of stuff.
Outside of the Emergency Room most of us are more likely are the latter. Not many of us have a lot of urgent and important things to do each day. We might have a couple things that fall into that category and then we have a lot of other stuff that we do because we need to, because we think we need to, because we've never really thought about it, and because we don't have a plan in place.
Busy might actually be in your control.
As Henry David Thoreau said, it's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
If you find yourself constantly busy. Ask yourself why. And ask yourself what are you busy about?
Remember, it's your life, and being busy all the time might not be optimum. Is that you really signed up for - being busy all the time? If not, then this episode may help you reframe what you are actually being so busy about.
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer
Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
Shannon Jones, a young farmer from River Hebert, Nova Scotia joins me to talk about what it is like to be a young farmer on her farm, Broadfork Farm. She started the farm with her partner Bryan Dyck in 2011. Both Shannon and Bryan farmed on other farms for many years before they started their own farm. The lived simply and knew what they could get by without. That made the transition to farming a lot easier. Their path of frugality is one path into farming. But like Shannon said, find what works for you and don't just copy what someone else did. At the end of the day it is very clear that Shannon loves what she does. Living her dream, working her dream job, as part of the next generation of farmers.
Show Notes: www.permaculturevoices.com/43
Geoff Lawton joins me today to talk about permaculture. Geoff talks about his early days in permaculture, where we are in permaculture today, and where we need to go in the future. He touches on what he has learned along the way and what he finds most valuable. Geoff then goes on to answer a lot of audience questions about tree systems, water harvesting, his new chicken tractor for composting, and his upcoming online PDC. Key Takeaways: Consider starting a community group. They provide a whole lot of support to keep things moving in the right direction. Realize the ability of pioneer plants and succession to work for you. One of Geoff's early mistakes was not allowing plants to work more for him. Later he embraced and accepted plant rampancy. Don't just do things in patterns for the sake of patterns. Rationalize and legitimize every placement and connection you make. So many people are stuck in the matrix. They know things, they just don't do anything. Permaculture needs to focus on feeding people in urban and peri-urban areas. Use chickens in your composting system. There is a huge benefit to using chickens at the beginning of a composting cycle. Consider aquaculture as a use for wetlands in temperate wetlands. Whatever you dig in wetlands you gain in soil, so you intensify the water. You get drier land and wetter water using a temperate climate chinampa.
Show Notes: www.permaculturevoices.com/31
Support the show at www.permaculturevoices.com/support
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 farms scaling to 10 acres. If small farms do that, what does that look like, both for this world of farming small and for each independently operated farm? Is that scale manageable on a people powered biointensive level? Or does this style of farming not scale? It's a question being asked by one of the leader in this movement, JM Fortier. A few years ago JM Fortier left his 1.5 acre farm behind to start working on an experimental 10 acre farm to test the idea and validity of scaling these types of farming methods. It's project which has produced some answers, but one which has also produced a lot of questions, some of which are the focus of our show today. It's all about the future of market gardening in this episode with farmer JM Fortier. Get JM's audiobook version of The Market Gardener at www.permaculturevoices.com/audiobook
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