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
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support It's currently September 15, 2016 and the end of the regular farming season is near. Along with it is Curtis's tenure at the Kelowna Farmers Market. After 7 seasons at the farmers market, Curtis is moving on. It's part of a larger effort to simplify the farm and match the farm to his lifestyle. At this point in his career Curtis is trying to simplify his farm. Not grow bigger just to be bigger. Instead choosing to grow better becoming more efficient and effective. That means focusing on the market streams that work, the products that sell, and moving to plots located even closer to his homebase. Part of those changes involve dropping things like the farmers market which has done since the beginning of his career. But it's a market stream that requires getting up on Saturday for 8 months of the year and it's a market stream that isn't growing anymore. And It's one of the many changes taking place at Green City Acres, resulting in a farm that will look very different come April 2017. Today we will take a look at the many changes coming to Green City Acres, along with they why behind those changes. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
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THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE.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.
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THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE.Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - How should I incorporate micro-nutrients into my mushroom substrate?
To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter.
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Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/yourstory3 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support "Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This episode is about those secret sorrows, it's an inside look at the world of depression and suicide. Depression that affect 20 million Americans a year. And depression is like a war, you either win or die trying. Today's episode features some stories of people fighting that war. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/yourstory3 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com takes on the question - You have kids, how do you work from home and get anything done? To learn more about Justin and see all of the ASK Justin episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/justin. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support.
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The last few episodes have focused on stuff. The tools of farming. Today we are talking about the flip side of tools, the opposite of the physical. The mental side of things, in particular hustle.
The best tools and the right stuff without the business sense, hustle, and effort won't mean anything. The tools make the job easier. Just owning them doesn't mean anything. You have to do the work.
And it's that hustle to do the work form preparation to production to sales that can give you the advantage over people who just have the money and the stuff.
As Stephen C Hogan said. "You can't have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic."
Because if you do, where's that going to get you. Left with an unsuccessful business and collection of expensive stuff.
A lot of success isn't quantifiable with a dollar sign, instead being measured in pure blood, sweat, and hard work. And the beauty of it is that none of this costs any thing and can be applied by literally every person on the planet regardless of their particular situation.
Today, we will get into the importance of the hustle, and the areas like sales and preparation, where hustle makes the difference between you and the person who isn't hustling as hard.
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THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE.Stefan Sebkowiak of Miracle Farms joins me to talk about the what's lacking in organic systems - biodiversity. And why organic is good, but creating a polyculture is a lot better.
Stefan started out his journey purchasing a conventional non-organic orchard. He worked on converting it over to organic and realized that something wasn't right, something was missing. The system was lacking the biodiversity that you see in nature.
So Stefan converted over his organic orchard into a permaculture, polyculture based system. He removed a lot of apple trees and replaced them with other fruit trees and support species. He added more diversity to the system giving him more products to sell, more wildlife, and ultimate a healthier, more resilient system.
A lot of commercial orchardists say that polyculture won't work. Stefan has show that on a tree by tree basis he is getting as much yield as a conventional orchard.
He is out there trying to prove that you gross $1.00 per square foot in a polyculture system that value adds from multiple yields - poultry, fruit, vegetables, herbs, etc.
"You can read a lot, but you need to go out and test things."
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THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE.Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - In a perfect world, what would be your ideal recipe for a substrate mixture that is fairly universal in terms of species of mushrooms that would grow on it? To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support.
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/135 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Busy versus effective. Two different ways of getting stuff done. Think of busy as the pinball in a pinball machine, a lot of bouncing around randomly, getting some stuff done, but not in the most linear way. Where effective is like the bowling ball headed down the lane, a straight shot targeting a specific pin. Both lead to results, the busy route does a lot more moving per unit of work done. Usually these two routes are mutually exclusive. Busy people aren't effective, and effective people aren't busy. The danger in being a busy body, is just that, you are just busy; you are doing a lot of work, maybe the right work, maybe not, maybe in the right order, maybe not, and the cost of being busy is a loss of time. Whereas the effective person does what they need to do when they need to do it based on the time that they have available and the priority of the task at hand. This saves the effective person time, allowing them to get more done, or just have more free time. Time can be a major constraint for entrepreneurs. You can't get more of it, and we all only have 24 hours in a day, so using that time effectively is going to determine what your lifestyle looks like. Today I am talking to an entrepreneur who has made shifts in their life to make their time less busy, and more effective. It's Erik Ohslen of Permaculture Artisans. Erik's been on the show a few times in the past, and if you have heard those shows that you will know that he founded the successful landscape design and build company Permaculture Artisans. In addition to running that company, Erik also is a part of several other businesses, and he's married, and he has kids. How does he make it all work? That's the focus on today's episode. I am going to dig into Erik's new business venture, ForeSite mapping, and the strategy behind that. The second half of the episode will get into how to balance family and business? The key in all of this, is to make effective decisions, so you are less busy with your time. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/135 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Part three of our series on Small Scale Farming on the Cheap - What's the least you could spend to start a farm? Last week in Episode 23 we started going through the equipment needed, or perceived to be needed, when you start a farm along with the costs and advantages associated with that equipment. Given that this is Part 3 it probably makes more sense to listen to Part 1 and Part 2 first. Last week we left of the talk on equipment wrapping up with the tiller. We'll start today with a little bit of warmup on macro business talking before jumping back into the list discussing hand tools. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support
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