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
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 permaculturevoices.com/tuf36
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. Jean-Martin's farm now generates $150,000 on 1.5 acres, with 40% of that being profit. Big numbers for a small farm. It's the $100,000 an acre that JM is associated with today. But he didn't start out making $100,000 an acre. He started out at square one, just like many of you. And as a preview for the episode, it wasn't easy. There was a lot of hard work involved in the beginning. It was that hard work and striving for constant improvement that allowed JM to arrive at the systems which he uses so profitably today. The systems which allow him to generate $100,000 off of 1 acre. But let's go back in time to Day 0 when he was just starting out. He was married, didn't have any money, he lived in a tipi, but he had a vision for the life that he wanted to live. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/pv3
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 you don't have the skill, the will, or the resources to make it work. At some point should you draw the line and just say, maybe this isn't right for me, it's not working? When you find yourself scraping by ask yourself why, and what you can do about it, annd just maybe you will realize that your model doesn't work, or you're not very good at it. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/tuf35
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. So how do you match the vision with what it takes to survive today? We’ll find out, in today's conversation with Erin Axelrod. Erin is a partner at LIFT economy, a business consulting and coaching company that provides support, structure and strategy to the next generation of businesses. A generation of business that share the vision of a world where all human needs are met, where people have more time to play and enjoy each day and where life flourishes in the richness of a stable climate and resilient ecosystems. In this episode Erin will be talking about her work at LIFT and what she has learned through her years of experience working with permaculture visionaries and the businesses that they are trying to build and grow to support their vision. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/erin
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, pay attention in this one, because Zach is someone who is carving out their own niche as a designer, and making a living doing it. Zach's a protégé of legendary Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer. He has worked on properties around the world with Sepp and he has worked on his own jobs in multiple countries that range from big to small. He approaches the field with a high level of professionalism and integrity, something that isn't stressed enough in this field. And something that we will touch on in this episode. Learn more about Zach at permaculturevoices.com/zach
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 episode. These questions were actually answered last winter on via Curtis on his YouTube channel.
If you want to watch him answer these questions you can do so in the show notes at permaculturevoices.com/tuf34.
In this show Curtis will be answering questions on time management, farm startup, finding land and securing land, converting land to urban farm land, approaching restaurants, and record keeping. The nice thing about these questions is that they cover a wide variety of topics which will help to help tie together the season as we look to wrap it up. There's a lot here, enjoy it.
Watch the video answers of these questions at permaculturevoices.com/tuf34
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 was born. Despite life presenting challenges that some people would say aren't worth the risk, Chris made a go of it taking on these early challenges he has managed to grow his operation to one that will do $180k in sales in 2015. And all that sales are coming from a farm that's in a shipping container taking up 320 sq. ft.
Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/chris
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 you to have a realistic view of what it's going to take to get to where you want to go. And it may scare a lot of people away. For today's episode I want to focus on the long road to overnight success. Being resilient enough to keep going when the times get tough, and being personal and emotionally invested enough to keep you going through those tough times.
Show notes at permaculturevoices.com/cd7
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 valuable time on tasks that actually return a greater value than the time that you put in?
Today we talk about the way that Curtis used to do certain tasks and contrast that with how he does tasks now. And why he changed how he did things.
For notes and links related to this episode visit the show notes at permaculturevoices.com/tuf33.
This episode was recorded in November 2015.
Darby Simpson will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016.
Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3.
As you will learn in this episode, Darby Simpson is someone who transitioned into farming on a part time basis while working full time in an unrelated field.
Putting in well over 50 hours each week as an engineer and spending a couple hours each day in the car commuting back and forth. But despite those long hours, he started his farm, on the side.
He did it while raising a young family, and keeping his sanity in the process. He did it by working hard and smart. And he did it in a very approachable way.
He started his farming operation with only $500. With that $500 he bought 50 broilers and some equipment and he was on his way to farming full time. The first 50 sold and he never looked back.
$500 in initial expenses, started farming on the side, while working full time, and with a young family. A very relate-able and applicable situation to many people listening to this show.
If you are contemplating that jump into farming and making that dream a reality, but you feel like life is standing in the way, here is someone who's done it with life in the way.
Learn more about Darby at permaculturevoices.com/darby
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