Stay ConnectedInsights for vegetable farmers and market gardeners who earn, or want to earn, a living growing vegetables profitably.
In each episode, I talk with a beginning or experienced farmer, diving deep into their story to find out what makes their market farm successful. I focus on in-the-field farming. Soil preparation, weed management, post-harvest processing, appropriate technology, farm tools and equipment, and growing crops.
Hosted and produced by Diego Footer’s Modern Grower Podcast Network.
Copyright: © Modern Grower
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 and passive strategies that you can employ to
From harvesting early in the morning to harvesting and late in the day, there are options, and this episode is all about dealing with the heat on the farm for the farmer and for the crops...
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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 figure out to do somehow.
Free samples are just one of the ways to do it.
Samples aren't without their negatives either. They cost money, they take up time, they get in the way of doing transactions, and they may require additional levels of compliance if you are handling food.
But like anything and everything, it comes down to do the positives out weight the negatives for your particular context.
If they do then free samples might be the way to do. And as you will hear today, for some farmers market vendors samples work really well and they are one of the many tools in the salesman's toolbox to help you sit back and count the money.
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/
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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/
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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 customer to switch to buying lettuce or tomatoes from you instead of that guy or that girl? Because that's really what you need to do. Either you need to get existing customers to switch or you need to pick up market share from new customers. The bad news is that once a person commits to a particular product or brand in their mind it's very hard to get them to switch. Look no further than you own habits. How often do you go to different grocery stores or gas stations by your house or how often do you change brands of laundry detergent or ketchup? Probably not very often. You made a decision long ago, and as long as things do change, why switch. Given that, how do you compete in a crowded farmers market? Why is a farmer's market customer going to choose your booth versus the booth that they always shop at? You have to be unique.. Again, look at the landscape of the market, if there are already 5 vegetable vendors at your market more or less growing what you grow, and they are established, then you either have to be unique enough to go in and compete with them hand try to knock one of them out of the top 5 in terms of market share, which is hard, or you have to be unique enough so you don't actually have to compete against them. Instead positioning yourself in the customers mind as the preferred choice. How do you do that, make yourself unique? One way is to specialize in something. Part of that specialization might mean differentiating your product so you position yourself as the category leader; a category that you own; one that you create. For example, say a lot of vendors are selling loose leaf lettuce. There's already an established hierarchy there in terms of market share for the category of loose leaf lettuce. How do you compete? You don't, avoid competition, and you create your own category. Maybe that category is head lettuce or romaine. Or maybe it's organic lettuce. Or living lettuce with the roots still attached. You differentiate your product just enough to move it to its own category. Then you become first to market in that category and have an competitive advantage. That's a far cry from going into a competitive market and competing on price. And when you think about it it wasn't really that hard. You didn't have to create or invent anything new. You just supplied an in demand product to a market that wanted it, but didn't have anyone to buy it from. That's one of the many benefits of specializing in a product. And it's that benefit and the many others that we will be talking about today, on The Urban Farmer.
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://bit.ly/2B45VKQ
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 website. Should you? And does that matter? Our analysis and methodology for breaking down each of these items can be applied to many aspects of business at any time, regardless of how old the business.
There are a lot of distractions that come into play when you are running a small business, hopefully this episode will help you focus on the distractions that matter, and forget the ones that 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/
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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.
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://bit.ly/2B45VKQ
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 there are, but it's not the norm.
If are getting into farming only for the money, to get rich, then you better think about how you are going to do that, and why you are going to do that.
If money isn't your only motivator for getting into farming, then you better think about why you are getting into it, and how you are going to do it.
Either way it won't be easy. But either way can make you rich, it all comes down to, how you define rich.
Today's episode is a look beyond the bank account. It's a look at all of the other benefits and reasons to be an entrepreneur and to be farmer.
This episode is us kicking around ideas and brainstorming to broaden the idea of what being rich, truly means.
It's a definition that's different for everyone. And it's one that you need to define when you get into this. Because if you define it, it makes it a lot easier to become rich, and if you don't then it makes it a lot easier to stay poor.
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://bit.ly/2B45VKQ
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 everything else from other farmers who are better setup to grow those specific products. It creates a win/win situation for you and the other farmers. Everyone grows what they grow best, and in theory sales go up. It's also a win for the consumer because they now have concentrated access to more local products, without having to sourcing these producing individually from each farmer. Aggregators, collaborative CSA's and food broker models, are these models perfect? No. But if they give you options. And if you are having issues moving product, then more options might be better than less options. You just need to look at everything and figure out which combination is the best fit for you and your market. In today's show we'll look at some alternative market streams for selling your vegetables, so to help you start thinking outside the box, so you can sell more boxes, of vegetables. It's currently May 2016.
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://bit.ly/2B45VKQ
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 the process a conversation began about Curtis farming his neighbor's backyard now that it was a rental. The conversation eventual led to an agreement, one where Curtis would take down the fence between his yard and his neighbors, and extend his farm into his neighbor's back yard. It's a process that was built on the back of respect and social capital, and facilitated by old fashioned conversation. Today we'll take an extended look at the transition of that back yard from lawn to production farm, and all of the challenges and successes that went with it.. It's currently May 11, 2016.
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/
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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 he now looks at them as a bit of a bonus crop given the way that he grows them. Many home gardeners dedicate full rows to tomatoes and give the plants wide spacing's. Curtis does the opposite. He interplants his tomatoes; dedicating most of his bed space to another crop, while squeezing his tomatoes into the out 2 edges of each bed. This strategy works for several reasons. It takes advantage of more of the soil strata. The tomatoes are planted deep, so their roots occupy the deeper layers of soil. While the main greens crops in the beds have shallow root systems. So while the plants are planted in the same space competition is minimized. Another reason why the competition is minimized is that the tomatoes occupy more of the vertical space. If you time the plants strategically during the year plant growth and sun angles allow you to get more plants in the same space with no shading. Overall, inter-planting has been huge for Curtis's farm. It's what's allowed him to hundreds of pounds of greens and hundreds of pounds of tomato, in same relative space. Not a bad bonus yield in a situation where most farmers would simply leave the tomatoes out. Look around your garden at the extra space and think about that next time you plant your tomatoes. It's currently May 4, 2016.
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://bit.ly/2B45VKQ
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