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
Greens are big business for Curtis' farm. Both in terms of volume of product, and dollars generated for that product.
His customer base, which is mainly made of restaurants, buys a lot of greens. And they pay good money for them. But like many things on the farm there is a seasonality that goes along with restaurants and the products that Curtis sells to restaurants.
Typically spring is a slower time of year for restaurant sales, and thereby farm sales. Things just aren't as busy.
But this year is a bit of an anomaly, because Curtis's revenue is way up for the season.
That increase in revenue can be attributed to a couple things. First, he has picked up a few new wholesale customers outside of restaurants, and second, he is selling all of his customers more high value product, specifically greens.
More demand, means more production, so Curtis' production of greens on the farm is way up this year.
But it's not just as simple as planting more beds of greens. There's a lot of nuance involved...
When the beds were planted, how far apart the successions are, when do you harvest whole beds versus halves.
Logical considerations, but not always the simplest to wrap your head around.
That's what we will be focusing on in today's episode.
It's currently April 26, 2016.
Listen to past episodes at: https://www.paperpot.co/podcast
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What would the 2000 sq.ft. farm, let's call it a micro-farm, look like?
How could you best utilize that space and take many of the techniques that Curtis uses on his current 1/2 acre urban farm, to make the micro-farm generate some decent cash flow.
How much could you make on a micro-farm of just 2000 square feet?
Really it depends on what you are growing and who you are selling it to. But grossing 20,000 on that 2000 square feet isn't crazy talk. And even half that, $10,000, is a realistic target to shoot for.
When you think about that, that's a pretty lucrative given the space involved. I think most people can get access to 2000 sq.ft. That's essentially fits well within your average American lawn.
The 2000 square foot micro-farm has a lot of things going for it. It's manageable, yet scaleable. It's big enough to matter to start you thinking and implementing a lot of these systems, yet it's not over whelming. It makes a great transition plot for someone looking to transition into farming or just get their feed wet.
Given that today will be a case study looking at the 2000 sw ft micro farm.
We'll break down what this farm might look like. How you would want to manage it. What types of crops you would want to focus on, and put some a basic framework in place that you can build off of.
As, you see, you can do a lot with 2000 square feet, and it might not be that small after all.
It's currently April 19, 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
It's currently April 12, 2016.
We start off today talking about whether you should start farming with a greenhouse or not.
The conversation quickly turns into reasons why people succeed and don't succeed.
Hopefully this episode is a welcome kick in the ass for those who need it. And motivation to keep kicking ass for everyone else.
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
It's currently April 5, 2016. Today's episode focuses on starting and transplanting Salanova via micro soil blocks. Curtis will talk about how he starts Salanova lettuce using the blocks and the advantages for doing so. We also run a quick time and cost analysis of starting lettuce in blocks versus cell trays to show the comparison. At the end of the episode I go over a recipe to use for the micro blocker and some basic techniques for using it.
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
It's currently March 30, 2016. And over the past few months Curtis has literally been all around the world. I today's episode we'll look back at some of the places that he visited and what he took away from those visits. From the high tech innovation being done at Jean-Martin Fortier's Le Ferm de Catra Taaamp in Quebec to the low tech soil building techniques used by Jodi Roebuck to build soil in his bio-ingestive garden in New Zealand. It's not just all fun and stories, there's a lot of good information in this one such as do these techniques scale, how can you build soil, and how can you combine tarps and soil to really build soil.
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
If we go back to where we left of Season One of the show, it was December and there really wasn't any crop production happening on the land itself for Green City Acres. At that time some of the land was sitting fallow waiting for future planting in the spring, and some of the land was occupied by dormant crops that had been planted a few months earlier in the fall. Let's find out how much Curtis' total farm has been quietly in production throughout the winter, with beds holding overwintered crops, and why.
This episode also covers overwintering crops, prepping beds with tarps and stale seed bedding, and dealing with the shoulder season day length changes.
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
All of the guests for this episode are listeners of the show. Listeners just like you.
A few months ago I asked for feedback on the first season of the show, and I received a ton of it.
Today, I will share some of it with you.
If you submitted feedback for the show and gave me the OK to read it, thank you, this episode is yours.
As humans I think we live in a guru culture. A culture that puts people on a pedestal.
And that can be dangerous because it creates limiting beliefs.
Beliefs that we could never be like them.
Beliefs that we aren't good enough.
Beliefs that we have some sort of unfair disadvantage.
Beliefs that we can't do what they do.
Because they are an expert, and we aren't.
A lot of people view Curtis as that expert and put him on that pedestal of knowledge.
They create limiting beliefs in their mind and tell themselves, I could never do what Curtis does.
I have sat in workshops with Curtis and heard it first hand, time and time again.
And if you believe that, that you could never do what Curtis does, then Henry Ford said it best...
Whether you think you can, or think you can't - your right.
This episode today is for the people who think they can.
If you ever feel stuck or stalled or find yourself struggling and wondering if you can actually do it, then here's an episode for you.
An episode full of stories of "ordinary" people doing the hard work to go after what they want in life, and showing that it might not always be easy, but it is possible.
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's episode is actually a rebroadcast of a presentation that Curtis gave in January in San Francisco.
The presentation is called Farming in the City.
In this presentation, Curtis will take you on a tour of his one third of an acre urban farm, where you will get an inside look at the day to day operations of the farm from vegetable production to sales.
Curtis will show how he farms commercially, and profitably, in backyards and on small plots of land in the city, land that he doesn't own. You'll learn about the methods and techniques that Curtis has used over the last six years to grow his sales and profits.
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
In this episode Curtis and I dissect an article that was published on Alternet on January 1, 2016 by farmer Jaclyn Moyer.
An article titled....
What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can't Make a Living - People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable
This one is a good one and we cover a lot of business basics such as...
We will break down the article to hopefully help a lot of you avoid some of the troubles that Jaclyn talked about in the article.
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
Scott Hebert started farming in June 2015 when his family business shut down. At that time he didn't have anything to fall back on. But he had always had an interest in farming, and within a few days of getting the income shock warning his wheels had been put in motion and he was putting a plan into place to transition into a career as a farmer.
He contacted Curtis to visit his farm, so he could start leveraging Curtis' experience to plan his farm and his future. Because he knew wanted to farm, but didn't want to be broke, therefore, he had to make money at it, and that meant he had to have a plan and a strategic approach.
And it's that approach that we will be talking about in today's show.
It's currently February 2016 and this episode was recorded with new farmer Scott Hebert a couple of months ago in December 2015.
Let's get into it and see what a transition into small scale farming is really like...
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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