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
While Curtis and I were on tour we made a stop at Singing Frogs Farm in Sebastopol to visit with farmers Paul & Elizabeth Kaiser.
It's a pretty remarkable farm. The Kaisers are farming just over 2 acres and grossing over $100,000 an acre. They come from an agroforestry background and approach farming systematically as a business.
This episode is some of our thoughts from our visit.
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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If you want to be better off in December 2016, then the planning for that starts now in December 2015.
The biggest leverage point which for the farm season next year is right there in front of you. You just need to tease it out.
That's what today's show is about. Doing some End of Season Reflection - Thinking about How Things Went This Year, to Alter Course and Plan for Next Year.
I hope that you can use some of the information that we talk about in this episode to reflect on your 2015 farm season, so you can get better in 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
In today's episode Curtis and I will take a look back at the season of this show and talk about what's in store for the future for Curtis and this show.
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
How much work should you put into something before it gets to the point where it isn't worth it? At what point does the money, the effort, and the headache justify not doing it?
With everything in business and farming, there is always a trade off, an opportunity cost. If you are doing one, thing, then it's at the expense of something else. Because you can't do it all, and regardless of the return, sometimes it's just not worth it.
In this episode we spend a lot of time looking at how to decide if customers and crops are worth the effort.
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 in Curtis produced about 17,500lbs of product off of his farm this year. That's a lot of food coming from a small space. Remember Curtis is only farming off of 15,000 sq.ft. which is spread out over 5 plots. And this year he made the most of it producing over 17,000lbs of produce on those 5 plots.
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 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?
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.
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
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, and just maybe you will realize that your model doesn't work, or you're not very good at 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 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.
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'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.
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 we talk about post crop harvest processing, including how Curtis has changed some of his techniques over the years.
We also talk about some of his farm equipment and infrastructure like his flame weeder and walk in cooler.
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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