Farm Small Farm Smart

Farmer and consultant Michael Kilpatrick joins me to talk about improving farm productivity and profitability through better processes.

View the show notes for this episode and all previous Farm Small, Farm Smart episodes.

Learn how to start a microgreens business in Chris Thoreau's Build Your Microgreen Business Workshop.

Keep learning with these two great audiobooks: The Market Gardener by JM Fortier The Urban Farmer by Curtis Stone

Increase farm efficiency with the Paperpot Transplanter.

Author and farmer Ben Hartman talks about his farm and his book, The Lean Farm.

View the show notes for this episode and all previous Farm Small, Farm Smart episodes.

Learn how to start a microgreens business in Chris Thoreau's Build Your Microgreen Business Workshop.

Keep learning with these two great audiobooks: The Market Gardener by JM Fortier The Urban Farmer by Curtis Stone

Increase farm efficiency with the Paperpot Transplanter.

The benefits of building a microgreens business, and how to keep improving it.

View the show notes for this episode and all previous Farm Small, Farm Smart episodes.

Learn how to start a microgreens business in Chris Thoreau's Build Your Microgreen Business Workshop.

Keep learning with these two great audiobooks: The Market Gardener by JM Fortier The Urban Farmer by Curtis Stone

Increase farm efficiency with the Paperpot Transplanter.

Today we are going to Ojai California to talk to a farmer who's more than just a farmer. Max Beecher was inspired into farming by Joel Salatin and Joel's entrepreneurial spirit inspired Max to get created when ti came to his farm based businesses. Max started out his farm journey in 2013 with wife. At the time they weren't farmers though, they started out as aggregators... He describes the experience as "one where we sold produce from a few different local farms to a local customer base we were working on building. This started by selling #2 produce from a local farm I was volunteering at, and the farmer let me split the gross with him, since he would have thrown the product away otherwise. Our idea was to make money up front by selling other people's produce, and to build a customer base so one day we could sell our own product through it. We have continued to grow that webstore business, and it remains a core feature of our business, with a list of almost 300 customers, generating over 100 orders per week. We now source from around 15 local farms, and have a ready market for our own products, including the micro greens. Because of building this webstore before we started farming, marketing what we grow has never been a problem, and we throw little to no product away due to over production." That business has continued and evolved today to become a full-fledged online store generate over $100,000 a year in sales at a decent profit. It's a thriving business and an integral part of Max's farm, and it's one that started by selling someone else's waste. Learn more at http://www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart

Today's episode is a different type of episode. It's a consult style episode with new grower Eddy Gilmore and long-time microgreen grower Chris Thoreau. The first part of this episode will be Eddy and I talking about what's going on with his farm, and then later in the episode Chris will join us to answer some of Eddy's questions about growing his microgreen business. Eddy's at a point in that business that you may find yourself in. He's growing his microgreens at home in his house, but he's running out of space and wondering where to from here. Find out how Chris would handle and approach the business expansion. For Eddy microgreens weren't the first farm business from day one. They came about from necessity. In Eddy's words... "We were freaking desperate over here. I have a wife and two kids, and I was all in on Tiny Farm Duluth. Less than two months ago it seemed as if all was lost. The land was being sold where the vast majority of my farm was located. It was owned by an institution, and I had no idea they were thinking of selling until just before it went on the market. Then, after it sold, I learned that the new owners weren't open to a 7,000 square foot market garden on their property. Just two hours after I received this devastating news, our 2008 Toyota Prius blew both the engine AND transmission. Total, absolute chaos. Our lives were completely upended." Given that Eddy's life was upended, how did it end up? Stay tuned to find out. Learn more at http://www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart Chris's Growing Your Microgreens Workshop: http://www.permaculturevoices.com/microgreens

Given summer heat growing certain crops can be really tough, especially greens. Given the tendency of the normally cool weather lettuces to bolt quickly, turn bitter, and have their foliage burn, many growers simply pass on trying to grow summer greens. The challenges are too great and the returns are too low. But not for all growers. Over the past few weeks I talked to a lot of growers and I tried to track down farmers who were growing greens exceptionally well in some very adverse hot conditions. For today's show I got a group of those growers together and asked them all how their doing it, growing greens during the summer heat. And not just growing them, but growing them very successfully. In today's episode you will hear how their doing it and what goes into growing the greens from establishment to harvesting to storage. There are some similarities in their strategies and some differences. There's a lot in here. The Farmers: Elliot Seldner of Fair Share Farm in Winston Salem, NC. Brandon Gordon of Five Acres Farms in Pleasant Plains, AR Erich Schultz of Steadfast Farm in Queen Creek, AZ Ray Tyler of Rose Creek Farms in Selmer, TN

Increase farm efficiency with the Paperpot Transplanter and Other Small Farm Equipment at https://www.paperpot.co/

Follow PaperpotCo on Instagram: http://bit.ly/2B45VK

Sam's taken a perspective that he gained on hiking the Appalachian trail and he has used it to help navigate the equally hard journey into being a full-time vegetable farmer. Like the trail, Sam's career as a farmer has spanned a lot of land going from 1/8 of an acre in town to two fenced acres a few years later. Today Sam and I will talk about some of the challenges of growing crops on two acres, how Sam has to design his market streams to his land base, working with limited labor, and the trade-offs between growing niche crops and a wide variety of CSA crops. We'll also touch on some of Sam's big takeaways from his days on the trail and how that's helped him as a farmer.

Increase farm efficiency with the Paperpot Transplanter and Other Small Farm Equipment at https://www.paperpot.co/

Follow Diego on IG https://instagram.com/diegofooter Follow PaperpotCo on IG https://instagram.com/paperpot

Podcasts by Diego Footer: Microgreens: https://apple.co/2m1QXmW Vegetable Farming: https://apple.co/2lCuv3m Livestock Farming: https://apple.co/2m75EVG Large Scale Farming: https://apple.co/2kxj39i

Small Farm Tools https://www.paperpot.co/

For today's show we are going down to the State of Arkansas to talk to Brandon Lyons of 5 Acre Farms.

Brandon is someone who transitioned into farming from the nursery trade way back in 2010. Since then he's grown his farm to 1.25 acre, and during that same time he's also grown his family getting married and having kids.

It's a farming journey that started out with a single farmer who could put in crazy hours on the farm to make it work, but one that's now changed to a husband and father farmer, who absolutely can't put in crazy hours on farm. As a result Brandon is now focusing on crop selection, seasonality, and processes to make the hours he does spend on the farm pay, and pay well.

One of the processes that Brandon has focuses on over the years to help save time and labor is no-till. He's employed that strategy on his farm seeing great results both in terms of soil and reduced weed pressure. In this episode we'll find out why he did it and how he did it, today it's all about running a high intensity vegetable operation in rural Arkansas with farmer Brandon Gordon.

Learn more at www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart

Everyone enters the world of farming for different reasons. Reasons spanning from environmental concerns to bringing high quality food to their local market to creating a path to a more independent future… For my guest today, Travis Schulert, farming became a mode of a change, because prior to farming Travis described his situation as… "I was stuck in a dead end lifestyle, living in a trailer park, no savings, no plans, and between 24 and now (28) I started a CSA on leased land, funded the infrastructure of the farm and gave myself the money to build a tiny home. My wife and I lived in the tiny home and saved what we could, started doing markets and learning to sell and grow. " Farming has been a means to get Travis and his wife out of that lifestyle which wasn't working. But it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Between production issues, CSA issues, and trouble with land tenure, it's been a bumpy road. Travis has been able to navigate that road so far and is now in his 4th year of farming, but one which is also a new beginning as he starting his first season on a new plot of land currently dominated by grass. As you'll hear in this episode, like all things in farming, Travis is taking it in stride and doing his best with it, and now realizing "farming is only romantic until you start doing the work." Today it's all the trials and tribulation of slowly scaling a farm on the side with farmer Travis Schulert. Learn more at http://www.permaculturevoices.com/farmsmallfarmsmart Support the show at http://www.permaculturevoices.com/support

When it comes to this world of farming small, what is this world? Is it a bunch of small farms each operating independently? For the most part, I think the answer is yes. Given that, what's the next step. Is it more small farms operating independently or is those small farms growing to be larger small farmers. Now I am not talking 1.5 acre farms scaling to 100 acres, I am talking about 1.5 acre farms scaling to 10 acres. If small farms do that, what does that look like, both for this world of farming small and for each independently operated farm? Is that scale manageable on a people powered biointensive level? Or does this style of farming not scale? It's a question being asked by one of the leader in this movement, JM Fortier. A few years ago JM Fortier left his 1.5 acre farm behind to start working on an experimental 10 acre farm to test the idea and validity of scaling these types of farming methods. It's project which has produced some answers, but one which has also produced a lot of questions, some of which are the focus of our show today. It's all about the future of market gardening in this episode with farmer JM Fortier. Get JM's audiobook version of The Market Gardener at www.permaculturevoices.com/audiobook