How To Make Your Small Farm PROFITABLE

Hey everyone, I hope you guys are well. So today we're talking about six strategies to run a profitable small farm. The number one thing that you absolutely need to do is to systemize your fields and the design of your farm. So everything should be organized in beds. So we talked about this in another episode of the importance of the permanent beds, but the beds should all be the same size, standardized in length, and they should be grouped together in what we call field blocks. And the field blocks should always also be the same size. And that's how you organize the layout of your farm. And when you do this, you make a lot of the material very versatile. You'll have the drip tapes, they're all the same size, the row covers all the same size, your irrigation system will be standardized for the whole place. So by keeping everything in the same kind of standards, you simplify a lot of the operations. And you'll see, if you can look up a lot of the most productive, profitable small farms that you'll see, you know, you have these field blocks that are all the same size. So that's one of the key things, and hopefully this resonates with you. It's never too late to change the setup of a farm, and it's never too early to draw your farm from a bird's eye view, and to place your beds in field blocks, and to make sure that it all makes sense with regards to zoning and distance between everything on the farm. Number two is completely different from number one, but just as important. You start with the macro, with the farm design, but the micro is your weekly and your day design. And that revolves around making lists. So everything that you do on the farm should be on a list, and your list should be twofold. You need to have your weekly list of all the operations that are going to need to be done in a given week, and then every day you end your day by making the list of what needs to be done the next day. And that simple little strategy, ending your day by making the list of what needs to be done tomorrow, is my number one trick to help growers better plan, but also get out of their heads at night. When you make that list at the end of the day, your day is done, and you feel good. You can go and do something else, and you don't have all this, you know, mice in your head always spinning the wheel of what needs to be done. It's written down. Just to give you an example, so this is our farm manager here, Angie, at the Old Mill. This is everything that needs to be done. She put it into the weekly slots, and she's organizing her week with everything that needs to happen. And that gives clarity, and everyone that works here on the farm understands what's going on. But even for her, it's important because she has a clear view of all the chores that need to be done. And then we'll come and we'll scratch everything once it's done, and that's very encouraging. And by the way, you see here, coming back to the key number one, is like by having blocks of group beds, you can simply identify all these blocks. So each field block is a number, and inside those field blocks, you have the number of the beds. So field block number three, bed number six, is 36. And that simplifies a lot of the discussions about what needs to be done where. Hey, by the way, if this is interesting to you, we'll be giving a workshop at the Market Gardener Institute, June 11th, Crops That Pays Off Quickly. And in this workshop, it's free, it's online, you can register to the workshop, all the information's on the link below. On this workshop, we'll be sharing some of the tips and the tricks about not only which crop to grow, but how to grow them. And so make sure that you're coming to this workshop. It's my way of sharing my expertise with you all, and I hope to see you there. Number three is to block time for marketing. Yeah, a lot of us come into the world of small-scale farming because we want to grow stuff. And that's really important, that's a big part of it. But selling is also part of the job. And so you need to make sure that you have good marketing strategies, and that you save time to work on these issues on the farm. A good example of this is, you should have a social media calendar, and you should be posting regularly with a given timeline between all of these posts. That's just one thing that you can do. Going to farmer's market, if you are going, making sure that your booth is really nice. There's a lot of little tricks to go about that, but just remembering people's name, making sure that your presentation is top-notch on your lists of price. All these little details, in the end, they count. And so if you're not really good at marketing, and you don't know about it, you can look up some key strategies. We've posted videos in the past about this, but I think the take-home message is that selling is just as important as growing. So you need to put some attention and some of your focus on that part of the farm. Point number four, and that is especially important in market gardening, is that you need to focus on lucrative crops. You need to make sure that you're growing the crops that will give you the best bang for the buck. You need to make sure that you know which crops are your top sellers. And if you're new to the game, perhaps you could do a little research about who's growing what and what you could be growing yourself. But if you're already at market, you should know which crops are your most popular and which crops are also generating the most revenue. And you should be focusing on these crops, making sure that you always have enough of these, that you have the right growing strategies, the right growing techniques. These are greenhouse tomatoes. I know how to grow this really optimally because I've learned it. There's a lot of tricks and tips. Make sure that you're really good at growing these crops. And also think about the revenue per square feet. On a micro farm, on a market garden, that's really important. How much is this crop generating per square foot? Is it the top tier? Is it the lower tier? And focus on the crops that have good revenue and or that don't take too much time. So tomatoes is a bad example of this because they're there for the whole summer, but they're generating a lot of revenue for the farm. But you'll have another crop like turnips, turnips, radishes, salad heads. They generate a lot on a short amount of time, so you can multi-plant on the same bed. So that's a key strategy in market gardening. So another important one, number five, in my experience is goal setting. It's really important. I can't talk about that enough. Goal setting is such a big part of anyone's success in anything. So on the farm, make sure that you have a goal for this year. What's your goal for the farm in three years? What's the objective for the farm in five years? You should kind of have that written down. Five years is like your dream. Three years is getting there and one year is like really what you're what you're doing, what you're planning for this year. You should have at least five goals for the farm on a given year, and you should change and revisit those every year. And these five goals, you should have really measurables about them. So if one of the goals is to, you know, have a lot less weeds on the farm, make sure that that goal is, okay, well, I'm doing some stale seed beds. I'm planting my carrots this year onto compost. I'm buying a flame weeder to do pre-emergence on some of the crops. I'm switching this crop from direct seeded to transplant. Or, you know, I have somebody that's coming twice a week to really help me with the cultivation aspect of the farm. So make sure that the goal doesn't stay vague. It really translates into an action, actionable item with a timeline. Okay, so you can look up goal setting, but like, I can't overstress this enough. If on your farm you don't have clear objectives, it's going to be hard to get anywhere. So make sure that you have the goal. Make sure you have the dream, five-year dream, the three-year goals to get to the dream, and then this year have five goals. One of those goals should be your financial objectives for this season. And in another video, I can explain how this translates into the crop planning process, but that's really, really important. And lastly, I would say that it's really important to create a positive atmosphere on the farm. You know, just making sure that people that are working on the farm are having a good time, that you yourself are having a good time, that, you know, it's even though there's stressful moments, there's a light-hearted to it. And that boils down to how you start your day and how you smile and what kind of vibe you bring onto the farm. And, you know, for anyone that's worked on farms, when there's a bad vibe, it's not cool. People don't want to be there. So make sure that you're creating a positive vibe, a positive energy. And if you yourself, as the leader of that farm, are having problems and it's not working out, make sure that you're talking to someone to ventilate and to get the oxygen you need to be the leader that you need to be on the farm. So really important stuff. I hope this is helpful and I hope things are going well. I'm doing well. J.M. out.