0:00Hi guys, in this video we're going to be talking about how to reach profitability quickly when you're starting a small

0:06scale farm. So my family started farming in 1998 and did not reach profitability quickly.

0:17So I feel like uh this painful to lay it out there like that.

0:22Well, I mean, you know, it's a good story now. Enough time has gone by. So,

0:27Dad, what would you say are the uh the key takeaways looking back on what what you would have done differently or what

0:35you would have advi what you would advise anybody listening to do differently to achieve uh some level of profitability earlier on?

0:45Yeah. Well, our biggest mistake was trying to focus on one crop and you know, we were doing strawberries

0:54and on paper we could make a living on an acre of strawberries, but we learned

1:01fairly quickly that uh farming doesn't happen on paper. It happens in the real

1:07world. And so, yeah, that that did not work very well. So I think focusing on

1:15too few crops, but the flip side to that,

1:20you know, I think we kind of went from one extreme to the other was focusing on too many crops. Yeah.

1:26And we were trying to, you know, once we decided, okay, we can't make it just with strawberries.

1:32Then, you know, we got into the CSA and we're trying to grow everything, you know, to keep everybody happy and

1:39introduce people to scorera and salsify and, you know, all those kinds of things

1:48that people have never heard of. And that's,

1:53you know, I I've I've kind of given up on trying to convince people to try new crops. When they come to the farmers market, they want what they're used to.

2:05And so, we've really paired down to things that we know everybody's like or almost everybody likes.

2:16Yeah.

2:17So, I think that focusing uh not putting all your eggs in one basket, you know, as the saying goes, uh is important. That being said,

2:28probably the bigger issue for us early on was putting all of our eggs in the strawberry basket, which, you know, even

2:37under ideal circumstances, they only are revenue generating, you know, couple months max, six or eight weeks out of

2:44the year. And there's so many things that could go wrong. You know, looking back, if you had put all your eggs into,

2:50you know, uh, salad greens or something like that, it might have been a different story. So, it's not necessarily that you have to diversify into a bunch of different things. Just pick the right thing that has, you know,

3:01fast cycles, you know, like microgreens for instance, you know, you're talking about a few weeks, two or two or 3 weeks

3:09from the time you plant it to the time you can sell it. Um, very critical for

3:16starting out. Yeah, for sure. You got to get that money back as quickly as possible.

3:22Pick pick crops where you can start to recoup your initial investment as quickly as possible.

3:28Yeah. Another huge thing for us was just lack of knowledge and experience.

3:34Um, you know, again, we've talked about now it's kind of the opposite extreme where there's so much knowledge, so many

3:41books and so many YouTube videos that people are overwhelmed with it. But, you know, pick some people who are doing it

3:50successfully and who have kind of the model you aspire to have and follow them on YouTube or read their books or whatever.

4:01Um so the knowledge is is really important but even more than the knowledge is experience.

4:10You know if I were starting again and I tried to do this but there were so few people doing it back when we started

4:17that it was hard to find people to visit but you know just see if you can work on a farm in

4:25exchange for knowledge. You know, most farmers are not going to turn down um free help. At least, you know,

4:37sounds like you're inviting people to come. Uh well, give some free help. Yeah.

4:46Okay. Maybe.

4:47Yeah. I mean, obvious for them to have some level of knowledge and experience, but I would assume

4:56anybody who's thinking about market gardening has read and, you know, has had their own garden and stuff, so they're not,

5:04you know, you're not having to to tell them what a weed is and how to pull it out kind of thing.

5:12Yeah. So just learning from others, you know, you can either make your own mistakes or you can learn from other people's mistakes. And I think that's critical.

5:21Yeah. Yeah. I I think that, you know,

5:25it's it's very true that when when we started n in ' 98, there wasn't a lot of resources. So there's a lot of mistakes

5:32that were made because we were trying things that we thought were going to work, but you know, there just wasn't a a track going. So,

5:40um, what about like, you know,

5:42investments? There's a lot of investments that have to be made, you know, uh, what what's your advice on how to make wise investments? I feel like

5:49there's probably some examples of things where we invested, you know, kind of went all in on something that maybe wasn't we had we should have tested on a smaller scale before really, you know,

6:00going all in. you know, how how would you encourage people to make wise investments in, you know, tools and

6:07supplies and infrastructure like to uh yeah, not overspend on those things.

6:14Yeah, that's that's kind of a difficult one. Um I I think your investment doesn't you

6:22don't want it to outpace your knowledge and skill level, if that makes sense. Mhm.

6:28Um I've seen so many people Yeah. invest in high tech fancy things that

6:38they don't have the knowledge and skill to really take advantage of it and it it's it's a disaster.

6:45So, you know, there are some things that you kind of need to start out a market garden. you know, you need a propagation

6:54house, you need a cooler, you need a wash and pack area. Um,

7:03so again, I would be looking at people who are doing it successfully and trying to emulate that.

7:11Yeah.

7:12But as far as Yeah. putting too much money into it, I would kind of, you know, you want to see what the market demands.

7:22Um, you may think that the market's going to love strawberries when actually they're looking for blueberries or, you know, whatever.

7:33Um,

7:34so yeah, don't don't let your investments outpace your your knowledge and skill level.

7:43Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, you know,

7:47there's something to be said for for bootstrapping, you know, initially, you know, say say you want to start out with something like microgreens where, you know, there's there's fast turnover.

7:56It's relatively, you know, it's a high it's a high profit crop or whatever. You might not need to invest $1,000 in a whole, you know, harvesting system like

8:05the quick cut greens harvester. Um, you could start out with just the the hand shears or

8:11and and just get started, you know. um start making money and then as the business grows reinvest the profits in

8:20more infrastructure and stuff and you know the other thing is that you know keep an eye on these uh garden groups on Facebook and stuff there's unfortunately

8:30I see quite frequently you know people going out of business and they're selling equipment and you can get deals on this stuff. So um yeah a lot a lot of good advice there. I appreciate it.

8:40we've um made a lot of mistakes, but I feel like you guys are in a good rhythm now with the farm, and it's cool to see

8:48um all the systems that you've developed, and hopefully that can be a blessing to those watching and significantly jumpst start your success.

8:58So, if you have any questions, feel free to respond back to this email and we may answer those questions in a future video. Until next time, happy growing.

9:10[Music]