0:00We hear a lot of questions from growers and a lot of new growers have this sentiment of there's so much to learn.

0:06Where do I start? So, I'm here with my dad who has 27 years of experience as a market farmer and we're going to be talking about this just briefly. Where do you start? It can be so overwhelming,

0:18so much information to learn, so many different topics to try to tackle. Like,

0:22what would your encouragement be to people? How do you break through all that uh that overwhelming feeling and

0:29get kind of to the you know the basics of what you have to learn to get

0:36started? Yeah, I can totally remember that very vividly just feeling totally overwhelmed. In fact, I have a very

0:45specific memory of looking at a Johnny's catalog and the green beans and you

0:52know, there's like 30 different kinds of green beans and I just felt totally overwhelmed. It's like, how in the world

1:00am I supposed to know what green beans I should grow? So, I definitely get those

1:07feelings. I've been there and just have a few suggestions.

1:14Uh again I'm from the older generation where we used to read books and in my

1:21mind there's three excellent books. I mean obviously there's many more books

1:27but to me these are the the cream of the crop and the first one is Elliot

1:34Coleman's the new organic grower. It's been updated. This is the 30th anniversary edition, but this is what I

1:43started with and in our internship program, it's still our textbook of choice. So, it's just

1:51great basic information on market gardening.

1:56And then there's also the market gardener, which when it came out was well, I think it's still very popular.

2:05JM4A. Um, just a great manual for starters. And then there's another one that's come out in the last few years,

2:15the No Till Organic Vegetable Farm. Excellent book. Any one of these three,

2:21and if you're a real reader, just read them all. It's going to give you a real foundation in in the basics of market gardening.

2:32If you're not a reader, uh obviously there's lots and lots on

2:39YouTube and I think my advice there would be to make sure you find people

2:46who are doing what you want to do successfully. You know, there's a lot of of quotes,

2:54experts out there on YouTube with a lot of different um ideas and advice and you

3:02know, a lot of it's good, but I don't know that it's all good. And so, find people who are doing it

3:08successfully. Um, just a few names I would recommend.

3:14Uh Connor Crickmore has a course actually an online course and this is

3:21what I would really recommend if you learn by seeing um Connor Crickmore has a very extensive course online.

3:31JM4ier the market gardener also has a very extensive online course. Uh Ben Hartman has a lot of online information.

3:42and Ben Hartman is the lean farm.

3:45Um, so those are some good places to start. I'm sure there's there's others that are also good, but those are

3:54excellent. Then the other thing I would really encourage is find somebody who's

4:00doing it locally and successfully and just see if you can spend time with them. You know, you got to be sensitive

4:08to the fact that farmers are busy, but if you offer your time for free to help

4:16in exchange for some knowledge, most farmers I think might take you up on that. And then I guess the last thing I

4:24would say is just start small ideally and make small mistakes. Mhm. You know,

4:33um if you go into it whole hog, you're going to make some big mistakes, but if you can start small and

4:42just learn how to grow stuff and grow it successfully and then expand from there,

4:49I guess those are some thoughts I would have. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, along the line of starting small, just maybe

4:58picking a a handful of crops, I think the tendency is to look at the Johnny's catalog and just be like, "Oh, I want to

5:06try that and I want to try that." And next thing you know, you've got 50 different varieties and and it's going to be hard to hard to succeed at that.

5:14So, yeah, pick the the staples and go from there. On the topic of courses too,

5:20there's also like if if somebody was wanting to just focus on like growing lettuce, which is a good cash crop, fast

5:27turnover, whatever. I think Ray still has his lettuce master class, which is just specifically about uh perfecting

5:35lettuce production. Yeah. Which is is also Ray Tyler Rose Creek Farm. That's that's an excellent place to start

5:44because I think most market gardeners learn fairly early on that

5:50lettuce is king on the market farm and um that's going to be your main crop

5:58probably. Yeah. So, learning how to do that well year round is is huge for sure. Well, I think those are some great tips.

6:09Um, the books, I think we have all of those books, at least most of them available on the Farmers Friend website.

6:15So, feel free to go purchase them there and support us if you would like. Um,

6:20yeah. Any other final thoughts before we wrap this one? I think I think it's some really good pointers. I mean, yeah,

6:27there it is.

6:31just face the fact that it it is going to be overwhelming at first. Starting a

6:37farm from scratch is a huge job and you know don't feel bad that you feel

6:44overwhelmed cuz that's kind of where where you start. Yeah. And the only way to get over that is to get some

6:53experience under your belt and and have some successes and some failures. You

7:00know, keep track of what you do so you know what not to do the next year or what to do. Yeah, definitely. Um yeah,

7:10you just kind of have to break it down to like what's the next thing, you know,

7:13what's the next thing. You can't get overwhelmed just by the hundreds of decisions that have to be made and just

7:20get get decision fatigue. You just kind of have to have the whole big picture and then narrow it down to like what has to be done this week and yeah, start

7:30small and read books. So, hope that information's been helpful and if you have any other questions, uh, feel free

7:37to reach out to our customer service team at farmersfriend.com. Until next time, happy growing.

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