0:00we recently asked some of our customers how they're feeling about the upcoming growing season and we're going to go over an answer we got with you all today I'm here at Bountiful blessings farm

0:08with my dad John Dysinger and today we're going to be reviewing a comment we got from

0:16Candy she says this year I am on the fence about what to do for the future I feel like I'm spinning my wheels working

0:23way too hard and still losing money I'm 100% sure it's mismanagement in my part and yet I'm not sure I have what I need

0:31to make it a success but I also love growing food so much and I love our customers so much I can't imagine my

0:38summer without them so it's definitely a battle in my heart God bless you for the Innovations you do for us I love love

0:45love that you created a rebar post puller those little things make huge help for us uh I didn't ever think I

0:53would hear that kind of a Rave report on the post pounder or the post puller that we we did but that's cool all right well

1:00dad what kind of feedback or or thoughts would you have for candy I'm sure you know in the 27 years 26 years that you

1:09guys have been farming um there's probably been Springs where you had a very similar feeling of discouragement

1:17and like wanting to to continue pressing on but just you know struggling with the

1:25realities of you know previous failures and whatever else you know so yeah I can

1:32definitely relate candy to your your feelings your your angst your um you

1:40know that that um battle between loving what you do but feeling you're not very good at it and um feeling like you

1:49really don't know what you're doing I feel like I spent probably the first 15 years feeling that um so it it's

1:59definitely you know a learning curve and it takes a lot of time to to figure out the nuances you know it

2:08doesn't take much time to learn how to prepare beds and broadfork and you know

2:15whatever but all the nuances take a lifetime to really master so you know

2:21you said here um I'm not sure I have what I need to make it a

2:28success but I also so love growing food so much I love our customers so much you

2:35know to me that says you do have what it takes I just want to encourage you with that um you love what you do which

2:43is you know vital to be a success at it and and um you know and to me that's the

2:52best marketing if you love your customers they're going to love you and that's the best marketing you can do do

3:00so I I would hate for you to be discouraged but obviously you're struggling with you know actually making

3:08money at it which is the challenge most of us have struggled with at some point or

3:16other um I I think there's a few things I would like to suggest you know there's

3:23probably a lot of things we could suggest but number one um I wanted to bring down here I didn't do it but the

3:32the lean Farm by Ben Hartman um I highly highly recommend that book if you haven't read it um that

3:41was a real game Cher for us on the farm here when we read that book because it's all about learning to farm

3:50efficiently and um developing systems and so I'm guessing that that's

3:59probably something you're lacking is just having the systems and and and

4:06having the efficiency in place you know and really focusing

4:12on profitable things rather than unprofitable and so a second thing I

4:20would say so my first recommendation is read the lean Farm if you've already read it read it again you know it's a

4:28book you need to read read again and again um secondly focus on crops that are

4:37really making you money and you know there's a lot of metrics for that and in the book The Lean farm he gives a number

4:45of those different ways to kind of measure profitability one I was just reading

4:50about the other day was um dollars per day per crop so if you know

5:00you can make X number of dollars off of radishes on a bed you know and you get

5:08approximately this many Bunches of radishes those radishes depending on the time of year you know they're only in

5:15the ground for 20 to 30 days basically

5:21so you take the the money you've got and divide it by the number of days it's

5:30days to harvest yeah in the ground and then that gives you a dollars per day that you're actually making from

5:38that crop maximizing the the dollars per day

5:44yeah high yield high high turn then you start you start looking at your crops and saying okay how you know you can

5:52have some profitable crops or they appear profitable you know like say ginger um which can be profitable but

6:01you know it's in the ground a long time yeah so you have to think about all that so that's one thing another thing I would

6:09encourage is focus on the basics and by that I mean um and you

6:19know we've learned all of these things the hard way but um most people want orange carrots you know you can grow the

6:29purple and the white and and the red or whatever and there'll be a few adventurous people that want to try them

6:37but most people just want red carrots I mean orange carrots and red tomatoes and red watermelons not that

6:45you probably should be growing watermelons but um you get the idea yeah um I remember one year when Kirsten and

6:54Paul and uh Caroline and I were doing our summer production we grew a mix of red okra and green okra and

7:03here in the South everybody just wants green okra they don't you know and so we grew it together harvested it together mixed it together and presented it at

7:12Farmers Market as a green and and purple okra mix and people would come along and pick out all the green and leave us with

7:19purple so yeah that's a good good point we stopped growing the red okra because there just wasn't the market so really

7:28make sure you're focused on the profitable crops and what people want um so those are a few suggestions

7:37I'm sure we could come up with more yeah well I was going to ask so I'm sure there's some things that stand out over

7:44the years that you've implemented whether that's some new tools or new processes or something but can you think of anything that really stands out as

7:53like a gamechanging kind of um process that you implemented that didn't like

8:01cost a lot of money I mean obviously there's some things like we're in the the propagation tunnel I know that you like doing concrete on the floors was a

8:09big Improvement stuff like that but that's that's stuff that you can afford to do when you're a little more profitable but like things that that pretty much anybody could do on a fairly

8:17tight budget as they're starting out like anything that stands out that's kind of GameChanger yeah I mean I I

8:25don't want this to be a farmers friend um advertis I mean we're not going to

8:32complain but two things that stand out to me with that is number one covered

8:39growing space you know we just are putting up another tunnel um because you

8:46can't have too many you know the quality the environment yeah the quality of the product and being able to work in the

8:54rain you know being able to work year round and um control the environment on

9:01ome small level is huge so you know get you some covered growing space and and

9:09then the second thing that we've just really started using in a big way in the

9:15last few years is the quick plant Fabric and it really hit me this last year with our

9:23interns you know in in years past the interns spend an awful lot of time cultivating

9:30ating and this last year I mean they spent very little time

9:36cultivating and most of their time harvesting and you know when you read Ben Hartman's the lean Farm you know

9:45cultivation is is muda he calls you know waste it's you're not make making money from

9:52cultivating but you are making money from harvesting so yeah those those two things have made a big difference and

10:01you know I I I know that there's the downside to using um

10:09petroleum products and you know I'm not saying it's the ultimate solution but you know on some point when you're

10:15starting out you just got to you got to make it work you got to you got to start turning a profit and and you know it may

10:24be a intermediate step yeah but at least invest in in product that's UV treated UV stabilized that's going to last many

10:34years you know so it's ideally not just single use Plastics I mean we've had landscape fabric that we used for 10

10:41years and you know not more than that yeah so so that's a at least a a good investment yeah and you know quick plant

10:50Fabric's great it's already got the holes burned in it you just roll it out plant but there is a premium for for

10:57that you know value add that we do so you know if somebody's really on a budget they can still buy just the the plain material and burn the holes

11:05themselves and maximize that so yeah yeah for sure but I mean I think that's the takeaway I mean what about just

11:11simple things like um you know watering timers just hose bib you know timers that you can just set your irrigation

11:20and not have to uh worry about it how how much have you guys utilized stuff like that well not much okay

11:29I mean we should um and someday we will yeah but yeah but

11:38you know I mean as far as irrigation goes at least having um access easy access to

11:47irrigation at every pad y you know yeah I I remember um some who've been around a

11:57while know the um farmer to Farmer podcast that was I think the first small farm one that came

12:05out yep Chris Blanchard he interviewed Connor crickmore and that interview with Connor crickmore really changed the

12:14course of our farm because he talked about how if you have to do anything more than turn a valve to water a section it's not going

12:24to get enough water and that really impressed me and made

12:30us yeah get our irrigation up to that so the most we have to do is turn a valve

12:37so permanent permanent irrigation setups you moving moving sprinklers around yeah

12:43for sure that's big cool well we don't want to get too long- winded uh we could probably go for hours on ways to improve

12:53efficiency and uh you know improve your operation but uh we don't want to overwhelm candy I think the takeaways

13:02from from this conversation that I'm taking away is uh read the lean farmer

13:09uh invest in high value crops fast turnaround turnover crops that are producing High Revenue but at the same

13:18time not going not falling for the Trap of you know trying to get the the flashy uh you know blingy crops just grow the

13:27the standard red tomatoes and green okra and and uh that the stuff that people know um at the end of the day and then

13:36invest in you know some some systems to control weeds uh whether you know use of silage

13:43tarp or quick plant fabric um and uh yeah any last

13:50takeaways I just want to encourage candy um don't give up yeah don't give up hang in there you know like I said you've got

13:58the right attitude and um just just keep refining

14:05those systems and success will come I believe it yeah definitely well thanks

14:12for watching I hope this is a encouragement to not only candy but the rest of you watching as well um a lot of people that have tried to make a go at

14:20farming can can relate probably everybody that's tried to make a go at uh small scale vegetable production uh

14:27can relate to these challenges so um until next time happy growing