grass city, I'm posting to see if any of you have had experience with selling produce from any of your gardens. I am very familiar with gardens, my family farms and we always have a huge garden. well my grandpa can no longer garden so I figured I would make my own this summer and try making a nice living off it. me and my cousin are also going to start a shiitake mushroom farm, if anyone is familiar with it we might spore 500 logs this spring. I think I am going to build a stand to leave in our local town on some property my grandpa owns that gets plenty of traffic by it, just leave the shit out there and use the honor system for paying (it's a small town) plus if people need to steal small amounts of food I wouldn't care if they couldn't pay for it. so obviously at that stand it would be your mainstream produce (tomatoes,lettuce, peppers n shit) but I know of a few farmers markets in town and have heard of farmers making a LIVING selling at farmers markets. now I don't want to just sell the boring shit at farmers markets, I want to make my own niche. things like value added products, where you take produce and transform it into a different product (soap, chopped salads, chip shiitake mushrooms) my examples suck, but I hope you get what I am trying to say. maybe sell bundles pre bagged for smoothies, meals, or juicing. I am very interested in culinary and medicinal herbs, I think there are a lot of people at farmers markets that would try using these things to solve their ailments or to just stay healthy in general. I believe people are making a transition away from industrial farming and food. you may not have the same beliefs, but there are more and more people wanting local, organic food. the number of farmers aren't growing fast enough to accommodate these demands. I will be 20 this summer, and want to farm for a living. I have experience from gardening, hogs, cattle, hay, and field crops from the past 5 or 6 years of farming. if anyone has any advice from their experiences, or can suggest unique ideas or products that are popular at farmers markets I would greatly appreciate it. basically I want some original ideas thanks for reading! p.s. sorry if you've seen me post this before I just now found the proper thread Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hey, I posted this in the organic section and then I saw this. In case you're interested, this is coming up tomorrow through this weekend and is a free online summit for small sustainable farms. Might be of educational use to you. I'll be attending. http://www.smallfarmsummit.org/
Slimjim, It's great to see someone so young that is so driven to provide fresh, nutritious food to his community and I believe you will do great things in your life. I have a few ideas for you that comes to mind from my experience as a Master Gardener & Master Composter / Recycler through my county's extension service program. Keep bees and provide fresh local honey to your community. Studies show that local honey when eaten can reduce allergies in some people. Start organic vegetable seeds to sell the starts to home gardeners. Make available to these home gardeners organic, hard to get amendments like those we promote here. Ramp up a large vermicomposting operation to sell castings and worms to the community. You could also build and sell worm bins in the off season. Start a plot with the sterile cultivars of comfrey (Bocking #4, #14) so that you can sell crowns and root cuttings. This could be an internet/website enterprise. Either start a food canning/preservation side business and/or teach classes on the subject. I'm going to subscribe to your thread and will keep some more ideas flowing. Meanwhile, here are a couple of links you might find inspiring and good luck to you. The Urban Homestead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng
thanks you for all the advice! I will have to take your help and try some of these things Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Here's a link to a cool idea for beehives. The High Tech Beehive That Can Produce Honey at the Touch of a Button
I've got a local guy who's been keeping bees for 40 years. He's selling me a colony+setup and seems pretty open to mentoring me some. I definitely plan to become self-sufficient through gardening, I like what I'm reading here so far
I think having a plant-based diet makes things a little easier for me. Maybe a comfrey plot could sub for the manure machines (animals) to help me make some compost. I just need to figure out cheap ways to generate electricity, solar panels aren't a poor man's game.
This got me started on my quest for bees again...thanks Steve...but in looking for supplies, which are expensive!, I stumbled across this instructable for a top bar hive made out of a 55 gallon barrel. There are always folks with clean, food grade barrels on craigslist...bet I could make 4 of these for the cost of a Langtstroth kit. Bees might be game on this year...finally!
read a ton. . . find out if you have the bug. . . then explore it know that there are easier ways to make a living, and that you are choosing to enable your life and lifestyle to be self-determined...a perk that is hard to put a dollar sign on. find good markets (farm market, restaurants, CSA, etc) that support a living 'wage' for your products define your goals before you get started, and set realistic expectations identify your strengths and weaknesses. . . i am terrible at managing people, but good with the technical, production and marketing aspects. i grew organic vegetables for a living for 10 years, and started with an acre and a rototiller. ten years later i was growing 12 acres, had a large CSA and good farm market/restaurant clients. i also worked 70-90 hours a week ; ) I have since scaled back and moved (way) north from where I was. It's more of a small farm/homestead with relatively small income goals. But with my time/investment farming I was able to buy 20 acres and a beat up old house with cash. (granted ground prices here are a very reasonable 2k/acre) good luck. hit me up if you need resources. start with attra.org sut
thanks! obviously I'm not starting out for the money!! for me it's the only way I see myself working for myself, and I value that more than 6 figures working in an office. loved your story, I will be coming back here in the coming weeks trust me Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I bail hay for this lady near my house and her neighbor is an old guy and you can see maybe 5 or 6 hives stacked in the backyard. All he has is a little dinky sign saying honey for sale. He is definitely getting to old so i am eager to see if he needs help/get me started-on-my own type deal. How much do you think it cost you for all that stuff? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I'm sure he'll be more than happy to talk to you, at the very least. If he's done it for a while, he's developed a bond with bees and would want to see younger generations take up the interest. You can get a free equipment catalogue sent to you from here: http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/inforequest.asp They're based in FL, so it was good for me, I only really look to the east coast to source things. Either way, you can look through the catalogue to see what kinda stuff there is. There's a good chance he may be downsizing, or have extra equipment for sale, that's your best bet, buying used equipment. I'd get new PPE like gloves and a suit, though.
Yes and no. You have flexibility, even if there is work that needs to be done. If you add animals or hoophouses to the mix, you will remain married to the farm. Winter was always a time for planning, reading, skill development, and frustration that it wasn't warmer out : ) I kept pushing the length of the season, adding hoophouses for winter farmers markets, storage crops in the cooler, early plants for sale in the spring. So a 21 week season in the midwest turned into a 30+ week season. The difference is that you can make it what you want it to be. . . the problem is that if you catch the growing bug it can get out of hand