Whether you are new at starting a CSA farm, or already have experience, these downloadable tools can help simplify your planning. The Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator handles all the heavy thinking for you, and you only need to enter the basic info about your farm and your growing needs.
Click these links to learn more about the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator and our Grow Your Own CSA planning tools suite.
The farm and garden calculator will help you to determine:
- Potential yields for a wide range of vegetables and herbs
- The number of plants required
- Row space required for each plant type
- Planting and harvest dates for your area (by noting your last frost date)
- Successive plantings
- How many people or CSA members you can provide for
- Retail sales calculator for market gardeners & farmers
The calculator comes in three skill levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. And there is a version for both farmers and gardeners. The farm version includes the retail sales calculator which allows you to enter the amount of each crop you want to sell each week and the price per pound, then it does the math for you, letting you see your potential income from retail or wholesale sales.
In my next article, I will be writing about how I am using the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator to help me determine how much land I'll need to produce a given income from the farm in order to be financially sustainable. In less than an hour I was able to determine how much land I needed to be under cultivation, how many CSA members I could have, how much I could sell to restaurants, and how much revenue that could bring in. Stay tuned for that article, and see just how much you benefit using the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator and our CSA tool suite!