By Jim Sincock
So the local food or farming bug has got you, and you want to start your own farm! Before you dive right in, there are many things to consider and this article will help you ponder each point.
I will go over six points which I feel are critical to consider before starting a farm and CSA, no matter how small or large. It is important to know your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your business partner.
- A passion for growing food - farms are definitely a labor of love.
- Physical ability - are you ready for the hard work and long hours?
- Like-minded partners - do you have a like-minded partner to help with the farm?
- Small is beautiful - start small and build on your successes.
- Additional income - will you still need another job to pay the bills?
- Learning & growing - knowledge and growth are the key.
A Passion for Growing Food
For me, this was definitely my first consideration when I was thinking of becoming a farmer. Do I have a passion for growing food? And perhaps even more, do you have a passion for growing food so you can help feed others?
For me, I knew I had a passion for growing food. I had been gardening for years and loved everything about it. Working with the Earth was fulfilling, as was planting seeds, nurturing them, and seeing all my hard work come together as the plants grew and were harvested. Even when seeds didn't germinate, or grow as well as expected, I got something out of that as well. What better way to learn, than to learn from your mistake? Whenever something didn't grow as well as expected, I was scouring my books or the web for information on what may have went wrong.
Perhaps you already love gardening and growing your own food, but what about growing for others? This definitely adds a new dimension since you will be moving from a hobby to a business. It is no longer just about you or your family being happy with the food you are growing, now you have customers to keep happy. Why do you want to grow food for others? Perhaps you want to help create a stronger and more local food supply. Perhaps you love growing so much that you want to share the beautiful and healthy produce that you grow. Maybe it is a combination of both of those things. Hopefully you don't think farming is a get rich quick scheme! (It's not!)
In dealing with customers, I feel that two things are of equal importance: Excellent customer service, and a high quality product.
Customer Service
I come from a customer service background and feel that your level of customer service can make or break your business. Someone can have the best product in the world, but if they aren't friendly with their customers, they won't keep their customers. Or at least not keep the good ones!
Be friendly - Now I'm not saying you need to be (or try to be) a smooth talking sales type, or be overly talkative if that is not who you naturally are. Just be yourself, and be sincere and friendly with your customers. I'm generally a quiet person, but I'm always friendly, sincere, and am just myself with customers, and they appreciate that.
Listen - Listen to what your customers have to say, they often have great info to share which can help you improve your business. The first year of our CSA many members volunteered their thoughts on why they left the CSA they had been with. This info was like gold! As they shared this info I would ask questions to help understand what worked for them, and what didn't. If they were being negative about the CSA they left, I always tried to turn it around to make the conversation more positive, and therefore making them feel like we were hearing them and taking care of them.
Some CSA members or other customers might not say much, so I usually try to strike up a casual conversation to learn more from them. One of our members was very quiet, and I couldn't really tell if she was happy with her CSA shares or not. So on one pick-up day I checked in with her, asking if she felt she was getting enough of everything, or too much of some items. She actually seemed happy I asked, and let me know that she felt the quantities were good, and was glad we provided recipe ideas so she didn't get bored making certain items the same way. Then she had some questions about a tomato plant she was growing on her deck, so I shared ideas with her on that, and even let her take some llama manure with her to fertilize it. She left with a big smile, and thanked me, and then I knew she was a happy customer!
Be Honest & Sincere - That is a simple one! Just be honest & sincere with your customers, that will impress them. Some customers may be curious about how you grow things, or your background—always be straight with them. And if they ask a question that you don't have an answer to, say you don't know, don't make something up! I've had customers ask questions that I didn't have an immediate answer for, but I always found the answer and shared it with them the next time I saw them.
It is all about building relationships, and hopefully lasting relationships with your CSA members and customers. Other farms or ranches I personally buy from are operated by people I like and trust, and they are like friends to me and I will always be their customer!
A Quality Product
No matter how nice you are, you still need to provide your members and customers with a quality product. First this starts by using high quality seeds and seedlings, preferably organic, in healthy and nutrient rich soil. Part of growing a quality product can also be by choosing more unique varieties of plants. It doesn't hurt to take a walk around a local farmers market to see what everyone else has. If everyone is selling pretty much the same thing with similar varieties, perhaps you'll want to be a little different. Creating your own unique salad mixes are one thing you can do. Choosing more interesting heirloom varieties is another way to stand out from the crowd.
The other part of a quality product is making sure what you offer is fresh and vibrant looking. Fresh and vibrant looking makes for fresh and vibrant tasting! With our CSA some items can be harvested the day before the CSA pick-up, and refrigerated. Those items are usually things like squash, cucumbers, peppers, sometimes beans or peas as well. For leafy greens we had time to always harvest them the morning of the pick-up.
Cleanliness - We clean our produce on two levels, for the CSA members, and for other customers. The only real difference comes with the salad mix. The salad mix for CSA members is harvested into cold water and is therefore slightly washed. (If the lettuce is overly dirty, we will wash it better.) Our CSA members are told they will need to wash their salad and other items, even if it looks clean. Salad mix for the farm stand, and definitely for restaurants, is double or triple washed in a 5 gallon salad spinner. Since those customers are used to getting triple washed salad mix, we do that because they expect it. In general the more you wash your salad mix, the more it can become bruised, so we prefer to be gentle with it when we do have to wash it. Root crops are always sprayed down to get the bulk of the dirt off. Use your judgement on other crops. Sometimes a hard rain can splash mud on produce which you may want to rinse off. We never wash our basil because we have found that once it has been wet, it goes bad a lot faster.
Physical Ability
If you are used to gardening, you know that it can be hard work at times. Now that you want to do a farm, make sure you are up for the hard work that is pretty much non-stop. Even an eighth of an acre can be a lot of work. You have the initial soil preparation, laying out the rows, and seeding and planting. Then you need to stay on top of the weeds which grow much faster than the actual produce! And finally you will be harvesting on a regular basis.
There is obviously a lot of manual labor involved, and a lot of crouching and getting back up again. Starting off with bad knees or a bad back probably isn't the best idea if you want to be a farmer. Your knees and back and muscles will surely be sore enough if you start out in good shape! So starting off in good general shape, or the willingness to get in shape is key. (And farming will get you in shape!)
Aside from the ability to work, you need to also have the willingness to work. Sometimes the work can get boring, tedious, painful, frustrating or any mix of the above. If (or when) that happens you need to keep at it, you have veggies and herbs that need your loving care, and CSA members or customers waiting for your great produce. I've had my moments when I was out picking in pouring rain, or a co-worker was driving me nuts, but I was usually able to improve my attitude because I really loved the work I was doing, and got great fulfillment out of it. Sometimes that can be hard to remember, but once you do, it is like attaining "enlightenment".
Like-minded Partners
Starting even a small farm can be an awful lot of work for just one person. Having a like minded partner to share all that is involved with starting a farm and CSA can be very helpful. Whether starting a farm with a spouse or close friend, it is important that it is mutually supportive partnership. Both partners should have an equal amount of passion and desire to make the farm a success. Often each partner may have specific skills that the other does not have, and this can help create a successful business.
While you may be like minded and have the same goals for the farm, it is critical to be open and accepting of each other's ideas and input. It may seem obvious, but going into business with a spouse or friend often requires a bit more diligence in keeping things running smoothly. Listen, be supportive, work together and you can grow not only food, but your relationship. Have fun with it!
Small is Beautiful
One thing I learned in my permaculture training was to start small and build on your successes. When Tracy & I started HeartEye Village CSA we basically jumped from around a 400 s.f. personal garden, to a 4000 s.f. micro-farm and CSA with around 16 members. While we knew we were good at gardening, this was a big jump and I couldn't have imagined starting much bigger than we did. This was the perfect size to allow us to prove that we could grow at a production level, and to prove that we could have happy CSA members. And we did prove it... not only to ourselves, but to our CSA members.
While 4000 s.f. is a fairly small growing space, we use biointensive planting methods which include tighter plant spacing, intercropping, and succession planting, all of which allow you to grow more in less space. Our first year we averaged around one pound of produce per square foot, had happy CSA members, and sold some at our farm stand and to restaurants and a food co-op.
In theory, with biointensive methods, as you become more skilled and continue to improve your soil, you can grow even more in the same space than you did when you were a beginner. Depending on the financial needs and desires of your farm, you may need to increase the amount of land you are growing on in order to increase sales. Using the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator is a great way to help you figure out details such as: The amount of land required to grow X amount of food; How many CSA members you can feed; How much can be sold through other outlets (farm stand, farmers market, restaurants, etc.).
Start small and build on your successes!
Additional Income
Until you find that sweet spot of what you need to do to live off your farm income, how do you plan to pay the bills? It is a tricky thing to juggle—the farm needs a lot of attention, yet you still have to make a living. Many of the smaller farmers I've met are either retired, have a day job (or night job, or freelance job), or have a spouse who has the day job. Even if you were able to make enough on the farm to pay the farm's bills and your living wages, you'll still want to think about off-season work.
Maybe you have a part-time job, or you are self-employed in some respect—a computer person, a carpenter, jewelry maker or other crafts person—another source of income is probably a reality for most small farms, at least during the start-up years.
Learning & Growing
So you've read some books and started a farm, the education doesn't stop there! The learning process is never ending, and you will want to keep educating yourself so that you improve how you grow, how your run your business, and how you help others learn to farm as well. If you are like me, your book shelf will grow to become the ultimate library on farming and growing plants. You may even spend far more time on the computer than you want by reading articles on the web, or participating in forums where you can ask questions and learn from others. Maybe you'll take classes or workshops to learn more and improve your skills. (Most university extension offices can provide a list of farm related workshops, many of which can be free of charge.
Talk with other farmers! Find farmers who seem like minded in what they are doing, and see if you can set up a time to meet with them, and ask them questions. Some may not have the time, some may not have the interest, but when you do find the ones with the time and interest you will learn a lot! Before we started our farm we met with three different farmers. Each were organic, and each at different sizes and skill levels.
One farmer had year round greenhouses as well as many acres of crops. Her mother & father had started the farm, and now she was the main farmer. She was very helpful and gave us the main labor saving tip of using weed barrier. She also gave us good insight into greenhouses and growing year round.
Another farmer was newer to farming but definitely knew what he was doing. He gave us plenty of info on the crops he grew, how me made a small hoop house for starting plants, his composting set up, and his drip irrigation system.
The last woman we talked with was an urban farmer, "farming" various yards and providing produce to her CSA and some local restaurants. She had been farming for years, and previously had some acreage, but later decided to do a "multi-yard farm". While she did give us a tour of the various yards around Denver that she grew in, most of the time was spent in her living room where she answered every question we had, and gave us answers to questions we didn't even know to ask! Everything from soil amendments, to plant types, to nuts & bolts business figures, she shared it all. She was an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience, and she was very happy to see our enthusiasm in starting our own farm.
The knowledge and experience shared by these three fairly different farmers was invaluable for us in starting our small farm. You can learn a lot from books, but talking with other farmers will help even more.
Keep learning, keep growing, and share the knowledge with other new farmers!