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086: Brian Bates of Bear Creek Organic Farm on Starting Fast, Debt, and Selling to Grocery Stores

9/29/2016

7 Comments

 
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Brian Bates is a first-generation farmer at Bear Creek Organic Farm in Petoskey, Michigan. He and his wife, Anne Morningstar, started farming in 2014, and have rapidly grown their business to anticipated 2016 sales of $180,000.

With just an acre and a half of cultivated ground, Bear Creek makes most of its money from greenhouse and high tunnel crops, and Brian breaks this down for us. We get an in-depth look at the tools Brian uses to track wholesale and retail sales, and to track those back to the enterprise they’re a part of – something that gives him insights into where he’s earning most of his returns, which in turn drives his business decision-making.

Bear Creek sells half of his produce wholesale, mostly to grocery stores, and Brian shares how his work in the back end of his local natural foods store informed the ways he has structured his production and marketing efforts.
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We also explore how Brian and Anne financed the startup of their operation, and how they’ve used debt as a lever to both enable and drive the rapid growth of their operation.
​

The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Sponsors

Vermont Compost: Founded by organic crop growing professionals committed to meeting the need for high-quality composts and compost-based, living soil mixes for certified organic plant production.

Quotes from the Show

We were never going to have a CSA… we didn’t want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none.

If it didn’t have to do with garlic, greens, and honey, it didn’t get a loan.


The farm works for us, we don’t work for the farm… if something about the farm is not working for us then we have the power and authority to change that.


The debt has done a great job of making the business have to answer to a third party that’s not just us.


Less than fifteen percent of [last year’s gross income] came from our field production… I think the field’s an expensive place to operate.


What matters so much more than a perfect field of carrots is what your spreadsheets look like and what your margin is.


Following that money is the only reason that I know the greenhouse is as important to our farm as it is.


These [financial choices] are the kind of decisions that let me sleep at night – comfortably.


A produce buyer is buying from you, but each time they buy a product from you, it is very inconvenient for them. Because unless your product comes with a barcode in a standard measured unit the way they order things from California, then it’s inconvenient.


Everybody’s buying their salad greens at the store in a plastic container anyway. The best thing local food producers can do is make an equally well-designed and packaged product that we all know is going to taste better and be thousands of miles of fresher.


​If you can normalize the shopping experience, then your market gets a lot bigger.

Show Links

Brian is a big fan of the Fearless Farm Finances program.

The USDA Beginning Farmers Microloan provided an important part of Bear Creeks’ startup capital.

Bear Creek took advantage of the EQIP High Tunnel System Initiative in their startup years.

Fundraising through Kiva provided a microloan to Bear Creek.

Bear Creek bought their greenhouse structures through Jeff McCabe at Nifty Hoops.

Michigan’s Hoophouses for Health program also provided funding for high tunnel construction. The funding is repaid by providing food to disadvantaged families and schools.

Richard Wiswall’s book, The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook, was “transformational” for Brian.

Bear Creek invested in an e-commerce website by Shopify, which offers an iPad point-of-sale tracking app.

Bear Creek uses Wave, a free, web-based accounting program that facilitates credit card payments, for their invoicing.

GS1 barcodes  are an important part of Bear Creek’s packaging and marketing.

Brian says that if you’re thinking about going to a field day or a conference – go! Two conferences that Brian highlighted are the MOSES Organic Farming Conference and the Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference.
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085: Eric and Robbie McClam of City Roots on an Urban Father-Son Farming Partnership

9/22/2016

1 Comment

 
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Eric McClam and his dad, Robbie, own City Roots in Columbia, South Carolina. With eight acres of vegetables, mushrooms, u-pick berries, flowers, bees, agritourism, vermicomposting, and several high tunnels, City Roots is seven years into its operation and grosses about $650,000 annually.
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We dig deeply into their operation and the relationship between Eric and Robbie, including how their different personalities have influenced the growth of the operation and the directions it has gone, as well as how they structure their communications and their relationship. We also explore how City Roots has leveraged marketing partners to extend their reach, how they manage so much diversity and three distinct production parcels, and their experience with no-till vegetables, organic certification, and GAPs audits.

City Roots has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the 2012 Green America’s People and Planet Award for Best Green Business, 2010 International Downtown Association Pinnacle Award, the 2010 Columbia Choice Award, the 2010-2013 Free Times Best of Columbia – Best New Green Business and the 2010 Farm City Award – Richland County, and 2015 Green Business of the Year award from the Environmental Education Association of South Carolina. After spending a couple of hours with them, I know why!
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The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Sponsors

Vermont Compost: Founded by organic crop growing professionals committed to meeting the need for high-quality composts and compost-based, living soil mixes for certified organic plant production.
​

BCS America: BCS two-wheel tractors are versatile, maneuverable in tight spaces, lightweight for less compaction, and easy to maintain and repair on farm. Gear-driven and built to last for decades of dependable service on your farm or market garden.

Quotes from the Show

Having a diversified operation has really helped us grow but at times has spread us too thin. [Eric]

I’m less and less the farmer and more and more the accountant. [Eric]

If I underestimated anything it was the trouble that comes from weeds. [Robbie]

There’s two things on a farm that can do a lot of damage in a short time. One’s a tractor, and the other’s a
volunteer [Robbie]


​[Regarding no-till:] When it goes wrong, it goes wrong bad. [Eric]


Show Links

The McClam’s leveraged GrowFood Carolina’s food hub to access the upscale foodie market in Charleston, South Carolina.

Farm To Table Event Co.

Robbie and Eric used two Value Added Producer Grants to grow their business.

Eric really likes his Maschio Tarzan power harrow bed shaper.
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1 Comment

084: Lydia Ryall of Cropthorne Farm on Farming, Family, and Employees

9/15/2016

1 Comment

 
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Lydia Ryall raises fifteen acres of vegetables at Cropthorne Farm, located on a small farming island where the Frasier river meets the Pacific ocean, just twelve miles outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. $600,000 of produce is marketed through three farmers markets and a CSA, as well as through wholesale accounts and a farmstand on the property.

A third-generation farmer (and maybe more), Lydia farms on a fifty-acre property owned by her family. In addition to her operation, family members raise flowers, grains, and eggs in two additional businesses operating on the same piece of land. Lydia also hires family members as part of her operation. We discuss the nitty-gritty of how they’ve made this work, including their experience bringing in outside help to work on the details of their business agreements and how they can better work together.

Named the British Columbia and Yukon Outstanding Young Farmer for 2014, Lydia has operated her farm since 2009. Her depth of experience and business and horticultural acumen are apparent as we discuss the ways she has mitigated the heavy clay soils in her wet climate, the challenges and opportunities of the recent addition of migrant workers to her farm crew, the changes a new baby has brought to the farm and how she prepared to accommodate those changes, winter roots storage and ongoing harvest, the tools she uses to track harvest, packing, and sales, and more.

The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Sponsors

Vermont Compost: Founded by organic crop growing professionals committed to meeting the need for high-quality composts and compost-based, living soil mixes for certified organic plant production.

BCS America: BCS two-wheel tractors are versatile, maneuverable in tight spaces, light-weight for less compaction, and easy to maintain and repair on the farm. Gear-driven and built to last for decades of dependable service on your farm or market garden.


Quotes from the Show

I think [employees] are interested at the beginning. I think that for them to sustain coming out here is the challenge.

We’re a generation that we haven’t worked with our hands, we’ve been in front of computers for most of our life.

I was really hesitant about bringing people in from another country. We’re very much about the local economy and local food and things like that. We’d put job ads out, and nobody would apply for them.

As the manager, you have a really important role, but your mental health is important, too. It’s important to be able to step back and get away.

[Farming on family land is] a total blessing. It’s a blessing we have to work at.

We’re so focused in our business sometimes that we’re not looking at the bigger picture about where we’re going in five years. Do we even want to go there in five years? What are our personal goals? Is the farm meeting that? What about our spouses? Are they happy?
​

Being really aware of your emotions… and how one communicates, can go a really long way.

Show Links

Lydia is currently working her way through Crazy Horse and Custer.


Cropthorne Farm uses theselettuce harvest knives to harvest their leeks.
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083: Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Family Farm Takes Us to Potato School

9/8/2016

1 Comment

 
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Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Family Farm in Aroostook County, Maine, is not just a potato farmer; he’s a potato artist. Wood Prairie Farm provides certified organic seed potatoes and other products to customers around the country through their mail order catalog. Certified organic since 1982, Wood Prairie Family Farm has 40 acres in production, with ten or twelve of those acres in seed potatoes each year.

After an orientation to the history of Wood Prairie Farm and the potato culture of Aroostook County, we dig into the whys and the how’s of growing a great crop of from seed warming and green sprouting through weed control to harvest. We also discuss the ins and outs of producing Maine-certified potato seed. Jim is an observant and specific farmer and marketer, and really brings out the details of what goes into bumper yields and high quality spuds.

Named by the editors of the Utne Reader to the magazine’s 2011 list of 25 “People Who Are Changing the World,” Jim is also one of those organic farmers who spends a large part of his time serving the community. Jim is the president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, and has served for more than twenty years on the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association certification committee, along with about a dozen other roles that he has played in the organic farming movement.
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The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Sponsors

Vermont Compost: Founded by organic crop growing professionals committed to meeting the need for high-quality composts and compost-based, living soil mixes for certified organic plant production.

Our Listeners: You’ve asked for ways to support the show – we have options for monthly patrons, one-time donations, and using your purchases at Amazon.com to support the show.

Quotes from the Show

[The low population in Aroostook County] required us to do out of the box thinking as to how we could make a living growing organic crops.

Trying to sell potatoes in Aroostook County is every bit as easy as selling coal in Newcastle.

A lot of what we’ve tried to do is learn how the old-timers did things before they had things like insecticides.

Physiological aging can be looked upon as a measure of stress.  In a hotter summer, the tubers that we harvest in the fall are going to be physiologically older than they would have been in another year when the temperatures were cooler.

Calcium is the wonder mineral, and potatoes love calcium.  

If you give a good rhizosphere around the seed where the tubers are developing that’s all important in terms of quality and vigor.
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Organic farming is the best life possible, but it’s also probably about the most difficult life.

Show Links

Jim uses unit-tuber planting to make it easier to rogue diseased plants.

Wood Prairie Farm has instructions for green sprouting (also called “chitting”), including instructions for building the green sprouting trays. 

Wood Prairie also has a potato growing guide available online.

Jim mentioned the use of Organic Triggrr as a seed treatment to increase the tuber set.

Wood Prairie’s Juko Super Midi potato harvester has a sorting belt where workers can sort potatoes and rocks before the crop goes into the bin.  

Jim’s recommended resource on potatoes is The Complete Book of Potatoes by Walter Young.
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1 Comment

082: Paul Underhill of Terra Firma Farm on California Farming

9/1/2016

4 Comments

 
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Paul Underhill is a partner in Terra Firma Farm, where he manages crop production on 220 acres in the southern Sacramento Valley. Terra Firma Farm raises certified organic vegetables year-round, as well as fruit and nuts, which they sell through a 1200-member CSA in Sacramento, Davis, and San Francisco, as well as through retailers, wholesalers, and restaurant accounts.

Paul gives us a look into operating at scale, including the logistics of a thousand-member CSA. We also get a peek at the equipment he’s found useful at this scale, including a relatively inexpensive GPS system, multiple-bed equipment, and low-tech harvest tools.
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Terra Firma Farm has been around since the 1980s, and Paul tells us about the many changes to California’s food and agriculture scene, and the impact those have had on Terra Firma’s employment practices, equipment-acquisition opportunities, CSA program, and food safety practices. Paul also shares the story of how he became a partner at Terra Firma Farm, and how they make their partnership work.
The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Sponsors

Vermont Compost: Founded by organic crop growing professionals committed to meeting the need for high-quality composts and compost-based, living soil mixes for certified organic plant production.

BCS America: BCS two-wheel tractors are versatile, maneuverable in tight spaces, light-weight for less compaction, and easy to maintain and repair on farm. Gear-driven and built to last for decades of dependable service on your farm or market garden.

Quotes from the Show

If you get afternoon shade on the boxes, even in San Francisco, you can cook a lot of produce.

I think we still have 1,200 paid subscribers, but we’re only delivering 900 boxes per week.


It’s hard to avoid produce in California. You walk down the street, there’s a farmer’s market. You walk into a store, and there’s a giant display of beautiful produce. You go into a restaurant and everything’s local. Californians are super spoiled about produce.


People have really high standards here and it makes doing a CSA harder.


Just because you can grow something here doesn’t mean you should.


Farming in the winter here is more like farming in the summer [in Pennsylvania].


One of the reasons that we do is to try to do as much cover cropping as possible.


For as big as 150 acres sounds, the reality of our farm is that, because we farm all year ‘round, we do numerous successions on a not-huge scale.

Show Links

We discussed CSA structures and Trauger Groh’s book, Farms of Tomorrow.

​Terra Firma Farm uses Farmigo to manage their CSA.


Paul uses pallet-sized MacroBins extensively in the farm’s harvest operations.


Terra Firma Farm uses an inexpensive GPS system from Lefebure for bed layout .

One of Paul’s favorite tools is his Holland 1275  plastic mulch transplanter.
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