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017: Greg Garbos on Engineering Successful Farms

6/4/2015

11 Comments

 
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Greg Garbos brings his training and experience in conventional engineering to his work as a small farmer and with small farmers. He is the owner and cofounder of Four Season Tools, a greenhouse and horticulture supply company that also provides farm design consulting, as well as the owner and founder of City Bitty Farm, a grower of microgreens for Kansas City area restaurants. Greg and I dig into using intentional decision-making as a basis for developing a farm around sound principles.

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Greg mentioned Breaking Through Concrete, by Edwin Marty, Food Policy Manager for Austin Texas

Greg suggested hightunnels.org as a resource, and as an original resource that got him into the world of agriculture.

I’ve bought BCS two-wheeled tractors from a couple of different suppliers. I bought my last one from Earth Tools – like Greg said, this is the place to get them. I won’t buy another one from anybody else.

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Greg talked about the way that his alarm systems from La Crosse Alerts help put his mind at ease.

A trolley system has come up multiple times in the short history of the Farmer to Farmer Podcast. Four Season Tools has a good one available here: https://www.smallfarmtools.com/trolley-systems-info

Greg asked me to post a picture of the small pallet system we put in place at Rock Spring Farm. This was modified from a standard hand cart by a local welding shop, and the pallets were built locally by a small pallet manufacturer for less than $2.00 each.
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Followup on November 11, 2015: In response to comments below, Greg sent us a picture of the grass shears his team uses to harvest salad greens.
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11 Comments
Andrew link
11/9/2015 11:01:11 am

Really enjoyed this in-depth podcast! You and Greg provided some awesome information on many things farming. As a microgreens grower in Montreal, I really enjoyed his few points relating to his operation. One question: what was the Black and Decker Greens Harvester he was talking about?

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Chris Blanchard
11/9/2015 11:37:45 am

from Greg: "There are more expensive units out there. But we go through lots of cheap units. We buy these four at a time. We use something like this:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/BLACK-DECKER-4-in-3-6-Volt-Hand-Held-Shaft-Cordless-Compact-Grass-Shears-GSN30/203613922"

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Andrew
11/11/2015 06:16:00 pm

Thanks Chris. I appreciate it. Keep up the awesome work!

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Chris Blanchard
11/12/2015 09:44:24 am

Also, we just added a picture of these above. Andrew, Greg would be interested in learning more about your farm, if you want to use my contact page to give me your email address, I'll put the two of you in touch.

Reply
Kevin
11/19/2015 09:12:53 pm

Greg mentioned a growing media that he prefers. Blue... something? I was hoping we could we get more info on this product and even this part of his growing system. Does he use his soil for multiple plantings with added fertility or is it just single use, etc? Thanks for the great podcast! I listen to every episode, sometimes multiple times!

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Kathleen Stoltzfus link
12/14/2015 04:17:35 pm

Would Greg be willing to post a link to his You Tube videos?

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Sara
2/22/2016 11:36:27 pm

We love it all, Chris! Thanks for all funneling all this great information to us. I know this episode was from a while back, but I wondered a little more about the modified dolly for the mini pallets. Did you have little forks welded to it?

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Chris Blanchard
3/1/2016 05:00:18 pm

Sara, we did have forks welded to the dolly to slide under the mini pallets.

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John link
2/26/2016 06:28:09 pm

I had the pleasure of giving Greg a tour of our 25 acre greenhouse facility today. Being a large-scale grower of annual bedding plants, it was great to talk with someone with a different perspective, but very similar view of our industry. Our design philosophy is much the same in regards to efficiency and labor cost.

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Mike link
11/9/2016 11:22:30 am

I've been voraciously listening to your podcast for the last week. Thanks for your work. He mentions your time management presentation. Where can I find more about that?

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Chris Blanchard
11/15/2016 06:47:30 pm

This presentation isn't available as a recording online, but I will be presenting it for ACORN on January 17, 2017. You can register on their website at http://www.acornorganic.org/events/calendar.

Gland you are enjoying the podcast!

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