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157: David Greenberg of Abundant Acres Farm on Investing in a Deep-Compost System, Radical Delegation, and Cooperative Direct Marketing

2/8/2018

1 Comment

 
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David Greenberg of Abundant Acres Farm raises about five acres of vegetables with his wife, Jen, in rural Nova Scotia, about an hour from Halifax. With four full-time employees in addition to David and Jen, Abundant Acres focuses on high-value crops, while also growing a bit of everything for their diversified market streams.

David takes a deep dive into the cooperative direct-to-consumer marketing arrangement Abundant Acres has with a few select food producers in Halifax, including how they use that storefront to host the free-choice CSA. And David digs into how he and Jen manage inventory and supply for the off-farm free-choice CSA, including everything from record-keeping to how that informs their planting choices.

Abundant Acres uses several different production systems, including tarped, deep-compost fields for high-value crop production, tractor-based row crop and plasticulture vegetables in rotation, mobile caterpillar tunnels, and heated greenhouse space. We take an especially in-depth look at the investment and returns on the deep-compost system, discuss the engineering behind the mobile caterpillar tunnels, and get some insights into the lessons-learned in the plasticulture system.


According to David, the farm succeeds in large part because of its reliance on radical delegation to employees. We discuss how David and Jen set expectations, guide their workers, and give and get feedback to improve performance so that they can rely on employees to take leadership and responsibility for the production on the farm.

Sponsors

Local Food Marketplace: Providing an integrated, scalable solution for farms and food hubs to process customer orders – including online ordering, harvesting, packing, delivery, invoicing and payment processing. Manage multiple product and price lists with ease.  Maximize your sales by selling multiple product pack sizes out of the same inventory.  Local Food Marketplace will help you reach more customers and save time in fulfilling your customer’s orders.

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Vermont Compost Company: 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

[With the deep compost system] our yields expanded, doubled our yield, everything just got easy and awesome.

Our crew is busy all the time harvesting and planting and marketing, and as every vegetable farmer knows there's a time where you have to get weeding done. If you can't get it done on time it's not even that hourly labor cost, it just doesn't get done.

I just kind of buzz around helping people and discussing things, and hoping to catch inexperienced mistakes they make before it ends up costing us.


I really believe in trusting young people and giving them a chance to soar. You know, that's like for me what farming is all about. It's all about the fabric of society. It's about believing in people. It's about creating space where people can feel healthy and strong and that's what energizes us.

Show Links

David discussed the Hanley style hoop house that they use at Abundant Acres, and how they have modified it for New Brunswisck

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Hoops for the Hanley-style hoop house are available from Multi Shelter Solutions on Ontario.

Transcript

The transcript for this episode is brought to you by Earth Tools, offering the most complete selection of walk-behind farming equipment and high-quality garden tools in North America. And by Osborne Quality Seeds, a dedicated partner for growers.  Visit osborneseed.com for high quality seed, industry-leading customer service, and fast order fulfillment. Additional funding for transcripts provided by North Central SARE, providing grants and education to advance innovations in Sustainable Agriculture.
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1 Comment
Eric Buteyn
2/27/2018 06:58:20 am

I’m very impressed by David’s operation for the most part, but his comment that the sustainability of using peat is debatable?!? I think we need to be more creative.

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