May 1, 2013

Truth be told, I don’t like recordkeeping any more than the next farmer.  You may think that is strange coming from someone who is known for advocating recordkeeping repeatedly in workshops and in a book on farm business management. No, I didn’t get struck by lightning or have a brain transplant. I just want to […]

Since I last wrote about edamame, soybeans that can be eaten as a fresh vegetable, interest in this crop has increased and there is now more information available. Here I focus on providing edamame for a long harvest period. For more basic details see the June 2007 Growing for Market, or my book, Sustainable Market

For the the life of our flower business, we’ve been hunkered down, pushing through, making do with little and solely working with what’s at hand. Limitation has always been the theme. The property we farm is not our own and is a small plot at that. We started with no money, little training and had

This is the second in a series looking more closely at the five areas of potential produce contamination identified by the FDA. The first principle of microbiological food safety is to keep the poop – and the potentially nasty microbes it carries – off of the food in the first place. That means keeping tools,

In the March issue of GFM, I talked about a spacing change in my tomato hoophouse, which allowed me to plant 60 percent more plants than the previous year. Yet I was able to increase yield by 100 percent over the previous year. Now, I’m going to report on the improvements that led to the

The first few years of any farm are chaotic. They’re filled with high-energy experimentation. Farmers are learning their land, trying out different tools and production methods, and planting everything under the sun to see what grows well and what sells. Tractors are bought, greenhouses and coolers are built, workdays are long, vacations short.  At some