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Learning to farm vegetables for market requires balancing: you want to follow successful models and stick to a plan, but also be flexible as you respond to your unique conditions. There are wonderful books that share specific, well-defined systems of machinery, spacings, crops and their sequences, soil management, and marketing. Clear models from experienced farmers

We are probably the least qualified growers to discuss financial metrics. Over our 40-year career we have always been more interested in farming as a way of life than a business. Our financial goals for the farm have been very modest, earning just enough to cover our minimalist lifestyle and farm improvements.  Other than the

Last summer I joined four other farms in Oregon’s high desert to do field research on irrigation management in no/low-till vegetable production. The project lead, Katie Swanson of Sweet Union Farm in Klamath Falls, Oregon, invited farms to measure plant-available water differences over one growing season between beds with no- or low-till preparation and beds

Growing cut flowers in central New Jersey, we have a great climate, an excellent customer base, and fierce competition. New Jersey is second in cut flower farm sales after California. Not only are there dozens of farms nearby our Moonshot Farm in East Windsor focusing on cut flowers, but nearly every vegetable farm and farm

Paths have always been a conundrum for me as a vegetable grower. They make up almost one of our three cultivated veggie acres, and we’ve spent hundreds of hours over the years scraping them of weeds. Yet, they produce nothing. For most of my 12 years at Adamah, an educational and organic production farm in

One of the tools that has helped me keep my farms going for the past 15 years is a budget coupled with well-maintained books. The budget is a planning tool which helps me make good decisions through the year, and the books are a record keeping tool that help me understand the budget. As a

Savanna Institute offers guidance, NRCS EQIP funding   “How do I farm better and do less?” asks a yellow sticky note above my desk; it has been here for a few years now. There are probably a variety of ways to answer this. One solution I’m trying is the incorporation of more perennial species, including

Farmers — some burnt by bad experiences with venture-capital-owned sales platforms — have been seeking better software to manage sales and distribution of their products. Enter Farm Generations Cooperative and GrownBy, the first farmer-owned and designed online marketplace. Built to address the needs of both consumers and producers, GrownBy democratically places decision-making power and financial