How can I maximize my potential for success as a new farmer?

Hey fellow forest Gardeners 👋

I'd love to receive any critical and/or validating feedback, as well as advice about this question:

How can I maximize my near-term and long-term likelihood of success in forest garden farming?

Some context about where I am:

I quit my full time job in October to move into full-time farming. Don't worry though, I have a part-time contract desk job that covers my bills.

I have been learning for a few years through online resources and books, and have a basic to average understanding of many principles and practices of regenerative agriculture and forest gardening including: soil biology, light management, water management, nitrogen fixation, nutrient recycling, mulching, competition management and chop & drop, wind breaks and covers, diversity for soil health and ecosystem balance (pest management)

I have a few years of hands on experience including: interning at a conventional (tillage and fertilizer) farm, healing soil life in various small plots, growing minimal (partly due to too much shade) vegetables in my raised containers without inputs (eg fertilizers or pesticides), and growing indoor decoratives using grow lights and compost tea instead of chop and drop (to minimize bugs indoors)

I am connected with a couple of local regenerative farmers, have connected with the local extensions office, and have vended at a local farmers' market (only two times).

My partner and I are looking for land, and will likely buy in the next few months. When we do, I will start my farm.

And my current intentions for the near-term future:

Financial Goal/Milestone for 2024: Gross $2,500 USD (for the entire year) from selling annual veggies and perennial transplants (dogwood, japanese maple, a local maple, crepe myrtle, a local oak, cherry, pawpaw, black walnut... all of which I'm growing currently) to locals at farmer's market and directly to neighbors (and possibly restaurants).

Learning item 1: Continue exposing myself to a variety perspectives, examples, and resources in ag, market gardening, forest gardening, and regenerative

Learning item 2: Digest feedback from, and develop supportive relationships with, peers and mentors who are on a similar path

Practice item 1: Finish creating a mini grow area in my rental home's basement. Continue to practice and become more adept at germinating, growing, and harvesting veggies amidst diverse living mulch.

Practice item 2: Add glass+cheesecloth cloches (lots of success with long-lasting cheesecloth in past years) to new grow area under deciduous trees that lost leaves (winter). Practice growing cold-hardy veggies amidst diverse living mulch under that outdoor cover.

Plan item 1: Continue iterating on plan for first in-ground permanent forest garden. The TL;DR is to make hügelkultur beds, irrigation trenches, and swales along a woodchip driveway. I would transplant most of my ~200 grow bags into these beds. They'd be very mixed, and I intend to manage them similar to syntropic agroforestry (chop and drop & thinning competition). I would like to share more about this some time and get some feedback!

Plan item 2: Plan how to expand beds for larger harvests in 2025+. My current thought is to start by looking for erosion and start creating swales to slow down water wherever I find erosion. Then I can build out more collection and runoff trenches out from (and adjoining) the swales, and continue building beds along those water collection areas. If I get started early enough, I would just use covercrops and mulch from thinned trees, instead of importing compost.

Plan item 3: Refill grow containers with more decorative and edible trees. Many of my decorative seeds are currently undergoing cold stratification.

Key problems anticipated:

Bug/pest pressure during first couple years until environmental stability is reached. Enough people have succeeded and shown that diversity can be a successful (perhaps the most successful) pest management practice, and that's what I am using and intend to continue using as well. One exception: I intend to use exclusion for larger herbivores (such as deer), because their local predators (mountain lions) are not something I want roaming around to balance out their numbers. I intend to intentionally welcome and create habitats for large predator birds (eg hawks/falcons/owls/eagles) so they can balance the rodent herbivores.

Harvesting and selling a very wide diversity of veggies--My hope is to mostly sell "mixed bags" (or boxes) of produce directly to families, sold the same day (and in the same box) they are harvested in. This would allow me to offer significantly lower prices (less harvest passes and no sorting or cold storage, initially) while still having high enough margins to support myself. Some produce (like squash/melons/heads of greens) are easier to sell (and harvest/move) individually. And eventually, if I want to sell to restaurants, I'll need to figure out how to harvest to order too.

Thank you for reading! I would love to hear any thoughts or feedback anyone has. I'd also like to expand more on a few specific areas in the future, but this is a lot already!

First off congrats on your new adventure. I don’t have any experience selling veggies I’ve grown but I would think making it a forest aka some of this here and there and yonder would add a lot of time harvesting. Which if only for yourself no big deal if you miss a few produce. But if goal is for income it would seem that grouping each veg together would be better then adding what companion you could with it. Rotate the following years.

I do have a lot experience selling landscape plants as that’s what my father did. Flowers were easy to make money with. Also offering to plant them will add people to your clientele. Lots of people like that sort of thing and are either physically unable or just don’t know how with no care to learn.  Fast growing bushes and flowering vines etc gives a pretty quick turnaround. Buy small or from cuttings and sell later in season as a good size plant.

FYI 20 years ago we charged 40% to plant.

Interesting project!

When I saw the title of your thread, I immediately thought "have an off-farm source of income." But you have that covered. It's pretty tough to start from scratch and make a living off the land, especially if the land is not yet paid for.

It's always tough to know if you should spend your time on direct retailing or become a wholesale supplier and spend your time on the land.

Luck!

"...potential for success as new farmer???

Number one? Spend a lot of time talking with any local farmers there are left in your area. Ask them what they have done to/about/with:  soil, crops they sell, Co. Ag. agent, local weather conditions, who is/and where are best equipment suppliers, who has and sells the best animals in the area, what's the situation with the local town/township govt? Ask who is the area's best go to guy for advice? Ask what's the history of your farm, and how was it treated? And so on. ~~~And you might go to the local Historical Society and ask what they know about what has worked in the past in your area.

Number two? (Which is actually maybe number one) Spend some time sitting on the land and get a feel for it, before you start ripping into things. -And you might ask the Fairies and Nature Spirits what they would like to happen. And then ask them for help in what you would like to do.

Farming isn't so much about what we think should happen. A lot of it is learning what has and will happen. The more info. you can get about how a place has functioned and what has been done, the better off you will be. ~That is one of the reasons why generational farms have an advantage over new folk's farms. Accumulated knowledge. The faster you can get it, the better off you may be.

Joe Hallmark wrote:First off congrats on your new adventure. I don’t have any experience selling veggies I’ve grown but I would think making it a forest aka some of this here and there and yonder would add a lot of time harvesting...

Thank you, Joe! I am so excited, yet so nervous at the same time. This path is so uncharted, especially outside of the tropics.

Point well taken about harvesting, thank you. That is one of my concerns as well, but your emphasis helped bumped this up on my list. The current thought I have for addressing this problem is to harvest mixed ripe veggies from a given section into a single box, and sell that entire box to a customer. I'd have a hand-pushed cart to load the boxes onto, and would sell the boxes the same day, at least initially, to eliminate the need to sort and store in cold storage.

My hope is that by harvesting all veggies in one pass into mixed boxes, and selling them same day, I could cut costs substantially, and entice customers to my odd/unconventional "mixed boxes" with their lower price and highly organic, pesticide-free contents (in part possible due to the mixed garden style). I hope that the mixed contents, lower prices, and organic contents would be highly attractive to enough families and health-minded individuals to get the ball rolling, and word of mouth and adjustments could help me expand my customer base.

However I have zero experience or success selling mixed boxes, and no one I've seen has done this. It's just an idea I have to make harvesting from mixed patches economically viable. Otherwise, if that won't work, I think you're right. I think I will have to grow veggies in largely uniform patches (likely with diversity coming from cover crops and living mulch) to make harvesting efficient enough.

Joe Hallmark wrote:I do have a lot experience selling landscape plants as that’s what my father did...

Nice!! Thank you for elaborating on this! I'm going to add bushes and flowers to my decorative lists as well. I have just been focusing on trees, and I don't know why. I think adding these to my list could greatly help my potential for success. Thank you for the suggestion! Also I like your idea about offering to transplant for the customers. Inspiring and thought provoking, thank you!!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Interesting project!

When I saw the title of your thread, I immediately thought "have an off-farm source of income." But you have that covered. It's pretty tough to start from scratch and make a living off the land, especially if the land is not yet paid for.

It's always tough to know if you should spend your time on direct retailing or become a wholesale supplier and spend your time on the land.

Luck!

Hey Douglas, thanks for touching base on this and providing some perspectives to think about.

I agree about how tough some of this stuff is! Though I'm really hoping to be able to move off of the computer (desk job) and into full time ag, I think there's a significant likelihood I will take years, if I even eventually succeed at all (it's my understanding that many farmers don't succeed).

This is quite a risk, and so I need to continue hedging my bets with back-up options. However I do believe it is possible to succeed! And I do believe that with continued input and collaboration, I will increase the degree and likelihood of my successes and my ability to help others succeed in leaving the corporate ladder if that's what they want.

Thank you for this input!

As a child, my Father always said the following:  “Never put all your eggs in one basket”, i.e. do more than one thing or focus, and have a diversity in your skill set, and “Always have a backup plan in case the first one fails.”  But to balance that, we also have to look at not having so much diversity we get overloaded and overwhelmed with the work load leading to burn out.  My Dad lived during the depression and his father died when he was eight years old, leaving the family penniless.  He worked at 4 jobs part time and fed his mom and siblings.  Even later in life he had a great job for 40 years but always had a side business, I guess due to his work ethic but also a lot of insecurity from having lived during trying times of poverty.  

Find what people really want a lot of and put your main thrust at that.  Keep good records season to season and yearly, of weather temps, precipitation and what the crops are doing, any problems, etc.  Records of what you are selling and the market area and how it does is necessary to help you with your future planning.  Having a great, friendly personality will pull people into your loop and make them loyal customers.  Emphasize quality and giving little extras to good customers and you will keep them for life.  Start a little slow until you find what your niche markets are and talk to people about what they want.  It may be something no one else is growing, but you could.  Always be open to new suggestions and ideas.  Figure out how much time expense is involved for the dollar amounts you earn from a given crop and see what is most efficient and don’t waste time on things that are too labor intensive and don’t generate much income.

If you have a lot of greens for instance, and don’t sell them, what are you going to do with them?   Have livestock that can eat it?  Freeze or preserve it all?  Or compost it?  Expensive compost.  Feel your way carefully.  Sounds like you already are doing a lot of diversity and this is a good thing,  Let people know what you are about to do and get your customer base lined up.  Keep in touch with these people to let them know you care about them and will have everything in place to help them with their consumer needs as soon as you can.  They will appreciate you for that.  

Observe your land and what grows naturally there.  If wild grapevines are growing up in the trees, cut some of those trees and plant domestic grape vines, it is a good habitat for them.  If moss and fern grow there is a spring, usually, or a wet area, and only elderberries or water plants like wet feet.  

I wish you every success and joy in your endeavors.  

Hi Jim! Thank you for sharing your advice and perspectives. Both are quite well taken, however I do have a concern with both that I'd like to discuss if you're open to it.

Jim Fry wrote:Number one? Spend a lot of time talking with any local farmers there are left in your area. Ask them what they have done to/about/with:  soil, crops they sell, Co. Ag. agent, local weather conditions...

I think there's a lot more of this I can do. Your post (and a couple from someone else in a recent thread) has reminded me I want to get more involved with the local ag community. I connected with the extensions office a while back, but would like to get further involved with them.

I would also like to continue learning from local farmers, however I put a big asterisk by this. I have done this, and there's more learning I can do from local farmers. However the reason I put an asterisk by this I that almost all the farmers I have heard of and met around me are using conventional tillage and fertilizer practices. The rare few who aren't appear to be using no-till methods that still leave very clean beds that are what I call "factory beds." They substitute inorganic fertilizer and pest control for organic fertilizer and pest control, and they stopped tilling (huge win!!), but the principles and methods they are using are still very similar to conventional ag--the field is looked at like a factory to place transplants or seeds into, harvest, and continue turning those beds with more and more cash crops.

According to my understanding, forest gardens are quite different. The field is looked at as a complete ecosystem, and I am having difficulty finding locals who look at their farms this way.

This first point is well taken, and has motivated me to connect back with the extensions office sooner. However I am reminded that there are very few people farming in a relatable manner who live locally. I think I need to find more individuals online to relate with given how rare forest-gardens are.

Jim Fry wrote:Number two? (Which is actually maybe number one) Spend some time sitting on the land and get a feel for it, before you start ripping into things ... Farming isn't so much about what we think should happen. A lot of it is learning what has and will happen.

Awesome!! 🎉🥳😎 I am incredibly aligned with this, Jim.

In my opinion, a critical difference that distinguishes forest gardening from traditional farming is the lens of management. I really like how one Brazilian syntropic farmer I watched put it--he sees himself as similar to an ant--not above or outside the ecosystem, but a member of it. He prunes, chop and drops, and minimally manages the ecosystem. But his goal (and the clear effect of his work) it to accelerate the ecosystem through succession and rapidly accelerate fertility. I have seen this same principle validated in forest management too. Minimally managed areas appear to far-outgrow and regenerate far faster than purely wild, unmanaged areas.

With that context, I am in very close alignment with what you've shared. I do want to observe the land and its processes, and make minimal changes to help it, rather than cram it into my image. That is part of what makes this planning and preparing so difficult--I don't know what I'm going to get when we finally buy our property, and it's going to take me years to learn its intricacies and gently guide it through succession and fertility.

That said, I've got months before we have our property, and I think there are things I can do and plan so I can hit the ground running, and ideally hit my goal of $2,500 USD in 2024. But as your post emphasizes and I deeply agree with, I don't want to plan the whole thing out, as "re-creating" the land into something it isn't will not just hurt the land, it will hurt my potential for success.

Regardless of the land we buy, I am quite confident we'll put in a driveway, and I have been advocating for a woodchip driveway with my partner. The driveway will need drainage to prevent erosion. I'm thinking the combination of decaying woodchips and captured water along the driveway would be a perfect place to start my first garden as I observe and learn about the rest of the land.

.................................

Thank you for the support and feedback thus far 🙇‍♂️

Other than planning, getting feedback about my plans, and practicing, I think the best thing I can do to prepare is to continue learning from other forest gardeners and regenerative farmers. I am watching videos, reading books, and reading through posts, and will keep an eye out from other forest gardeners sharing in these threads. I'd also appreciate any other perspectives/advice/feedback anyone has to share!

Not knowing anything about your past life experiences. I would suggest taking some business/accounting courses if you have not done so.

Most of the family/small businesses that I know of that have failed was due to a lack of common accounting practices.

Management is another common business failure.

Hiring an accountant to handle the finances is another option though I am a hands-on type of person who wants control of how I handle my affairs.

Sounds like you have a great start, and the suggestions above look good to me. Some keys I have garnered from research and experience are:

Sell value added products directly to the consumer whenever possible.

Get a livestock guardian dog or two, within a tall sturdy fence, and they will fill the niche of the predators you would like to keep at a distance. They will protect their territory, livestock, and the trees and gardens therein. I have found Pyrenees-Akbash to be an ideal cross. They have 10,000yrs of permaculture bred into them, and are better at it than I am!

Hi Faye 👋 I read this yesterday after I replied to others' posts, but wanted to wait until I had time to respond more in depth.

These are some fantastic pointers, and I appreciate the examples you've given as well. I'm going to quote a few of the points that seemed most critical for me to digest and learn from, so that I (and any others) who look back through this thread can find them more easily.

Faye Streiff wrote:As a child, my Father always said the following:  “Never put all your eggs in one basket”, i.e. do more than one thing or focus, and have a diversity in your skill set, and “Always have a backup plan in case the first one fails.”  But to balance that, we also have to look at not having so much diversity we get overloaded and overwhelmed with the work load leading to burn out.

My dad often said something very similar! ... Although I haven't so explicitly considered the other extreme you contrasted this with--diversifying and spreading oneself so thin that one fails due to overload. I have much respect for the balance you're depicting. It's got me thinking about something new:

Originally I was thinking of making my garden homogenously diverse--all beds would have a very wide diversity of trees, cover crops, and cash crops.

With the point you've made here, I'm thinking it might be good to hedge my farming bets by doing something a little closer to conventional farming and standard alley-cropping vegetable agroforestry. I could select a minority of the beds to just have a single cash crops (eg multiple varieties of winter squash), and have the rest of the diversity be there for ecosystem balance--trees, groundcover, bushes, etc. Managing such a wide diversity is somewhat challenging, and I don't have the experience yet to know how it works at a larger scale.

Faye Streiff wrote:Find what people really want a lot of and put your main thrust at that.  Keep good records season to season and yearly, of weather temps, precipitation and what the crops are doing, any problems, etc.  Records of what you are selling and the market area and how it does is necessary to help you with your future planning.  Having a great, friendly personality will pull people into your loop and make them loyal customers.  Emphasize quality and giving little extras to good customers and you will keep them for life.  Start a little slow until you find what your niche markets are and talk to people about what they want.  It may be something no one else is growing, but you could.  Always be open to new suggestions and ideas.  Figure out how much time expense is involved for the dollar amounts you earn from a given crop and see what is most efficient and don’t waste time on things that are too labor intensive and don’t generate much income.

💯

I want to like put this somewhere I will won't forget for when I start interacting with more customers. There are so many relevant and seemingly wise tips and perspectives here. Thank you so much.

I'm going to highlight one thing that seems perhaps most critical to me given what I see as my weaknesses--having a great, friendly personality. I can be quite socially anxious, awkward, and avoidant. I can also be very welcoming, inclusive, and friendly. A lot of it comes down to my current perspectives and bodily dis/comfort. I think affirming and aligning on the importance of building quality relationships before I interact with customers or really anyone would help me tremendously. In addition to how important this facet is, I think it is also a facet I am inconsistent on and have some weaknesses with. Very pertinent for me personally!

Faye Streiff wrote:Let people know what you are about to do and get your customer base lined up. Keep in touch with these people to let them know you care about them and will have everything in place to help them with their consumer needs as soon as you can.  They will appreciate you for that.

Another point well taken. However I do have a concern with this one.

I've been waiting to connect with customers, because I don't want to lose their interest or trust. I still don't have enough confidence that I will be able to produce enough veggies to support some families next year. There's lots of factors that can result in me not being able to sell anything, but I'm especially worried about pest pressure in the first year or so.

I am approaching this from a different lens, and I have already found a few people that seem interested in buying the type of produce I'll be growing, including (yesterday) a larger nutrition program in my local county. However I'm nervous about communicating that they may be able to buy from me next year; I don't want to let them down.

My current thought is to start getting more involved in this pre-communication when I have enough confidence that I'll have some produce to sell them in the next few months (eg around Spring/Summer 2024).

I'm curious if you think it'd be better to get involved with them sooner?

Faye Streiff wrote:Observe your land and what grows naturally there.  If wild grapevines are growing up in the trees, cut some of those trees and plant domestic grape vines, it is a good habitat for them.  If moss and fern grow there is a spring, usually, or a wet area, and only elderberries or water plants like wet feet.

💯

Agreed. This will be very relevant as I look to expand my garden area in preparation for 2025+.

Thank you for sharing, for your perspective and feedback! 🙇‍♂️

Anne Miller wrote:Not knowing anything about your past life experiences. I would suggest taking some business/accounting courses if you have not done so.

Most of the family/small businesses that I know of that have failed was due to a lack of common accounting practices.

Management is another common business failure.

Hiring an accountant to handle the finances is another option though I am a hands-on type of person who wants control of how I handle my affairs.

Hi again Anne, thank you for sharing 🙂

I'm a bit of a data nerd, lots of experience with numbers. However I have minimal experience in business accounting. I did do a basic accounting course in college, but after hearing your perspective, I think it'd be worth it to take another refresher or course. I'm thinking of perhaps taking a free Coursera class or one of MIT's free Opencourseware classes.

I relate with wanting to do this hands-on. There's certain things I prefer professionals do--like fix my car or build the foundation of our (yet to be built) house. However accounting and marketing for my farm are two things I'm inexperienced at that I'd like to become adept at myself... Maybe taking courses and receiving mentorship and pointers from professionals, but not often hiring professionals to do it for me.

A follow up Q for you:

Would you mind elaborating a bit on the common kinds of accounting and management failures you've seen? This may help me focus on common errors, and it could help others too.

Hey Ben, thank you for your thoughts!!

Ben Zumeta wrote:Sell value added products directly to the consumer whenever possible.

I love it! This is something I've hardly considered, but dream of sometimes. A couple of the ideas I've thought of are selling nut bars, pies, jams, and corn chips. I'm not much of a cook and don't enjoy it much, but there are a few foods like these that could help me not just make higher margins, but also preserve my harvests so they don't spoil.

Your idea also has me considering another avenue: creating partnerships with local chefs who love this sort of thing, so I can grow them the ingredients and they could make the foods (win win!)

Ben Zumeta wrote:Get a livestock guardian dog or two, within a tall sturdy fence, and they will fill the niche of the predators you would like to keep at a distance. They will protect their territory, livestock, and the trees and gardens therein. I have found Pyrenees-Akbash to be an ideal cross. They have 10,000yrs of permaculture bred into them, and are better at it than I am!

😮

This may be very an important idea for me to digest and explore more fully. The current exclusion techniques I have considered are expensive (fencing) or finicky (fishing line, which I have witnessed work first hand, but have also read can be hit or miss). The smell-based deterrents I have read about also seem to be hit-or-miss. However including a living deterrent on the homestead (like a Pyrenees-Akbash 😎) could not only fulfill the needs I have to protect the produce, but be another being to love and be part of our family.

Very thought provoking and relevant for me Ben, thank you!

One follow up Q about the tall fence: is this for the deer or for the dog(s)?

Josh,
 Probably best if you wait to build a customer base just as you are ready to plant seeds, then you can taylor to their needs and they don’t have so long a wait.

You said you wanted to sell boxes of mixed harvests directly to customers. I have seen this done, even back in the 80's.
It is pretty common here in Ontario for small independent farmers to offer what is called CSA boxes. That is community supported agriculture and customers typically pick amoung a few types of options and sign up for a season of ( most commonly) weekly boxes of whatever you are growing.
You can do pick up at your farm gate or some partner with another business to host pickup options. Boxes or bags are generally reusable and get brought back each week so very little packaging is needed.

The friends I have seen doing full organic, mostly permie gardening, said their big profit area was actually edible flowers and herbs for local, high end chefs. They would work out plans for each season with the various chefs, so they would understand what was possible as things cycled and would plant to order. Products would get delivered or picked up 1-3 times a week. Being able to accommodate special events for them was a big help too, in developing the loyalty.

With even a small solar dehydrator, you might be able to preserve any access and sell it as well. People pay very well for custom teas and people making soaps and other crafts often want local, organic supplies.

Josh Terrell, said A follow up Q for you:

Would you mind elaborating a bit on the common kinds of accounting and management failures you've seen? This may help me focus on common errors, and it could help others too.

The ones I have heard about most recently are service-type businesses.

One was Dog Sitting or Pet Sitting.  The lady just didn't know how to manage her money.  Her customers loved her and were sorry to see her give up.

The other one was a managing service for AirBand Bs.

As soon as the employees got training they went to work for themselves.

Faye Streiff wrote:Josh,
 Probably best if you wait to build a customer base just as you are ready to plant seeds, then you can taylor to their needs and they don’t have so long a wait.

Thank you for your perspective Faye! I am feeling aligned with this too. I am also open to hearing any other perspectives about when to start communicating to customers that they will be able to buy food in the near future.

Dian Green wrote:You said you wanted to sell boxes of mixed harvests directly to customers. I have seen this done, even back in the 80's.
It is pretty common here in Ontario for small independent farmers to offer what is called CSA boxes. That is community supported agriculture and customers typically pick amoung a few types of options and sign up for a season of ( most commonly) weekly boxes of whatever you are growing.
You can do pick up at your farm gate or some partner with another business to host pickup options. Boxes or bags are generally reusable and get brought back each week so very little packaging is needed.

Hey Dian, you are right. Furthermore I knew this and somehow said this anyway:

Josh Terrell wrote:However I have zero experience or success selling mixed boxes, and no one I've seen has done this.

Selling mixed boxes has been done, and I think CSAs are where I got the idea from. Thank you for sharing this. I think that terminology (community supported agriculture) may be an excellent way to communicate to potential customers 💯

I think what's different about what I've been considering in comparison to CSAs I've known is:  (a) each box might have something different, because I would harvest directly into CSA boxes from the field (no sorting) and (b) customers wouldn't pay for the CSA up front. They'd just pay to actually buy the box at the time the box is available until perhaps my 2nd or 3rd year, when I was confident I wouldn't let them down.

However your post brought me into considering an alternative idea:

Assuming that I'm growing a variety of veggies together (small-garden style), harvesting each of the 70+ species (perhaps up to 20-30 ripe in a given season) into pure boxes will not be feasible.

Perhaps I can harvest the wide variety of veggies into multiple "harvest" boxes (instead of directly into CSA boxes). I could harvest into maybe 6 harvest boxes on a hand-pushed cart in a single pass across the field every 2-7 days. I could harvest veggies that can be harvested together into a single box (eg potatoes, carrots, and beets in one box... but kale and spinach in another box). Then I could bring these "harvest" boxes back (perhaps making another pass with a large trailer to pick up the boxes), and sort them into CSA boxes and/or display boxes (for customers to buy quantities/weights of produce from).

I'm getting long-winded, but I also want to briefly share that I really appreciate your idea about edible flowers, herbs, and crafting materials too. I've written those categories down. Just like with veggies, I want to go through the list of most common herbs and edible flowers, and see what I can grow in my climate. I want to grow a very wide variety of foods (and materials!), so I can have deeper, more substantial relationships with fewer customers, and still make enough $$ to live on. Your idea about preservation is something I definitely need to revisit. Simple & cheap preservation methods (dehydration, basement cool storage, and pickling?) will likely be my best bet, as I don't think I have the capacity to learn cooking (yet).

I need to do some more processing; your share has me thinking. Thanks for the conversation about this!! And I welcome any more thoughts 😊

Anne Miller wrote:

Josh Terrell, said A follow up Q for you:

Would you mind elaborating a bit on the common kinds of accounting and management failures you've seen? This may help me focus on common errors, and it could help others too.

The ones I have heard about most recently are service-type businesses.

One was Dog Sitting or Pet Sitting.  The lady just didn't know how to manage her money.  Her customers loved her and were sorry to see her give up.

The other one was a managing service for AirBand Bs.

As soon as the employees got training they went to work for themselves.

Thank you, Anne. I don't want to give up; I would like to succeed. I believe discussing things like these with people like you will maximize my potential to help myself, my family, and those in my community.

I will likely make financial mistakes. One I almost just made: buying something I don't really need yet. I could save about 4x the money if I just buy a 5 pack of 1020 trays, and build one tray to soak them in, instead of buying a soaking tray for each 1020 tray, and doubling the 1020 trays to 10 so I have an equal amount of both. It's thoughts and decisions to save like this that I need to celebrate...frugality is something I need to have a lot of if I am to be able to offer my customers food at a reasonable price.

Finally, at some point (even now), I want to discuss this idea about employees leaving to work for themselves! I would like to offer good enough wages and profit sharing, plus opportunities for growth and shared ownership (even franchising), that employees might see staying as more beneficial for them and their families than leaving. But I've never hired an employee before. I may start with just contract hourly help, and work up to a full time employee once the relationship has been established. Definitely something I'm new to and have a lot to learn about. However I think I won't likely want to hire help until my second year or later, so I've got time to discuss! 🙂

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Thank you all for supporting me by discussing and sharing with me! 🙇‍♂️