Lessons We Learned Our Second Year as Market Farmers скачать в хорошем качестве

Lessons We Learned Our Second Year as Market Farmers

Hola Market Gardeners and Farmsteaders! We are Mac and Jose with Yooper Country Farms, a market farm and homestead in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In this video we are sharing with you the lessons we learned our second year as Market Farmers. First: Irrigation is critical. This year we had our drip irrigation system, but we never installed it on our early beds. It impacted some of our crops like onions, carrots, salad mix, lettuce, kale and our first planting of beans. Second: Weather controls everything farming. This year we struggled with frost, hail, a wind storm that took out 2 of our pear trees, and a very cool summer that impacted our tomato and pepper harvest. Third: Insects are a pain, but nature solves some problems on its own. We operate our farm without the use of any chemicals, but this means we can't spray the bugs when they are eating our plants. We found that the birds swooped in and saved us. They ate a lot of our problems. We still have to deal with potato beetles, root maggots and cabbage moths! Fourth: Should we or shouldn't we be raising layers and meat birds. They are expensive and time consuming. We love having diversity on the farm for our members, but the expenses are overwhelming. We are practicing being decisive...so we are going to run them for another year. Fifth: Get creative at your farmer's markets and try some new ways to sell your regular products. This year we sold green garlic, squash blossoms and ramps (wild leeks). These items helped us to increase our sale. We also repackaged our garlic and it really made a difference on sales. Sixth: Mid-season is a crazy time on the farm. July, August and September hit us very hard our second year on the farm. We are planting in the green house, direct seeding and transplanting in the garden, weeding, checking for insects, harvesting, going to markets, serving members, handling our animals, washing eggs and trying to find some down time. Next year we will be better prepared for how crazy things can be. Seventh: We need to be better prepared for late and early frosts. We have decided to put up hoops for all of our early crops that need protection as we plant. We didn't do it this last year and the amount of time it took us to get prepared for a late frost was very frustrating. Next year we won't make the same mistake. Eighth: Jose and I need to slow down. We have grown so fast that a lot of things have gotten out of control. This has cost us both time and money. This year we are going to slow down and get better systems in place. Ninth: Selling CSA's early in the year means harvesting later in the year but not bringing in extra income. While the money is nice to have in January, February and March it is hard to be harvesting in July, August, and September and not be bringing in the extra money. This is just a reminder to ourselves and to other market gardeners that this can be an issue. Tenth: It's nice to have capital up front, but its also a struggle when its crunch time. Jose and I need to get leaner and learn to bootstrap what we have because the up front capital is gone. These are the ten things we learned this past year farming. Hopefully year number three will bring bigger success because we are constantly learning and trying to improve what we have going on! Thanks for watching, Mac and Jose! Yooper Country Farms