If any cut flower has made a comeback in recent years, it’s the chrysanthemum. This flower, once relegated to boring imports at the grocery store, has taken off in recent years and for good reason. There is so much to love about mums.

Many diversified vegetable farmers come to this profession focused on producing food for their communities, exercising their entrepreneurial spirits, stewarding the land, or some combination of the above. Few would likely say they got into farming because they wanted to be employers. And yet this industry has become heavily reliant upon hired employees — those individuals who share the labor burden, make it more possible for owners to expand their operations, and ultimately help turn the farm’s vision into reality.

I met Brian and Liz Simpson in 2017 at a farmers market in Birmingham, Alabama, where we were both vendors. They sold the most delicious shiitake mushrooms. Our CSA had requested add-on options from other farms, and it was important to me that they be local, organic, and farmers we admire.

One of the most common questions I hear both new and experienced farmers asking is, “what crops should I grow to be successful?” There are multiple layers to this question, but one of the fundamental ones for anyone trying to make a farm business successful is which crops are going to contribute the most to making the farm a profitable business? And since most market farms aren’t just growing one or two crops, the question is not just which one crop to grow but what mix of crops will be the best? This is the question that the Know Your Cost To Grow program is focused on and helps farmers answer.

While the cold is certainly one factor limiting winter growing, it is not the only one nor is it the hardest to work around. For vegetable growers operating in a northern climate, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is, in fact, the decrease in daylight hours and solar energy experienced in November, December, and January. For a successful winter vegetable production, anyone embarking on this adventure needs to understand the ins and outs of the season, and work differently than in summer.

No one has the same farm as you. This article is an overview of our annual planning process. It will help you create a customized Field Manual to consult when anything is unclear during the hot days of a busy season.

Planning is circular, just like farming itself. For new farmers this can be daunting, but each year it becomes easier as you are only tweaking last year’s plan. It is possible to start at various places in the cycle.

Time spent arranging dried flower bouquets can be enjoyable and rewarding as you create with materials you labored all season to produce. Or it can be like pulling teeth. If you simply don’t like arranging flowers, yes, you should adjust your business model. But if you are faltering because of a lack of confidence in your arranging abilities, don’t. Here are pointers to keep in mind when arranging dried flowers and tips of importance during the preparatory steps leading up to this crowning act.

Jenny Jack Farm is located in the small community of Pine Mountain, Georgia. The day I visited, Chris Jackson met me in the driveway of their home across a quiet road from their farm. He invited me in and offered me a drink, but I declined, too excited to see their place and the work they have been doing there. 

Before my visit, we emailed back and forth, realizing several similarities between our two farms: each with two young children and both parents working full-time on the farm, plus almost the same number of years farming. Whenever I connect with a fellow farmer it is refreshingly easy to talk and get into the specific details of this occupation.

Farmers are great innovators and for a lot of us the challenge of finding or creating better tools and methods is part of the fun of farming. It’s probably obvious to anyone who has been reading my articles and books that I’m someone who both loves the tinkering, seeing what other people are doing, and sharing those ideas with other farmers. Last year I had the opportunity to sit on a judging panel for the Small Farm Innovation Challenge put on by CAFF (Community Alliance with Family Farmers).

Last month we shared our formal Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Farmer Grant results around late season brassica disease management. Even after spending months gearing up for our project, we still found challenges to the reality of implementing scientifically sound field trials on a working farm during a pandemic, runaway inflation, and crazy weather. 

This month we dig into our trial outtakes: what we learned about the process to design and implement an on-farm trial, what we wish we planned for, and impactful results that didn’t neatly fit our numerical data.

Broccoli and cauliflower are fall staples on diversified produce operations like ours. Historically, they thrive in our northeastern region and provide heft, visual interest, and diversity to our direct market and CSA boxes.

But in recent years, growing heading fall brassicas feels like gambling. Hot summers stress seedlings. Autumn rolls in with waves of endless rain. Surges of Alternaria and black rot, with sporadic mildews and secondary head rots trash the plants. These wet fall conditions raise disease pressure while reducing spraying opportunities and efficacy. 

Americans have always been inclined to like big things, often the bigger the better. A lot of marketing has been based on supersizing. This attitude has been applied at farmers markets as well — big red tomatoes, big ears of sweet corn, big heads of cauliflower. But it would be a mistake to assume that great size is always an asset. More and more, bigger is not better.

It is the heat of late summer, and we are all in the throes of a hectic harvesting and marketing season. But in the midst of it all, I bet you are thinking about next year already. More of this, less of that, none of that ever again. It is in our nature to plan ahead, looking forward, trying new things, improving our farms and ourselves.

What is your long-term plan? Nut trees are a long-term crop, though not as long as you might think.  They can be planted in a traditional orchard set up, but also put into any odd corner that can be maintained for harvest.