Hear how Zoe Bradbury DeSurra of Valley Flora Farm balances four different farming enterprises between herself, her sister and her mom on one farm. The farm started in an unorthodox way- with a property trade- and overcame a healthy sense of skepticism about whether its rural Oregon location could support a vegetable farm at all, to become the multi-enterprise, matriarchal farm, where everything from the coolers to the draft horses run on solar power today.

Dr. Surendra Dara brings over 25 years of experience to his work as an Oregon State University professor and director of NWREC, the North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Oregon. In this podcast, we talk about integrated pest management (IPM) tactics growers can use to keep pests and diseases in check without getting to the point of spraying, even if the sprays are organic. We discuss controls as diverse as physical barriers, irrigation, nutrient management, biostimulants, biological soil amendments and more to develop sustainable agricultural solutions.

No one gets into flower farming because they love business analytics, however if you don’t know how to make sense of your business and make a profit, you’re not going to stay in business for very long. Luckily we’ve got Lennie Larkin of B-Side Farm to help us cut through the clutter and tell us how to plan to make a profit in our own flower farm businesses. She’s on the pod this week, telling us about her new book, Flower Farming for Profit, which will be out in January.

One perennial problem for market farmers is how to make local food and flowers available to customers every day, without having to spend seven days a week standing behind a table or giving up most of the value to a wholesaler. The farm stop is the most innovative answer to this problem we’ve heard of in years, and Kathy Sample & Bill Brinkerhoff of Argus Farm Stop are on the pod this week to tell us about it. Billed as a “year-round, everyday farmers market,” it isn’t a replacement for farmers markets, but a complement to them. In fact, many farmers make deliveries to the farm stop on and between market days.

Julia Shanks helps us plan for our farms to be profitable businesses. She has used her background in the food industry and accounting to help hundreds of farmers make sense of their numbers. On this week’s pod, we pick up on the trends she has noticed over the years and talk about important ways to understand farm business metrics, like calculating the breakeven point, figuring out cost of production, profit per hour, whether growth or specialization is the right strategy for profitability, and more! We cover everything from pivoting, to the entrepreneurial mindset, to how to get excited about digging into your numbers, even when you aren’t.

Sophia Ngueyen Eng left a successful career is Silicon Valley, after questioning the health of industrial agricultural practices that men workers wear hazmat suits to spray the endless acres of strawberries planted not too far away from her.  Now, she pursues her passions for sustainable farming and nourishing Asian cuisine on her farm in Tennessee, where she employs regenerative practices to raise grass-fed dairy cows, beef cattle, laying hens, broilers, ducks, sheep, goats, turkeys, and traditional Asian practices to grow a variety of produce for her multi-generational family and local community.

Learn how Ben Hartman cut his farm down to 1/3 of an acre from an acre without taking a pay cut on this week’s pod. Ben Hartman is well known for adapting LEAN principles from manufacturing to his farm in order to cut out waste and maximize efficiency; that is the subject of his previous two books, The Lean Farm and The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables. However, even after LEANing up his previous two farms, he found he was working too much at the expense of family, friends and community. So he and his wife and farming partner Rachel embarked on a quest to radically LEAN up their farm, and that is the story of his new book, The Lean Micro Farm, and this podcast. Hear how, though skeptical at first, he was able to make as much income and support the family off of 1/3 of an acre instead of the one acre they were previously farming, which in itself is a big reduction from the 400 acres his family was farming when he was growing up.

On tiny farms, market gardeners might flip—or transition—beds from one crop to another several times per season to make the most of every square foot. With these rotations, you effectively double or triple your production area by planting the same beds two or three times each year. That is, a 1/3-acre plot literally becomes equal to a 2/3- or 1-acre farm growing one crop per year. This justifies applying a large amount of compost to keep fertility levels high for multicropped beds.

The Utopian Seed Project is anticipating a less than utopian future as climate changes threaten crops and growing environments. Among the approaches the nonprofit is taking to fortify local food systems in the face of climate change is migrating crops north to adapt as warming temperatures move northward. The project, treating tropical perennials as temperate annuals, so far is succeeding with taro, chayote and other tropical crops imported to trial farms in Western North Carolina.

At the cutting edge of the local food movement is the challenge of providing fresh, local food even in the middle ofwinter. Growing in the winter costs more (greenhouses/high tunnels and row covers aren’t cheap), but when best practices are employed, might it still be possible for local growers to compete with out-of-region food producers?

Sometimes we can be stronger when we collaborate, and on this week’s pod hear from two growers with over 20 years of experience working together. Lyn Jacobs @la_finquita_del_buho and Polly Gottesman @pumpkinridgegardens each run their own vegetable CSA farms, and they’ve been collaborating to sell vegetable and flower seedlings, fresh cut flower bouquets, dried flowers and wreaths since 2002. This episode is packed with lots of great ideas and growing info, including how to keep your flowers distinctive at markets with other flower growers, how they manage the cooperative business arrangement between their two farms, and how to keep the personal relationship strong along with the business after more than two decades of collaborating.