The Business of Farming

/

Like all businesses, our farm business faces many challenges. Making our outputs (total income) exceed our inputs (total expenses) on an annual basis is daunting. Farming must always deal with ever different seasonality and weather issues among other factors, which in Missouri, creates a fairly long period between growing seasons without any fresh produce or fruit sales. We are in that long stretch of winter right now, the time every year that can devastate a farm business that needs cash flow to pay the bills. Budgeting is critical of course, but spreading out income streams and generating “off season” sales and cash income is also vitally important to the success and survival of our farm business. 

Read More

Planting Hope on the Farm

/

When it comes to farm planning, our eyes are always bigger than our stomachs when thinking about all that we can accomplish in the coming year. But isn’t that what farming is all about, hope? A seed is a perfect metaphor for hope. All the possibilities for a plant are contained in its seed. That is what we build our farm plan around. We start with thinking about the markets we will be selling to and then work our way backwards until we arrive at the types and number of seeds we will need to plant in order for our plans to have any hope of success.

Read More

"and that's the way it is..."

/

This week we took a trip up north for the annual Great Plains Growers Conference (GPGC) in St. Joseph, MO. These types of annual farming related events occur during the winter months across the country, in an effort to take advantage of an increasingly short and rare “season off” for farmers. Unfortunately the threat of winter weather forced the cancellation of the first day of GPGC workshops this year, and Friday and Saturday enjoyed very cold temperatures. This conference is our first choice for attending because of its focus: growing and selling food in the KC area and the large amount of research-based information.

Read More