This week’s farm essay is a reflection on an email I received from a farmer about their Season Review. “On my farm, we’re a 7 person team: 5 workers, my wife and me. I’ve been doing season reviews for the last 2 years. Both as individual and in group meetings (I haven’t tried a survey … More What to do with a difficult farm season review
Well I could tell you to grow profitable crops. I could also tell you to grow crops that don’t take a lot of space for the volume you harvest. Or I could tell you to grow crops that fit with your current weeding tools and systems. But today, I’m going to tell you to grow … More What vegetables should you grow?
Finally, farmers markets are over and the field is cleaned up. It’s time to kick back with a seed catalog and start choosing what to grow next year. It’s always fun to dream of all the new varieties you’re going to try and the new tools you’re going to buy and how they will make … More A good crop plan starts with a good sales plan
In last week’s Build A Better Crop Plan workshop, Katie asked this question: Any thoughts on best practices for crop notes? Tracking observations about disease, pests, weather, etc. Do you keep very technical notes about that, or maybe just a simple running journal of observations At the moment, I didn’t have as detailed an answer … More Best practices for crop notes
You can watch the video ere. So, did you manage to record every harvest you did this summer? Do you have perfect records of how much crop came out of the field? Yes, these records would be wonderful. But if things got a little out of hand this year (or maybe a lot out of … More fsa tip #77 – What to do if you didn’t take harvest records
You can watch the video ere. I’m sure this never happens to you, you plant a bunch of stuff but don’t record it during the growing season? And then, in the middle of the winter when you’re going to get crop planning, you can’t remember how many beds of peppers you planted last year? Well, … More fsa tip #76 – Go and record what’s in your field before it’s too late
You can watch the video ere. One of the first steps to start Crop Planning for your farm is to make a sales plan. You want to set up a table with your crops along the left side and the weeks you’ll be at market or CSA along the top of the table. Then you … More fsa tip #75 – Highlight when your crops are available in your sales plan
How to navigate your crop plan data with the Filter Tool in Google sheets. You can watch the video here. Here are the basic steps 1?? Highlight all your data (CMD-A or CTRL-A) 2?? Click CREATE A FILTER in the menu toolbar 3?? Inverted triangles appear in the headers of your columns 4?? Click on … More fsa tip #74 – Navigate your crop plan with filters
The ultimate Crop Plan spreadsheet tool is Pivot Tables. I’ve mentioned them before and I’m sure I’ll mention them again. Pivot Tables let you turn a spreadsheet full of columns and data into a simple schedule or calendar that is easy to read and easy to share. Here are the basic steps 1?? Highlight all … More fsa tip #73 – Crop Plan: Pivot Tables
Each row in your crop plan spreadsheet should be a distinct planting. A distinct planting means 1 variety planted on the same date. If you plant a lot of varieties and have a lot of succession plantings, you’ll wind up with a bunch of rows. This definitely has the chance to get messy. But if … More fsa tip #72 – Crop Plan: one row equals one planting