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To Get the Best Seed Price, Make a Call
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Market Garden, Pleasantdale, SK In niche markets, SPIN farmers can adjust their pricing to cover their seed cost, but you should always try to get your seed costs down as low as possible. That means buying in bulk and shopping around. Take pea greens. I...
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Advice You Won’t Get at Farm Conferences
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Pleasantdale, SK This time of year I hear from a lot of aspiring farmers. They are filled with passion and enthusiasm and are eager to glomm on to role models. I’m a pretty easy target. I have been at the farmers market...
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Vive La Niche
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon, SK Aspiring agripreneurs can always count on receiving this advice: never plant anything without first identifying your market. “Grow what you sell, don’t sell what you grow” is pretty much conventional wisdom now, and that’s progress. But since SPIN farmers are...
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Use SPIN’s Small Scale Advantage
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon, SK The emails and mailers are starting to come in outlining all the challenges and rewards of organic/eco/sustainable/regenerative farming, so that means workshop season will soon be upon us. A main theme of SPIN-Farming workshops is to understand and use your...
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Take your farm to the next level – the basement
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon, SK Now that there are some seasoned SPIN farmers out there, I’m seeing lots of plans for taking their operations to the next level. Many involve expanding their land base or investing in season extension. Both are good ideas. But accomplishing...
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A Multi-locational Farm is a Realistic Ideal
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon, SK Whenever I see farming conference programs at this time of year I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. The hot topics are always the same. Land access. Farm succession. Risk management. I just don’t relate because years ago...
