Courtesy of Roxanne C. , Philadelphia PA Since its launch 10 years ago, SPIN-Farming has come to mean many things. While it embodies lots of food and farming trends, it’s practitioners know it as a profit-driven production system coupled with a business model. That’s what it is meant to be....
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon SK The advantage to backyard farming is that you can ramp it up or down, depending on your financial needs at any given time. If you don’t use it to provide your full-time income, you can use it to fund a...
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon SK Go with your gut” is sometimes good advice. But if you want to turn your garden into a business, you also have to use your head. Over the years I have developed strategies for each of my crops. Having a...
Courtesy of Wally Satzewich, Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon SK In planning discussions the question frequently comes up, “If you want to make money, why not just grow the highest value crops?” It’s easy to go through SPIN 2.0 Crop profiles and pull them out – rainbow carrots, garlic, microgreens,...
Courtesy of Roxanne C., Philadelphia PA Egged on by the ever-expanding ecosystem of farm advocacy groups, farmers seem compelled to explain how exceptional they are. Here is a recent example titled “Here’s What I Need You to Know About Farming.” As we’ve come to expect, it includes the oft-repeated narrative...
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon SK It’s widely recognized that a lot of new small-scale farmers don’t come from farm families. That is certainly one reason why so many of them are having a hard time. But when you look at their complaints, most are not...
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon SK I used to get asked if farming was a 9 to 5 job. That was back in 2006 when we first launched the SPIN online learning series, and when my experience in downsizing was starting to get attention. One of...
Courtesy of Wally S., Wally’s Urban Market Garden, Saskatoon SK Unlike selling wholesale, there are no established unit sizes in SPIN-Farming, and no standards to go by. So how much to put in a unit is an ever popular topic in our online support group. To take the mystery out of...
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...
