The Business of Mowing Shared From MOTHER EARTH NEWS  Written By: Alden Stahr Setting Your Mowing Business Rates You’ll need to establish some sort of fee schedule before you begin your first job. Start by inquiring about the prevailing charges for lawn-mowing in your locality. When I bought our first John Deere tractor, I asked the […]

Farm Insurance Now Available for Smaller and More Diverse Operations Shared From MOTHER EARTH NEWS  Written By: Jennifer Kongs Until last year, U.S. farmers could only readily and effectively insure commodity crops, such as corn and soy. This left many small-scale, diversified and generally more sustainable farmers in a risky lurch. Enter Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP), an […]

Distributing Your CSA Crops Shared From MOTHER EARTH NEWS  Written By: Sarah Milstein Distribution Site and Managers If you’re delivering shares off-farm, you’ll need a reliable site. Members in the delivery community should be able to help find a site and sometimes will offer a garage, porch, or yard. If that is not feasible, churches and […]

How to Buy Farmland, Even If You Think You Can’t Shared From MOTHER EARTH NEWS  Written By: Ann Larkin Hansen For those of us who were born to farm but, alas, not born on a farm, the ache to have your own land can be so intense you feel it in your belly. I thought it […]

Excerpted from Market Farming Success by Lynn Bycynski Record-keeping The only way to benefit from your experience is to keep records of everything you do. You may think that you will remember when you planted which variety and when you started to harvest it. And there may be a few geniuses out there who really […]

Excerpted from Homemade For Sale by Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko   As a small CFO, you don’t need to spin wheels and spend lots of money to figure out the value and sales viability of your product. Depending on your products, options to connect with your customers and garner actionable information may include: • Follow-up e-mails […]

Excerpted from Homemade For Sale by Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko   Every business must both attract customers and retain customers. Once you have customers, maintaining records about them can help you sustain and grow your enterprise. From tracking your customer orders and preferences to capturing useful information like birth dates and anniversaries for relationship-building marketing […]