Stages of Learning in Farming - Becoming the Expert

By season 10 or before, you may be able to quit your day job if that is your goal. You have developed a playbook for your farm. Many farm families have off farm income and that is OK. But if you want to farm full time you will need a plan to do so. How much income will you need, what is the scale of your operation that will generate this level of income? Will you need farm workers? Have you achieved this goal? By year ten you should be approaching your basic farming goals.

Even so, there is much more to learn on the road to becoming an expert.

"Practice Resurrection"

I (Reed) read through many publications in any given month, but one of my favorites is Cardus' Comment Magazine. They're amazing exemplars of writing, photography, and thorough thinking. With their permission, I'm reposting a bit from their Fall 2014 Edition. I thought it applied well to the nature of this blog, as many of you can relate to the experiences of this family that patronizes a market in Grand Rapids.

"The Fulton Street Farmer's Market is a hallowed place for our family. For a decade, the market was pretty much our front yard, so we easily fell into almost daily rhythms that incorporated the market. Having moved just a mile away hasn't made much difference: visiting the market is a nonnegotiable liturgy in our house. In fact, if you ever visit the refurbished Fulton Street Market in Grand Rapids, peruse the memorial bricks that line the upper square and look for a brick that simply exhorts, "Practice resurrection." That's ours.

Serendipity in the Herb Garden

We noticed that oregano, mints, thymes and chives would come back year after year in old garden plots and around old homesteads. These were always earlier than herbs we grew and planted. Why were these established plants "way ahead" of their more domesticated cousins. Could we establish our own "persistent" or perennial herb garden.

10 Benefits of a Micro Farm

We have 8 acres of tillable land on our farm and typically plant about 5 acres to vegetables and fruit each year.

Anything under 10 acres is a micro farm.

Here are 10 significant benefits of a micro farm...

How to Pick the Best Garden Vegetable Seeds

One of the rituals of spring is picking out seeds for the garden. Until you have some experiencing it is always a challenge to pick the best varieties and seed. 

Here are a few tips...

We Work For Our Customers So You Don't Have To

We have trialed 100's of varieities over the years to find some of the top varieties for our location, climate and our customers needs.

We sell some of these varieties as plant starts at the farmers market. Things like heirloom tomatoes and top hybrid cucumbers.

Customers have brought many interests and needs to our attention in the past. We have broadened our offerings from time to time based on customers requests.

Some of these requests were Purslane, Arugula, Sweet Corn, Dandelion Greens, and Heirloom Okra.

We have a broad knowledge of the things we grow.  How to grow them. How to process them for the best nutrition and flavor. How to prepare them for your table.

We will continue to add this knowledge to our posts.

If you have any additional things you'd like us to consider growing. Please let us know either by leaving a comment or seeing us at the market.

The Jedi Master of Root Growing

Reed is our Jedi root grower. He has done an amazing job with this since he was very young. He is very good at planting onions and can do about twice as many plants as two other people.

Two years ago he'd pick, clean and sell 300 lbs of sweet summer onions a week at our market. He would completely bury a six foot long table with beautiful sweet onions. He called this strategy "Pile them high an kiss 'em goodbye".

He also loves radishes both to eat and to sell. 100 lbs of bunch radishes a week was not unusual.

Potatoes is the other specialty crop he excells in. He digs and clean about 100 lbs of nice little baby potatoes a week. When he was little he wasn't heavy enough to get the fork in the ground so we would work together, with me digging and Reed picking the potatoes off of the plant and carefully putting them in the tub we picked into.

He is also very good at leeks. He peels them and clips them, and afterwards they shine; a beautiful shade of white.

EntreLeadership On and Off the Farm

Dave Ramsey defines EntreLeadership as "The process of leading to cause a venture to grow and prosper". Webster says a leader is "someone who rules, guides, and inspires others."; accordingly, the word entrepreneur means "one who takes a risk."

We have raised our children with a spirit of EntreLeadership. Since before they were school age they have contributed in an age appropriate way to the farm and selling at the farmers market. They each have had areas that they have enjoyed contributing to and they have developed expertise in. Reed has been our root expert: radishes, onions, garlic, leeks and potatoes. Jenna is the herb expert: basil, rosemary, mint and chives. Andrea is an expert in, well, practically everything. She especially likes transplants and flowers.

Now that they are teenagers how has that EntreLeadership spirit worked out:

• Andrea, a music education major, in the summer of her freshman year in college, is planning to organize summer music theory classes for middle and high school students. She has put together a syllabus and will develop curriculum for all the age groups. She was on a path to do this independently and offer classes to schools in the area. Her first stop was the honors choirs of SE Minnesota. Turns out they had been wanting to offer classes just like this and they are interested in hiring her. So an entrepreneurial venture turned into a summer job and may go well beyond.
• Reed has had a strong interest in electronics since he was little. When he was 8 I got him an Lego NXT robot that he could program. When he was 10 I got him a PIC microprocessor and bread board. He has done numerous electronics projects. In Junior High he got interested in buying and selling electronics like laptops, ipads, ipods and iPhone. He is now a freshman in high school. He averages one purchase/sale per week. He recently bought a iPhone with a broken screen and had to completely remove all the contents to replace the screen. Pretty cool operation and it worked perfect when he put it back together. He has a nice business started. It all started after winter market a few years ago when I paid the kids about $300 dollars as an end of the season bonus. Reed wanted to buy an ipod and a new one was a little over $200. I told him he could get one for half that price if we was willing to wait a buy a used one. He found one for less than half price on Craig's list and was hooked.
• Jenna, a junior in high school, has been working at Great Harvest. She decided she wanted to work there and was able to get a job. They are flexible on hours so that works great with her school schedule. She really likes bread and cooking so this is an ideal position.
• Jenna recently bought a camera with her earnings and she is a very talented photographer. She is working on ways she can use her camera to earn extra money for college.

The Path of the Expert

I have heard that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in most fields. I thought maybe this was an urban legend, but turns out there is some solid research to back this up.

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell mentions the "10,000 hour rule". The 10,000 hour rule states that the key to success in any field is related to practice for a total of around 10,000 hours.

The Making of an Expert, a Harvard Business Review article indicates a similar finding in Dr. K. Anders Ericsson's research (see link below to the article). The things that Dr. Ericsson found to correlate to the success of superb performers were intensive practice, devoted teachers, and  enthusiastic support from their families. His evidence showed that experts were always made, not born. The journey to superior performance required tremendous diligence and tenacity. The process takes at least a decade in most instances.

A genuine expert has the following attributes: