Stages of Learning in Farming - Building Your Legacy

Lots of things to think about, and it can be a little overwhelming at the beginning. Farming is running a very challenging small business and that can be complex. But when done well, farming can be a multi-generational business, who's skills can be translated to future generations. Farming involves passion to keep us going when the days are long.

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.

Stages of Learning in Farming - Becoming Self Sufficient

Stage two typically lasts an additional 3-5 seasons.

You are on your way to a successful farming enterprise. You have a firm direction, you are focused and you have, by trial and error, refined your course, but you are still doing much fine tuning and investing.

Stages of Learning in Farming - Building on the Basics

Building on the Basics

Congratulations, you have formally stepped into the world of farming. You are starting into your first season or like us maybe you have been doing things on a small scale and want to step into the commercial market place.

Stage one typically lasts about three seasons:

Stages of Learning in Farming - Laying the Foundation

In my experience, every new farmer goes through stages of learning in building their farming knowledge and expertise. Lisa and I completed Land Stewardship Project's Farm Beginnings class in 2001. We learned much in this class which was organized to help beginning farmers get started. Even with this advantage, we had a significant learning curve to make the transition from growing on a small scale (literally gardening in our back yard) to taking the first steps into the commercial market place on a scale that is 10 or even 100 times the size of our starting operation.

I am going to organize these stages according to our recent experience. The farm calendar typically operates on a seasonal basis and whether you are growing vegetables like we are, or growing row crops and small grains, or livestock, the stages are similar. I have provided links to other articles on our website VegetableFreak.com  for more in-depth information on certain topics

Stages of Learning in Farming - A Land Stewarship Project Guest Post

I wrote Stages of Learning in Farming over the last year with the intention of doing a guest post on the Land Stewardship blog.

Check it out. They published Stage Zero yesterday.

It is called "Laying the Foundation".