10 Things That Make Urban Farmer Curtis Stone So Successful
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- 10 base principles which I think make Curtis Stone successful; principles universally applicable to any farm. Listen to podcast episodes with Curtis: bit.ly/2vMUDvX
Watch more bit.ly/2rvW4h5 from Curtis Stone : bit.ly/2cmcFLe
My Podcasts:
Farm Small, Farm Smart: bit.ly/2vMUDvX
Grass Fed Life: bit.ly/2uOsLTH
Voices of Change: bit.ly/2vrn81r
My Audiobooks:
The Market Gardener by JM Fortier: bit.ly/2uynxvU
The Urban Farmer by Curtis Stone: bit.ly/2uynxvU
My Business:
Paperpot Transplanter: www.paperpot.co
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Excellent. I like Curtis' honesty. He is honest about all of the aspects of what he does and in particular why. No rose colored glasses for him.
Wow, great analysis. You make some great points. I think one pitfall is that people think "I like to grow stuff, I wanna be a farmer" , not really realizing that to be a success at farming you also have to be good at business and have good people skills.
You have to actually enjoy interacting with people. Farming is not just a bigger version of gardening where people give you money.
I like the point you made about being adaptable too. Many people get really disheartened at the smallest failures. Being a farmer means getting used to failures and pivoting off of them. Actually a good trait for almost any pursuit in life.
Thanks for the great video.
Kirk Johnson Well said mate! Its one of the problems I suffer, marketing the product correctly and pricing it right. I like talking to people but just massively lack confidance, little sdlf belief.
Andrew Towell - You will gain confidence with experience. Partly through success and partly through failures. What binds them together is that you are doing something you really believe in. Other people have found their way into markets - so can Andrew.
I like a line from a movie . In the story they are being hunted by a bear in the woods. Anthony Hopkins character tells of a man who killed a bear with a spear. "What one man can do, another man can do"
ruclips.net/video/2ClpGuQbQuc/видео.html
I really appreciate how you clearly think things through and explain them in a way that is easy to understand. Thank you Diego.
I have a #11 That will make anyone successful in business is: Get rid of ALL the negative any issues that you may come about along your journey. ALWAYS stay focused on the positive issues! You will become much successful faster!!! Great job Diego and keep up the great work!
these principles applys all farming wether you grow 10,000 areas or a 1/4 of acre. As they say problems are sometimes the answer. Great info., thanks for sharing!
Pareto principle is excellent when you have very little space, money and time. So I still have sun shoots in the cooler and more on trays. I will be ramping down sun shoot production until I can move what I have. Good idea to gauge each crops profitability though. It's easy for us as urban farmers to want to continue to grow what we believe should be selling as opposed to looking at the facts of what IS really selling. Good video. When I have been doing this for several years I will look at tomatoes as well. Where I live, people only understand a big red ball to be a tomato, any other variety is like...what is that?!. Something to consider. Preach the CVR Diego! Farmers market managers act like, hey why aint you growing corn and potatoes, umm, because they have a low value in my context...blank stare is what I get. That's right, no peaches here...I need that space.
Hi Diego. I enjoyed your video and follow Curtis with interest, my one worry about the 80/20 rule is that sooner or later you end up just growing one thing that makes all you money and sooner or later one way or another that is going to lead to trouble.
Thanks Diego. Great summary of those principles for success.
Great videos Diego. You're improving keep it up!
Great video, definitely saving this one
Great presentation, thank you!
Great video! Thanks!
Thanks for the encouragement man. I've been in a garden lol thats about it but I reckon I am one who has continued to gather information to weigh the odds of success because MY time can be invested right now and with my focus being on health and spirituality what better way to bridge herb gardens into herbal farms including but not limited to local fruit trees berries and the like but with my focus on growing all year around to meet the demands of those of us in the States who fail to get properly grown "ripe" fruit for cellular detoxification combined with herbs, fasting, juicing, etc., who are transitioning over to the Tropical Diet so to speak, or for those simply looking for organic food. Fuck Monsanto...I'm farming to educate and provide for people other than myself so with that maybe eventually these 33 acrea will have 10-11 1.5 acre farms combining the best of both worlds. Loook at me procrastinating now....lmao Love ya brotha sincerely thankful and appreciate it. You and Conor have truly put the last few pieces of my puzzle together for me, all I have to do is hang it up for everyone to enjoy. It is blissful. Although for someone with very little at the moment I have a lot now...more than I realized thanks you all. You kind sir deserve peace of mind knowing you have motivated me to start. It is after 7:30 pm EST and my ass going to prep this herb plot and start my compost bin.
Well....it's a start. Composting begins tomorrow. Thanks for a kick in the ass. I've been too caught up on not having a successful start or the proper systemized foundation to play on to minimize loss of time money determination stress and to eventually work less for more high quality food than I know what to do with. Looks like my happy ass will be saving up to invest in Conors online course and for your paperpot transplanter. Those are going to be essential tools for me to utilize.
Excellent video!
Great and useful analysis! But don't you need a blend of the Pareto principle and a system-wide approach? For example, if salad mix is the most profitable then there may be a tendency to only grow salad mix, but wouldn't it compromise your system in other ways if you become a monoculture? At what point does it become chasing profit at the expense of your business future? How would you guard against crossing that line?
I think the best answer to what you are asking is you just have to be nimble. Nimble in terms of what markets you sell to and what crops you grow. The great thing about vegetables is you can change crops pretty quickly. If you produce only one product, then this nimbleness becomes even more important. There are businesses out there that just grow mushrooms or watermelon. I am not saying that's the best approach or the approach for everyone, but it works.
all good points Deigo. it appears if Curtis continues to chase that 80/20, as Wannabejober was pointing out, he will eventually whittle his crops down to only a very few. and i'm not saying that's a bad thing in the least. but i wonder, perhaps this is a question for Curtis directly, but his model of "farming land that you don't own" would seem to have little appeal to the landowner if all they got was salad greens every week in remuneration. i could be wrong. so does that drive the solution to paying rent instead?
additionally, Curtis has spoken about reducing the distance to his differnt plots and somewhat about growing plants at the more distant locations that do not require as much constant care. i wonder if corn, melons, cucumbers and other longer term crops grown on more distant plots could make the numbers work? Curtis' CVR is focused on optimizing the productivity of a piece of land, but if we look at time invested, those plants with a high CVR also have a higher level of input in terms of man hours. if you plant corn on a far plot and check it a few times between planting and harvest, but have no other labor cost, does that work? not in place of those nearby high CVR crops, but as an adjunct grown on the more distant plots?
I'm finishing up my first season on a farm that's borrowed quite a bit from Curtis and his work. While in Curtis' case the 80/20 drives him toward a more focused crop selection I don't think that's predetermined. I'm focusing my farm much more on the retail market (I've got a handful of small restaurant customers, no distributors) and in my case I'm probably going to grow a lot LESS salad mix next year, Salanova in particular. And I'm going to possibly grow even more crop types, not fewer. I haven't done my final number crunching yet because I've still got another couple weeks left in my main season, but here are a few thoughts relative to your feedback:
-I think you can definitely balance your CVR equation in a way that optimizes both land output and hours. If you can move more salad mix it might work to go that way. In my case, with my current customers, I can sell more if I offer more variety, not just more volume. A few beds dedicated to salanova so one is always ready for harvest is more than enough for me because it's so productive. Storability is also valuable to me because if I can hold something over for a week or two it reduces waste. Carrots are a great example of this.
-I think the idea of growing lower-value crops at further plots might work in your context, but if you're on a decentralized land base (I am currently doing 4 yards plus a nursery in my yard, all within a half mile) you've still got to be careful with lower value crops. You still have to pay for a plot in terms of rent/veggies, and invest in prep and irrigation. Something like corn or melons might work if you can sell them, but at least in my case there are plenty of other things I'd rather spend the time/money on that will have a higher ROI than setting up a far-away plot.
-In the case of cucumbers, this is something I would NOT grow far away. In my context I also consider it a very high value crop. While it's easy to grow, you need to harvest very regularly once it gets going, and trellising also helps on a smaller land base. This is a good example of where the market makes a huge difference in the economics of a particular crop. I only did a single planting of cucumbers this year (50'), in the field, and did just about everything wrong because I'd never grown them before and also had to battle some extraneous factors. I harvested 180lbs, of which I sold maybe 120 of at $3/lb, and was in the bed for about 80 days. Those aren't the kind of numbers Curtis is doing, but if I grow earlier in the season, do two successions, and actually grow them correctly, I figure I'll be able to get at least $500 off a 50' bed over 80 days, leaving enough time to also do a spring and fall crop in the same bed (I'm zone 8b in Portland, OR, so this might not be an option for you). That's not Salanova if you can move it all at $8/lb, but it's pretty good and much easier.
I think you are right on! Great principles! The go getter part is where most Americans fail...
I've seen a bunch of farms try and do this approach to farming, they have a good go at it but eventually fizzle out. I've been farming for 10 years and I am just now starting to watch youtube farm videos, it's funny to see farming be pitched in the light of get rich quick. That's why I believe a lot of these new farms fizzle out, plus I've got my salad game on lock around this county, don't bother growing salanova, it tastes terrible compared to select varieties grown in hedge row configuration. Unless youj have heavy backing, you do have to DIY most of your farm, aside from raw materials or machines, and in order to DIY you need a background in construction, electrical, sometimes plumbing, and just a general sense of how to reassemble equipment, otherwise you will bleed money by replacing gear. The biggest thing I see new farms fail was brought up briefly, they let their romantic ideology of farming take control of how they utilize their time, So many little farms failed to launch because they got a goat.
Damn good advice!
Do you test for pollutants that can cause cancer in your soil or simply hope for the best ?
Do you allow your kids to eat your produce ?
You can get a soil test done if you think your soil is contaminated. And if it is, then you have to decide if you want to use that soil or not.
Lol, slow creep towards monoculture. It is easy to see how it happens.