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Curtis Stone runs a commercial urban farm called Green City Acres out of Kelowna, BC, Canada. His mission is to show others how they can grow a lot of food on small plots of land and make a living from it. Using DIY and simple infrastructure, one can earn a significant living from their own backyard or someone else’s.
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While I'm just a hobby gardener who aspires to provide local produce to my neighbors and family…
I find that potatoes are one of my favorite things to grow and I can do it in quite a low effort way with no hilling. I think with my no hilling method that I could just use more space to up production. It might take more space than other people have or can use in their context but I have the blessing of belonging to a family with plenty of land and space to grow on. There is no way that I'd be able to compete with a specialized potato farm but I love potatoes, and unless they get in the way of being able to be profitable and make a living gardening someday, I'd like to grow them for others as well.
Anyways. I put potatoes in early in the year, before the garden centers in my area get them even, in the 3 years i've been growing them I've never had any issues with them coming up too early or rotting. I only put them in about 4 to 6 inches deep. Then I cover them in a nice layer of grass clippings. Once the potatoes begin to emerge I throw some straw over them, and they punch through that with ease. I never have to weed the bed due to the mulch and shading effects of the plants. 2 rows to one of my 33-36 inch wide beds. Before the weeds have a chance to find their way through the mulch, I have harvested the potatoes with just a bit of forking here. Since they are shallow, and have not been hilled, I can harvest the majority of them with my hands without having to touch a fork or a spade.
Also considering how well the potatoes keep overwinter in the garage… I don't think it would take much monetary input, considering my available resources, to put together a proper root seller. My wild imagination sees me potentially selling a bag of potatoes to a neighbor in the middle of the winter?
I have no idea how I can get from just being an enthusiastic hobby gardener to someone who is able to profit, and even someday make a living off my families land.
In the UK, CSA stands for 'Child Support Agency' – Where divorced parents sort out payments / maintenance costs for any children that they have… I'm not sure how salad boxes can help here.
We're on our 4th year of a CSA after 2+ years of farmers market sales. (First year of CSA, 2014, we also sold surplus at the farmer's market occasionally.) I concur with all your points, except I am a little puzzled that you consider broccoli and cauliflower to be low value crops. Broccoli gives us a good 4-6 weeks of yield from one planting and cauliflower was the highest demand and the highest yield in $ at the farmer's market for us. The weeks we had cauliflower and broccoli it was sold out in the first half hour at what we thought were exorbitant prices.
Perhaps it is a space thing? Those heavy feeder brassicas do take a lot of room and can hold a spot for 80 days. Space is not a problem for us except very early in the season before our main growing areas dry out. (We have 19 acres between the two of us, though we only plant an acre or so right now, plus we have a 1 acre low pH remote field where we grow potatoes and winter squash. )
just fyi – i clicked on this video specifically so i could find out what a csa is
I also clicked on this to find out what a csa was also lol, I'm digesting every video you have in preparation for starting to transition to full time farmer. I've been a small scale backyard vegetable gardener nearly my whole life, being parents always had a garden. After seeing one of your videos totally by chance the 75K on. 1/3 acre you have inspired me Curtis! I've decided to make my favorite hobby a full time career!
Community Supported Agriculture, got it , something I'd done before lol and didn't even know it. Some areas, Boise, Idaho, where I'm from for example there called a community garden or neighborhood garden.
Do your neighbors think your nuts walking around talking to a selfie stick? Haha. I like what you're doing. I have a 4400 acre cattle ranch here in Montana and thinking of doing a CSA of a sort to bring in more income. How do your greenhouses hold up to strong winds?
That iPhone 7 takes really sharp videos.
Love your videos and the clarity offered. Given your 'worldwide' audience I wonder why you would not say what CSA meant in your jurisdiction. For many other jurisdictions it means Child Sexual Abuse which I'm sure was not what you intended. Funny how Baal has us confused . . .
I would also think a big part of the decision is just the availability and proximity to restaurants or a farmer´s market. You have done some videos talking about restaurants, but I would imagine a lot of farmers don´t have dozens of restaurants for specialty crops as potential buyers. For many urban areas, marketing for CSA participants is probably much less work and requires less business sales experience, it is more folksy.
Canadian Space Agency?
''the urban farm broker. i did this for a year.'' what was the reason you stopped?
You can do videos on the crops that are the fastest ones and the slower ones and which one that has higher profits and the lowest profit ones. In my location as far as I know that the restaurants near me don’t have micro greens! That would be a good choice for me to take the average of in my area.
I just checked out a csa for my city yesterday and was debating on joining up as a beginner. Good ideas there for me to work on. Thanks Curtis.
Thank you very much for the video I appreciate all your words of wisdom! So I have been wanting to do a CSA for the past two years now, I live on 11 acres and my garden is about an acre however I can expand it anytime. So this spring summer I will try to do a small CSA program and also look into trying to sell to some local restaurants and grocery stores. So my question is how do I go about selling to the restaurants when this will be technically my first year selling to the public? Wondering if you have a video on this and also the best way to bag and market or produce container wise label wise ??? Would I be better off just taking online course?!
CSA – Canadian Space Agency. Good clients
In the UK CSA means Child Support Agency, so a google search for CSA is not helpful, thank you for the vid description tho as that tells me to search for Community Supported Agriculture and that yields the info I need
it would have taken you 10 seconds to explain it
I'm interested in a CSA because I'm about to rent an acre, don't have a place to put a bubbler/spinner, and don't want to worry about produce wilting much. Therefore, I don't want to grow an acre of greens. It would be too much for me to do alone. However, if I do a CSA, greens may be less than 10% of the box!
Absoluted clear and good explanation. Thank you
Very helpful.
So what about on a large CSA? I mean I worked on a csa that was 1 acre by the greenhouse and around 10 acres around the property.
Super helpful! You have been the best source of information for our small farm.
For inquiring minds: Community Supported Agriculture
Getting involved with a start up CSA in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. What software do you use to manage customers, crops, outsourcing, billing, etc.? Would prefer something Mac compatible with an iPhone interface, too.
Would it be unrealistic to start a CSA on 500-1000 acres? I'm willing to buy a 3-row raised bed layer. I already have a large cattle and hay operation but want to diversify into something bigger that involves the community around me. I have always loved the idea of a CSA, but lack experience in growing fruits and vegetables, especially on a large scale. is this something that you would consult on? I thought I would reach out to my extension agent but they rarely have good advice. What is the learning curve to growing vegetables on a successful level?
If you were to plant a 50ft bed one behalf of a customer…where they order what gets planted in it…(or a local sponsor, to donate the food to a soup kitchen on their behalf, etc)… …with a range of 10 veggie options or so… …how much would you charge per bed?
I have access thousands of acres…so we can handle any number of beds. I was thinking $400 per bed, per season. Maybe $500.
What do you think?
Thank you for your advise. "CSA, I am not going to tell you here. Look it up on Google." So I stopped and did just that. Thank you for not wasting my time for something you could have said in 10 seconds. End of video.
Good to the point perspecive on CSAs straight from the horse's mouth…
I have a gigantic amount of space (4 acres) i am starting a market farm solo and should be able to do CSA and keep the high value crops growing too