Year-round farm business development for dream farms, current start-ups, and newly established operations.
This interactive course will be an opportunity to Build Your Farm on paper from the ground up using real-world numbers. Learn to use cash flow spreadsheets to project and track your current or future farm business annually.
Familiarize yourself with the flow of finances over the course of several growing seasons not with imaginary numbers, but your own.
Students will build-out their own farm projects using the templates provided in class.
Students will be required to work together and research outside of class to gather information to plug into their templates, which will be discussed during class time.
Some of the skills provided in this class will be: business planning, financial planning, seasonal planning, financial damage control, loan and grant opportunities and practicalities, as well as lots of practical information when planning and executing your farm business.
No matter where you live you can start a farm business. We will begin with a preferred zip code for your farm and build it out from there. At the beginning of the course you will have a blank template. By the end you will have a complete foundational farm vision to build off of for the future, one that includes income and expense projections based on real-world numbers tailored to your area.
This class will be fun and is intended to be empowering for growers thinking about or starting to transition to running their own operations, or established growers who still struggle to keep their numbers straight.
John is not going to teach you how to get rich farming. He will leave that to you. John is not a financial advisor, just a small farmer who has benefited from the tool of a clear financial spreadsheet.
The Marketing and Record Keeping course will follow up on some of the details discussed in the Build Your Farm course. We will discuss marketing strategies and the benefits and drawbacks of farmer’s markets, CSA programs, and wholesale accounts. We will also discuss farm planning records, such as planting and harvesting plans as well as certification planning. This class is led by John Kenny and Ben Coerper of Wild Harmony Farm.
A panel of Seed to Seed host farmers will share their expertise during class as well.