The Five Things That Made My Farm More Profitable and More Enjoyable with Farmer Conor Crickmore of Neversink Farm (FSFS93)

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Today it’s Part Two of the series with Conor.  [Part 1 HERE]

As you heard last week, along with his wife Kate, Conor Crickmore is grossing over $350k per year at Neversink Farm in upstate NY. A lot of money for a very small farm, and the amazing thing is, they still think there’s room to grow.

In today’s episode, we’ll focus more on production as Conor gets into the why and how, of how future growth is possible for Neversink.

He’ll talk about some of the challenges that he sees many struggling farms facing, and how in many ways the answer to those problems is simplification and standardization.

Two base principles run through everything that they do on the farm.

Conor will also discuss in depth the five things that have made their farm as profitable as it is, while simultaneously making their quality of life better.

And we not just talking gear here, or buy this or that. Again, it’s base principles that have really made Neversink successful, and those base principles are ones that you could apply on your farm today.

With that, let’s get into it with Conor Crickmore of Neversink Farm.

The Five Things:

1.  All the mistakes that they have made and learning from them.
   1. Quickly learning from them, and seeing what mistakes had in common, then changing and improving from there.
   2. Philisophy around those mistakes was: simplify, reduce work, make smart infrastructure decisions to make life easier.
2. Selecting Better and Better Markets
   1. Farmers markets offer flexiblity in terms of having product.
   2. Keep displays looking really nice and as though they have never been touched.
      1. Pile it high.
      2. “Look big.”
         1. Look bigger than they are.
         2. Look like there is an endless supply on the table.
      3. They want it slightly hard for people to pay for it.
         1. If no one is complaining about it, then it’s probably too cheap.  
      4. Don’t want to be loosing money for people who don’t care what the price is.
3. Getting weeds under control.
   1. “When you defeat it, the farm changes.”
4. Moving towards protected culture.
   1. “You can only keep weed pressure off the field so much – there will always be some.”
   2. No weed pressure inside the protected culture.
   3. Instead of buying a new house – upgrading houses to increase the production, lower costs
   4. Make each house more valuable, instead of expanding with similar houses.
5. Systematizing Everything
   1. Start with a system and improve that system over time.

Other Tips:

• Simplify down:
  • Get rid of processes that aren’t needed.
  • Crops that aren’t as popular.
  • Crops outside of what they do mainly and well.
    • Things their system isn’t setup for.
• Big problems he sees farmers facing:
  • Not dealing with weed pressure.
  • Not having a system of standardization 

Connect with Conor:

Neversink Farm

Neversink Farm on Facebook

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