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So maybe you’re planning on starting out your farm, or you’re already in the middle of a start-up farm. How do you plan on marketing your produce and your farm? Who are you first going to tap to start the marketing process?
Today, we’ll be talking to a start-up farmer, Jay Reid of Resilient Farms in New Jersey. Jay has faced all the struggles that come with starting up a brand new farm, and today, he’ll talk about just how he and his fiancée, Kat, have made it through them.
Today’s Guest: Jay Reid
Jay Reid co-owns Resilient Farms in New Jersey with his fiancée, Kat. They have recently started farming together, and they have managed to successfully market their produce using their existing network. Jay has now quit his off-farm job to pursue farming full-time.
Relevant Links
Resilient Farms – Website | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram
In this episode of Farm Small, Farm Smart
- Today’s guest, Jay Reid of Resilient Farms in New Jersey (00:40)
- How Jay met his partner, Kat, and how they got into farming (02:15)
- Navigating the challenges of farming together as a couple (03:20)
- Preserving and honoring the business while maintaining the relationship by setting boundaries (05:45)
- “The planning stage is just as important as the planting stage.” (08:40)
- What needs to be done at the farm and what can realistically be done at the farm (11:50)
- Planning the finances: securing a nest egg before diving into the business (14:30)
- Ramping up sales and the pressure to keep up with the demand (17:30)
- The logic behind choosing which market streams to sell to and finding that “initial tribe” (19:35)
- What salad CSA’s are and how they’re packaged (23:50)
- The sizes and the prices of salad CSA’s (25:55)
- Utilizing the existing network to successfully market a brand-new CSA (27:45)
- How Jay and Kat approached branding and building their identity as a small-scale vegetable farm (32:30)
- Standing out as new vegetable vendors and translating the identity into a physical presence (36:35)
- Specializing in certain crops and produce to build an identity (40:25)
- Developing the farm from the ground up with a regenerative farming mindset (43:45)
- To use or not to use horse manure, given that the farm is on a horse property (48:35)
- Approaching the concept of a living wage and taking account of hours spent on the farm (50:40)
- How Jay and Kat divide the workload between them (53:45)
- Something from jujitsu that is applicable to farming (55:40)
- The biggest shock to the initial dreams of farming (58:55)
- Switching from a fear-based mentality to an empowerment-based mentality (01:02:20)
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