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What would the 2000 sq.ft. farm, let’s call it a micro-farm, look like?
How could you best utilize that space and take many of the techniques that Curtis uses on his current 1/2 acre urban farm, to make the micro-farm generate some decent cash flow.
How much could you make on a micro-farm of just 2000 square feet?
Really it depends on what you are growing and who you are selling it to. But grossing 20,000 on that 2000 square feet isn’t crazy talk. And even half that, $10,000, is a realistic target to shoot for.
When you think about that, that’s a pretty lucrative given the space involved. I think most people can get access to 2000 sq.ft. That’s essentially fits well within your average American lawn.
The 2000 square foot micro-farm has a lot of things going for it. It’s manageable, yet scaleable. It’s big enough to matter to start you thinking and implementing a lot of these systems, yet it’s not over whelming. It makes a great transition plot for someone looking to transition into farming or just get their feed wet.
Given that today will be a case study looking at the 2000 sw ft micro farm.
We’ll break down what this farm might look like. How you would want to manage it. What types of crops you would want to focus on, and put some a basic framework in place that you can build off of.
As, you see, you can do a lot with 2000 square feet, and it might not be that small after all…
Making the 2000 Square Foot Micro-Farm Work
- Where are you going to sell the product?
- This will dictate what you grow.
- Try to utilize cut and come again crops to take advantage of the space.
- With greens it is realistic to do $20,000 per 2000 sq.ft.
- Take out greens and you are still likely above $10k.
- Your layout would probably be: 24 – 25ft. beds in 2000 sq.ft.
- Segment the bed into quarters and manage those quarters as successions.
- Could you grow in field microgreens to further take advantage of the limited space.
- Playing along at home – in field microgreens – page number.
- Depending on your market essentially just shrink down what other farmers are doing to a micro scale.
- Growing some lower value crops as loss leaders and to increase diversity could make sense.
- What starting a small farm will allow you to do…
- Start building a customer base.
- Start interacting with customers.
- Find out what those customers want.
- Find out what the customer base in your area is – who is the market.
- Force you to start crafting your marketing and branding.
- What is your sales pitch?
- Get you to figure out if you even like doing this.
- Are you a fair weather farmer?
- Do you like growing, but hate keeping records and running a business?
- Do you like selling your products?
- Get you to start learning a crop and the nuances of it.
- Gets you started in keeping track of data.
- Start building a customer base.
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