Closing on the Farm - Nobody Said It'd Be Easy!

It's Tuesday afternoon, just wrapping up a couple meetings that have been WAY too long. Looking forward to heading home, eating a meal and planning what to pack for our trip out to Tennessee for the closing on Friday. "Only three more days" I think to myself, "then we’re really locked in!" About that time the phone in my pocket starts buzzing incessantly. One ring doesn’t really surprise me, but multiple calls in a row gets a little worrisome. Now I want out of this meeting even more.

I head to my office and check the missed calls. All 615 area codes. Interesting. That’s Nashville and the surrounding area, so certainly this has something to do with closing. I hope this is routine and not trouble.
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Insurance for the Small Farm

Following up on the First Time Farm-Buyer's Checklist, I posted some thoughts on insurance over on beginningfarmers.org. What are your experiences with insurance?

1.) Proximity to fire station

When we were looking at properties we hadn’t considered the fact that insurance companies might prefer it if we were close to a fire station! Wait, aren’t fire stations all over the place? Well, turns out if you’re in the middle of nowhere they could be pretty far away. These types of things don’t cross us city-folks’ minds.

Continue Reading at beginningfarmers.org

Getting Local Food Beyond the Coasts

In the recently released USDA study Direct and Intermediated Marketing of Local Foods in the United States there's a section dedicated to local food sales by region. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of local and direct-marketed food sales take place on the West coast and in the Northeast region (see map below). In this post I'll try to identify why this situation exists and some ideas for how it can be remedied.

Why is Local Food Concentrated on the Coasts?

 

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