Farm Flows - Leveraging Your Fixed Costs

 
I think a lot about how we’ll manage the cash flows at Little Seed during the first few years of operation. It’s an extremely important topic because it can literally make or break your business... no matter how well you appear to be doing. Fast growing, seemingly profitable companies go under all the time and the culprit is typically poor cash flow management. One way to prepare for (and hopefully avoid) that unfortunate circumstance is to understand your fixed and variable costs. In this post I’ll cover what that means and how it can impact your business and in a later post I’ll expand into how it applies to various circumstances (debt load, working capital needs, etc).
Read More

Farm Hopping: Milking and Cheesemaking at Sprout Creek Farm

In the latest installment of Farm Hopping, Scrapple and Sweetbreads go to Sprout Creek Farm! Twice!

Sprout Creek Farm, Little Seed Farm, Barn, To Be A FarmerSprout Creek Farm - Photo by Sprout Creek's Georgie Blaeser Sprout Creek Farm is a highly diversified farm with farm enterprises including dairy cows, sheep, pigs, meat & laying chickens, turkeys, an on-farm retail market and more. The farm is structured as a non-profit and is operated by the Society of the Sacred Heart. Sprout is most well-known for its cheese and youth summer camp. The farm produces 15 varieties of cheese from approximately 400,000 pounds of milk from herds of ~40 cows and ~65 goats. As if Sprout’s excellent cheese wasn’t enough of a highlight, the farm also offers kids the opportunity to spend the summer on the farm participating in all aspects of farming. Gardening, milking, animal husbandry, you name it! The staff’s ability to teach 10 yrs olds about farming turned out to be perfect for getting us up to speed!
Read More

Work-Life Balance? Isn’t That Why We’re Starting a Farm?

 
Over the past year we’ve spent a lot of time reading books and chatting with farmers of all shapes and sizes. Veteran farmers, young farmers, former farmers, aspiring farmers, urban farmers... if it ends with farmer we’ve found someone to tell us about it! Aspiring farmers, including ourselves, tend to have a romantic view of life on the farm. We may tell you that we understand it's hard work, but no matter how many farms we visit and how many farmers we speak with I still can’t get that image out of my head.
 
Part of it is because when we visit and work on farms we don’t really get to see the most difficult aspects of farm life. We’re agri-tourists. At the end of the trip we get to
Read More