Small Businesses Doing Well Building and Maintaining Backyard “Microfarms”

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-farmers-for-hire-20100502,0,5980031,full.story

by mcantelon • 16 years ago

35 18 16 years ago

karzeem2• 16 years ago

Fascinating stuff. It would be nice if after harping on how expensive it is, the author put the cost in perspective, maybe by giving a rough $/pound comparison between, say, this, a farmer's market, a CSA, and the grocery store. $20 a week isn't bad at all if it's getting four people the majority of their produce. And I know a lot of people who'd pay a premium for this.

bmj• 16 years ago

Agreed. We pay ~$24 a week for our CSA share (which is generally plenty for our family of four, and often includes other stuff like eggs or cheese each week). During the winter, I pay at least that much in produce at the local co-op.

thaumaturgy3• 16 years ago

I really enjoy having a backyard garden. Although it doesn't produce much in the way of food value -- if I'm lucky, I'll get some potatoes, onions, zucchini and corn this year -- I find working in it a few minutes at a time to be stress-relieving and therapeutic, and it's nice to look out the window and see green things growing.

I hope this is a trend that continues for lots of families, actually.

On an unrelated note, I got a kick out of seeing that his revenues jumped "to $54,000" last year. That was my business's second-year gross, and I didn't think it was all that noteworthy.

karzeem2• 16 years ago

Do you happen to know roughly how many pounds of produce you get out of every 100 square feet?

thaumaturgy3• 16 years ago

Well, last year it was < 1, due to seriously bad soil, deer, and inexperience. All we got out of the effort was some really amazing basil.

This year should be a lot better, but the deer haven't re-discovered me yet, so we'll see.

I don't really optimize for yield though; there are a bunch of neat things that can be done for that, and I'm partly doing this just because I like playing in the dirt when I'm stuck on the phone.

ctd• 16 years ago

"Farmscape pulled in about $54,000 for the first four months of this year--$22,000 more than last year"

thaumaturgy3• 16 years ago

Whoops -- well, that's a horse of a different color. Thanks.

mark_l_watson• 16 years ago

I agree: very stress reducing. My wife and I have 21 sq ft of containers on the deck right outside of our kitchen and close to where I work at home. Getting up frequently to "tend" our mini-garden is great. Also, we eat a bit of our own fresh produce almost every day. I like to grow Thai basil, regular basil, lots of onions of all types, hot peppers, brocoli, brussel sprouts, lettuce, and tomatoes. It is important to plant different types of produce at the correct time of year.

I like earth boxes: water goes in the bottom, roots get watered, minimizes evaporation so they are very water efficient.

orblivion• 16 years ago

Wait a second, if this is getting popular because of the recession, why is it more expensive than Whole Foods?

sethg2• 16 years ago

The cynical answer would be “so you can out-snob the snobs who buy all their produce at Whole Foods”, but I can come up with a less cynical answer.

Assume that in the long run, rising oil prices and what-not are going to make food more expensive and, in general, degrade your standard of living.

Then it makes a certain amount of sense to get in on the backyard-gardening thing now and invest the necessary money and effort into improving your soil, figuring out what kinds of plants work there and what doesn’t work, etc., so that you actually have something useful by the time the Apocalypse hits.

It makes not quite so much sense to hire someone else to do all this work for you, but, well, if your gardener moves to Oregon to escape the Apocalypse maybe he’ll at least leave you all his notes.

Of course, if I were thinking about the Apocalypse, I wouldn’t want to live in a part of the continent whose residents depended on faraway sources for fresh water. So maybe we’re back to the snobbery explanation. Or maybe I, as a New Englander, am just more of a snob than all the Californians.

matrix• 16 years ago

A quote comes to mind:

"[She] lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side."

    -- Terry Pratchett, in "Men at Arms"

scotch_drinker• 16 years ago

It says that more people are getting into this line of work because they have lost their jobs in the recession, not because they want to grow cheaper food at home that actually costs a lot more than Whole Foods.

People who can spend $1675 a year on having someone else grow their produce for them are probably a lot less likely to have been affected by the recession.

jmm• 16 years ago

Here's the site if anyone is curious about Farmscape: http://www.farmscapegardens.com/#home

The cost saving argument is probably a stretch: "In many cases, installing a Farmscape garden in the place of an existing lawn can lower your monthly yard maintenance and irrigation expenses. Depending on crop selection, most customers can expect to break even against the installation cost of the garden with the savings over organic grocery or farmers market purchases and the gas and time for the errands. This also depends heavily on how you value high quality fresh-picked produce and how you value your own time spent inspecting fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle."

But as another commenter points out, this is more about keeping up with the Jones than saving money. There's a chicness in CA these days in having a bountiful garden (chickens provide an extra level chicness in some places). And whereas the DIYers have set the trend and have embraced the dirt and sweat of the enterprise (see http://www.amazon.com/Farm-City-Education-Urban-Farmer/dp/15...), the green-leaning elite are willing to buy their way to the promised land. Another version of the same old story, no?

In terms of urban harvest, I think this is way cooler, although who knows if it's successful from an environmental-economics standpoint: http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2009/57477/

sethg2• 16 years ago

The cost saving argument might not be that much of a stretch, if you consider that

(a) as human-vs-nature struggles go, playing at subsistence agriculture might be less arduous than trying to imitate a British lawn in the Southern California desert climate

(b) the people in Farmscape’s target market are probably people who would otherwise be hiring a gardener to maintain their lawns

slapshot• 16 years ago

Feels like a fun hobby and stress release, not a cost-efficient way to grow food nor particularly environmentally friendly (they're using drinking water irrigation in the Los Angeles desert instead of agricultural water or graywater, the guy has to drive from plot to plot, etc).

terrellm• 16 years ago

I think this kind of thing is great - people gaining a closer connection with nature and also knowing where their food comes from.

My wife and I have a small ranch near College Station Texas (home of Texas A&M University) where we raise a herd of Texas Longhorn steers, for natural lean beef as well as their beauty. I can't tell you how relaxing it is to walk through the pasture at the end of the day. It's not only relaxing, but a great opportunity to get more "think time".

johnohara• 16 years ago

Container gardening is far more efficient and cost effective than yard farming. It yields an equal amount of satisfaction, is easier to manage and allows for a better balanced landscape.

Large planters, raised beds and strategically located pots seem to me preferable to hiring someone to come "tend the lower 400 sq. ft."

ebiester• 16 years ago

Looking at the picture, it looks like they were doing container farming. If I wasn't sure of moving within the next two years, I'd be doing it myself.

Small Businesses Doing Well Building and Maintaining Backyard “Microfarms”

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