About this podcast
Carrot Cashflow is the first 100% business-focused podcast for small-scale farmers and market gardeners.
Learn how to market your farm products better, increase sales, and get more customers. This show is for anyone who wants to run a farm business profitably.
Each episode explores a farm business topic. Some episodes feature guests where we talk with a beginning or experienced farmer, diving deep into their story to determine what makes their farm successful. I focus on farming challenges and struggles, sales and marketing, social media marketing, farm startup, market selection, and work-life balance.
Hosted and produced by Diego Footer's Modern Grower Podcast Network. Diego is also the co-author of the book Ready Farmer One.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 132 episodes
- The $5,000 Loan This Farmer Wishes He'd Taken (Debt 2 of 2) · 20 minLast time, Diego made the case for starting debt-free. This is the other half: the specific, testable situations where borrowing isn't reckless, it's strategic. Five tests to run…
- Should Your Market Farm Be Debt-Free? (Debt 1 of 2) · 17 minFor years, Diego's answer was the same: kill all debt, pay cash, operate lean. But then he interviewed a farmer who did exactly that: zero debt, minimal overhead, cash for…
- The Math Nobody Does Before Starting a Farm · 17 minAlmost every new farmer does the bed math: yield per row foot, CSA shares to break even. Almost nobody does the life math: what your household actually needs, what happens when…
- This Farmer Sells Out Every Week, But He's Still Broke · 21 minWhat's the most common advice when a farm isn't making money? Sell more. Find more customers. Add a market. Get into wholesale. And if demand is your problem, that's the right…
- He Thought Farming Would Be Easier in 5 Years (He Was Wrong) · 15 minBack in 2019, Troy and Cindy Dickens quit their jobs, sold their house, paid off every dollar of debt, and started farming half an acre while living in a school bus off-grid. One…
- Nobody Designs Their Farm for Their Kids (Then Everything Breaks) · 12 minA farmer told me something that stopped me cold: "I don't think we ever designed the farm well enough around having children." Seven years in, two kids, and that sentence had…
- A Brutally Honest Look at Farming With a Young Family (CC61) · 1 h 22 minThe last time Troy Dickens and Diego talked was 2020: no kids, a farm in Massachusetts, and Troy living in a converted school bus. Five years later, Troy and Cindy run Tilth and…
- The Reselling Strategy That Added $30,000 to One Farm · 14 minThere's a place on the market farming map where most farms go to die. It's not the ones that are too big or too small...it's the ones in the middle. Five acres, ten acres, mixed…
- Why Small Market Gardens Thrive - Be Careful Expanding · 14 minThere's a place on the market farming map where most farms go to die. It's not the ones that are too big or too small...it's the ones in the middle. Five acres, ten acres, mixed…
- The Boring Path to Full-Time Farming That Actually Works · 45 minThe romantic story goes: quit the soul-crushing job, buy some land, start a farm, never look back. Here's what actually happens: most people who do that fail within a few years…
- How Ben Hartman Plans His Whole Season With Three Questions · 16 minMost farmers plan their season by opening a seed catalog and picking what's pretty, what's new, and what their friends are growing. The best farmers open a one-page sheet, sit…
- Ben Hartman Makes $1,000 Per Bed...on a Third of an Acre · 18 min"Every bed here should generate $1,000 of value." That's Ben Hartman, standing on 15,000 square feet...a third of an acre. Twenty years ago, he started on a 1,000-acre corn and…
- Ben Hartman: How to Stay in Business 20 Years by Doing Less, Better (CC60) · 1 h 0 minBen Hartman wrote The Lean Farm in 2015 and changed how a generation of market gardeners thinks about systems and waste. Twenty growing seasons in, he farms just 15,000 square…
- Why Farm Businesses Fail When They Scale · 16 minThe hardest part of farming isn't starting. It's what happens when things start working: when customers show up, when market days get bigger, when you need more beds, more hands…
- 7 Hidden Costs of Your First Year at a Farmers Market · 16 minEveryone says the farmers market is the obvious place to start. Low barrier to entry — show up with an easy-up, a table, and a cooler. But low barrier to entry is not the same as…
- How 3 Farmers Built Financial Independence Without Quitting Their Jobs · 13 minSeven and a half years ago, a farmer wrote down five goals. The last one: use a farm to buy a farm. He just closed on fifty acres for over a million dollars. The farm's financial…
- From $247 Market Days to $10,000 Weeks (CC59) · 45 minShane and his wife started with two 8×12 plots as a hobby. Nine years later they own a 50-acre property in Sarnia, Ontario, market garden on 2.5 acres, and crossed $200,000 in…
- $130K/Year Selling Lettuce (Zero Farmer's Markets, Zero Packaging Costs) · 15 min$130,000 in farm revenue. $30,000 take-home. Where does the other $100,000 go? That gap is the most useful part of Chef Mikey Russo's story. Watch the video on our YouTube…
- Can You Make a Living Farming? (It Depends on 5 Things You're Not Counting) · 23 minA hundred and thirty thousand (yes, $130,000) in farm revenue sounds great until you see what stays. Chef Mikey Russo took home $30,000 from his farm last year. He paid $40,000…
- $130K/Year Selling Lettuce & Still Turns Down Customers · 14 minMichael Russo spent 20 years as a chef working 80-hour weeks, sometimes 100. He walked away at 40 with no farming experience, no degree, and no business background. First real…
