Bootstrap @ The Golden Yoke – Pasture Management
Pasture management in Montana is not just about building fence and moving cows. First and foremost it is about irrigation. Because of our arid climate we rely heavily on irrigation water, which is...
View ArticleBootstrap @ North Country Creamery – Pasture Management
For a grassfed dairy like ours, pasture is our bread and butter. Similar to most of our grassfed friends, we move the milking herd to a new grazing paddock every 12 hours. On the bright side for our...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Chaseholm Farm – Reflections on Marketing
This is post is coming at a good time for the farm, we were approved for raw milk sales last week and concrete was poured in our future tiny farm store. Getting into dairy farming from cheese making...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Blue Sage Farm – developing a marketing plan
Farmer’s markets have been the mainstay of my marketing plan for the past 9 years. They are a great way to get a small farm up and running with some cash flow but there are downsides to farmer’s...
View ArticleBootstrap @ North Country Creamery – developing a marketing plan
This year we took a multi-prong approach to marketing. I was striving toward an ideal that we would sell most of our products through a CSA. We managed to serve around a dozen members locally, and...
View ArticleBootstrap @ The Golden Yoke – Marketing and Sales
For marketing, like the rest of our farm venture, we are starting small with big visions for the future. We currently have a logo, a Facebook page, a domain name, and are within a couple days of...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Corse Family Farm – Thoughts on Marketing
When it comes to marketing on our farm we are in an entirely different boat than my fellow Bootstrap contributors. One of the most beneficial aspects (for us at least) of belonging to a cooperative is...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Chaseholm Farm – Farm Policy at Home
Hi all, it’s a rainy day in the Hudson Valley and the cows are inside, we made our rotation last until October 27th in our first season. Not bad…but room for improvement. Today’s post is about policy...
View ArticleBootstrap @ North Country Creamery – Farm Policy on the Small Farm
The most direct interaction I have with the government in the dairy business comes through the New York Sate Department of Agriculture and Markets. Every month, the inspector comes to collect product...
View ArticleBootstrap @ The Golden Yoke – State Policy Comes to the Farm in Montana
Policy is one of those subjects that people either seem to love or hate. Some farmers have no interest in getting involved with policy, even though it might directly affect them. And clearly, most...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Chaseholm Farm – Final Reflections on 2013
Before I had started farming I used to think about writing in a notebook or generally documenting my first steps so that I could look back and know what I had done and how to make it better. But once I...
View ArticleBootstrap @ The Golden Yoke – Looking Back, Looking Ahead
It is hard to believe that this is our last post as Bootstrap Bloggers. This year has flown by; it seems like it was just a few weeks ago that we were writing our first installment. When we wrote the...
View ArticleBootstrap @ North Country Creamery – The Year in Review
Now I understand how Kristin Kimball filled her book The Dirty Life with stories from her first year farming. I’ve been working on farms for over a decade, but this was my first year running a...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Blue Sage Farm – Reflections on Policy and Regulation
I have to say I feel really lucky that I have a great dairy inspector. I’ve heard horror stories about how an inspector can make your life miserable but I haven’t experienced that. I think it helps...
View ArticleAnnouncing the 2014 Bootstrap Writer Series Winners!
We are excited to announce the start to the Bootstrap Writing Series of 2014! This year we’ve selected four farmers from across the country who are in the early stages of starting their farms to share...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Forager Farm – Welcome to the 2014 Season!
My name is Hannah Sargent and I am a marketer turned farmer turned marketing-farmer. My fiancé Jonathon Moser and I own and run Forager Farm, a vegetable CSA in central North Dakota and are in our...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Nightfall Farm – Welcome to our 2014 Season!
You know that magic moment when you finally slam your tractor out of creeper gear and start to move with a bit of speed? Starting our farm is like that, only I didn’t realized we had been in creeper...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Wild Ridge Farm – Hello from Fredonia, Wisconsin!
Wild Ridge Farm is the convergence of three highly-skilled and passionate individuals: Anna Metscher, Alissa Moore and Joseph Dittman. Anna and Alissa have a combined farming experience of eleven years...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Lemonade Springs Farm – Welcome to our 2014 Season!
Lemonade Springs Farm is run by myself, Seth, and my partner, Kathleen. We are in our second full season. The farm is located in Watsonville, California, about a mile inland in the heart of the central...
View ArticleBootstrap @ Lemonade Springs Farm – Why I’m a Farmer
Recently, I had a conversation with a woman whose fifty-one years of experience farming inspired her to warn me away from pursuing it. Farming, you see, is a career full of troubles. There are...
View Article