Whole Foods Market’s Local Producer Loan Program (LPLP) provides up to $10 million in low-interest loans to small, local producers. Why? Because we believe in supporting local farmers and producers. We want to make it easier for them to grow their businesses and bring more local products to market. That’s good for us and it’s good for you.

Loans range from $1,000 to $100,000 and can be for things like purchasing more animals, investing in new equipment or converting to organic production. We minimize the fees, interest rates and paperwork that can often get in the way of a small local farm or business taking the next step to expand its operations.

Here’s the Loan Application Page

Perhaps you can relate to this. Probably one of the most enjoyable thing for gardeners is watching new plants grow. I love it when one of my plants I grew from seed or cutting starts to grow, then flowers for the first time. I’m a vegetable gardener so I’m looking for results I can eat, but flowers count too!

The only problem with growing new plants is we get to many, our gardens get crowed and we end up throwing some out, or we stop growing new plants. One solution for this is to sell some. Not only does it provide you with some space in our greenhouse, it also allows you to finance our gardening hobby, for free.

That’s why many people believe that the most enjoyable business in the world is making money from growing plants, and if you have a few spare plants, you can start right away.

Now’s the time to get into this. First, there’s a boom in the plant market. Seed companies like Burpee are selling at all time highs. People believe they can get more from their garden than the stock market.

How do you take advantage of this? The first thing you will need to do is to start growing some plants. The best way to do this is to either, sow some seeds, Take some cuttings or divide some perennials.

Sowing Seeds

To me this is a easy way to grow plants. There are lots to chose from, to start with its probably best to grow some perennials such as Lupins, delphiniums, campanula, poppies ect. We want to chose plants which are easy to grow and flower quickly. Check out a seed catalogue and look for first year flowering.

Sow the seeds in a seed tray, wait for them to germinate and within a couple of weeks that can be potted. Once potted wait a for them to flower (six to eight weeks), then sell them.

Taking Cuttings

This is a little harder than seeds, but it opens up more possibilities. You can grow most plants from softwood cuttings, but our aim here is to grow and sell quick, so chose fuchia, geraniums, Phlox ect. You can grow shrubs also this way but we want quick results to start with so if you search the web for plants to grow this way, we want plants which will root in a week and flower young.

The easiest way to take cuttings is softwood cuttings, just cut out the tips of a stock plant, put them in a small pot, 5 cuttings per pot with seed compost and wait for them to root over the next 3-4 weeks.

Dividing Perennials

This is probably the fastest method. To do this you will need some large perennials in your garden (or a friends garden). Basically we then dig the plant up, split it into as many as you can, depending on the plant you can get up to 100 small plants out of a big plant.

That’s the easiest way is to dig up your large perennial in February, then cut it up unto small pieces with a piece of the crown and a root attached. Pot this into a small pot and wait about a month for it to grow. It should be saleable with a flower in a matter of months.

This covers the basics of growing plants to sell Hope you can see what I see. The chance of a great lifestyle business.

For more information check this out…

Then you may want to check out the resources at The Modern Homestead site!

I was just looking for some information on how to build a greenhouse (a cheap one!) when I ran across Bob Senz’ article on how to get the job done for about $140!

I look forward to reading more of Bob’s material in the future, and I’m sure you will too!

Related article: Living Off The Grid

Chuck's Square Foot Gardening Boxes

Yes, it’s time to think about your garden. Where I live people are tilling space for their gardens right now. I’m planning to go out and clean up my square foot gardening boxes with their “special mix” of ingredients.

Where I live, it’s time to consider setting out onion sets right now… and thinking about setting out cabbages.

What are your garden plans this year?

Related Link: My Organic Food Garden

You can see the video about it at this You Tube link

According to the Buckeye Institute who filed a legal complaint over these criminal antics, noted in their press release that:

“The use of these police state tactics on a peaceful family is simply unacceptable,” Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said. “Officers rushed into the Stowers’ home with guns drawn and held the family – including ten young children – captive for six hours. This outrageous case of bureaucratic overreach must be addressed.”

The Buckeye Institute argues the right to buy food directly from local farmers; distribute locally-grown food to neighbors; and pool resources to purchase food in bulk are rights that do not require a license. In addition, the right of peaceful citizens to be free from paramilitary police raids, searches and seizures is guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 14, Article 1 of the Ohio Constitution.

“The Stowers’ constitutional rights were violated over grass-fed cattle, pastured chickens and pesticide-free produce,” Buckeye Institute 1851 Center of Constitutional Law Director Maurice Thompson said. “Ohioans do not need a government permission slip to run a family farm and co-op, and should not be subjected to raids when they do not have one. This legal action will ensure the ODA understands and respects Ohioans’ rights.”

They originally scheduled two days of “gleaning” – allowing free picking of vegetables left over after the commercial harvest of their potato, carrot, and leek crops.

They expected 5,000 or perhaps 10,000. 40,000 showed up!

Though a 600 acre farm isn’t you’re average “home business” … this is certainly one home business that’s making a difference.

But take note that they are talking primarily about high overhead super market venues.

Local farms that sell regionally and directly to customers have an advantage here.

1. They build relationships with their customers

2. They are getting the retail and middleman’s mark up

3. They are not paying for expensive retail grocery space

4. They do it for love, not just money

5. They can usually eat/barter/freeze what they don’t sell

6. They are marketing not only food but “experiences” and regional travel

7. They may be marketing directly to restaurants who provide steady demand

While people may not want “designer organic foods”, they want SAFE foods. They are tending to want LOCAL foods.

In other words, people with the resolve to run a family farm who know how to market probably started relatively poor and know how to live that way. Often they are there by conviction regarding quality of life issues and (if Amish for example) religious convictions.

So many have a resilience that a chain store with stockholders don’t have.

It reminded of the “Where’s George?” website that lets people track where their dollar bills have been by the bill’s serial number.

This little country girl wrote her name and address on an egg sold at the town market. The egg ended up on a  merchant vessel and the ship’s cook wrote it down before using the egg creating a life long relationship with the little girl.

If you’re selling a “real world product” (even if you’re a reseller for someone else but you actually handle the merchandise before it gets to the end user) is there some way to personalize your product  ala “The Friendship Egg” and “Where’s George?” to get people to relate back to you personally?

Labels (or rubber stamps) are inexpensive and a website can be fairly straightforward. You can even draw the customer’s attention to it at the point of check out. Could you offer…

1. Log on to www.________.com for a special discount on your next purchase

2. Enter your digital vacation photo in our contest at www.___________.com

3. “Learn the secret behind our Amazon Rain Forest shampoo by visiting www.______.com and entering this password”

How can you get customers to bounce back to you?

Here’s a place we visited this summer in Crow Buttes , South Dakota that was charming and convenient and ideally positioned for one of these “bounceback” techniques. But they never captured our name or email address. But here’s a picture of the general store there. A beautiful little business!

I have family members, for instance, who love raw milk… some to drink, some to make kefir, a “probiotic” rich fermented milk product.

Where they live, it’s illegal to sell “raw”milk directly from the farm, but the owners of a cow can drink their own milk.

So the smart farmer who has customers craving raw milk sells “shares” in his dairy herd.

This is a great article about the trend towards “community supported” farming. Organic produce which used to be “expensive” has a competitive advantage now since local produce doesn’t have to be trucked across the country.

This method provides annual seed capital – no pun intended – and can provide cash flow when cash is ordinarily in short supply.

Usually the right to buy at discounted prices is contingent on paying the up front “share”.

The farm bills of the past, and this new farm bill are not any different–all have attempted to take the natural economic swings out of farming, providing a safety floor to landowners and farmers. The end result of these policies is that they have driven up the price of land which makes it virtually impossible for a new farmer to enter the profession, focused production into a handful of crops, hurt small towns by diminishing farming diversification, pushed farm ownership into the hands of non-farmers and, in my opinion, seriously hurt rural America.

Congress has caused some major disruptions in rural America by incentivizing farmers in the wrong ways. Our small towns all across the country have suffered as a result. It is too bad that they don’t learn from their past mistakes and the Law of Unintended Consequences, leaving the market to sort out the winners and losers. America and especially rural America would be much better, if they did.

Just when entrepreneurs are seeking to reinvigorate local, organic agriculture and meet the soaring demand for clean food locally grown, this legislation drives up the price of land so that, in effect, work at home agriculturalists can’t enter the market.