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If you’re seriously considering starting a microfarm, I have a few preliminary questions for you.

What are you trying to accomplish? If you’re thinking that a microfarm can support your entire family, you’d better change the plan to a macrofarm, because that’s unlikely to happen. It is better to think of microfarming as an enhancement to what income you already have, and that’s why I recommend it for retirees, people who work from home already (like writers), or entrepreneurs who will use the microfarm to supply the basic goods for food products they manufacture.

Do you have time to farm? No, this is not a trick question. Spread out over the entire growing season, I estimate that I spent two hours a day maintaining my microfarm in 2013. But since the summer days are long, many of those hours can happen before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m., and you can always catch up on weekends if you have a real job.

What do you like to grow, or want to grow? My father taught me how to grow tomatoes more than sixty years ago, and I’m still doing it. It’s a crop I love to grow and I’m good at it, so it made sense for me to experiment with tomatoes first. Or, there could be a crop out there that you’ve always wanted to grow, like mushrooms or medical marijuana. My point here is that you have to be motivated by growing something you like and have the desire to grow it, and grow it well.

What is your skill/knowledge level? This book is not a guide to growing microfarm crops, but rather a guide to help you decide whether or not to farm, and if you decide to do it, helping you formulate a plan of action. Experience is always helpful, but it is not necessary. For example, Leo Lascaux, whose story is in Part 2, had never grown any plant before in his life. Yet he made a profit his first year of growing medical marijuana, and it was a significant one.

What do you know about running a business? This is actually more important than having gardening skills, because a microfarm is a business, not a garden. If you’ve never been an entrepreneur before, there are many books and courses on the subject. This is a microfarm-specific guide, so I recommend that you find a basic book on entrepreneurship and study it. Check out the last part of this book, Suggested Reading.

Where would you grow your microfarm crops? Unless you’re growing medical marijuana, your microfarm does not have to be on your own property. Fields and farms are often leased to other growers, and many arrangements of that nature can be made. There are some greenhouse operators who shut down greenhouses during the winter because they don’t grow crops or bedding plants in them, and if you can convince the owner that you can handle the tasks and pay the lease fee, you’ll have expanded your microfarm dramatically into the winter months. Also, many cities and towns have community garden plots available for rent, although you may have to drive to them on a daily basis to care for your crops.

Are you physically fit for gardening? Although gardening and microfarming don’t necessarily involve backbreaking labor, you have to be fit enough to lug around sacks of manure and potting soil, move some large pots with a hand truck, chop weeds sometimes, dig holes, mix and rake the garden after rototilling, and that sort of labor. If you suffer from any ailments that would prevent this work, you should think of another project or find a worker bee to help you.

Do you mind doing manual labor or repetitive tasks? In the sun? Some people find gardening work boring and just can’t keep their focus on it. I think of it as exercise outdoors that will result in either cash or delicious meals or both, and don’t even worry about the repetitive labor. Besides, there’s always a bunch of things that need work on a microfarm, so water for a while, then harvest some tomatoes, check for weeds, water some more. Vary your tasks and give yourself rewards along the way—take a break for a beer, for example. Get all of your tasks done early, like before 9 a.m., and the sun will not be a problem.

Writing a Simple Business Plan

The purpose of writing a business plan is to formalize your ideas for a business by getting organized. If you are seeking financing or business partners, a written plan is a great start. By showing your plan to business people—like bankers, lawyers, and other business owners—you will receive valuable feedback and sometimes good advice. Business plans are not set in stone and you will be amazed to look back at your plan after concluding the first year of your microfarm and see how much it’s already changed. Over time you will amend and revise your business plan because you cannot predict the future with perfect success. Here are eight steps outlining how to write a plan. Be succinct and keep the plan short and to the point.

1. The Plan. Outline the overall plan for your business. Specify what you are creating and write down what you think your business will be like in one, three, and five years.

2. The Mission. State why you are starting this business and what its purpose is.

3. The Goals. List your most important business goals and state how you will measure your success in achieving those goals.

4. The Strategies. Specify how you are going to build this business. Define what you will be selling and what your unique selling proposition is. In other words, what makes your business different from the competition?

5. The Funding. Estimate and break down the startup capital you will need to launch your business and state the source(s) of your funding.

6. The Expenses. Estimate your microfarm’s monthly ongoing expenses upon launch, in three months, six months, and a year.

7. The Income. Estimate your microfarm’s ongoing monthly income upon launch, in three months, six months, and a year.

8. The Action. Outline the actions you need to take now to get started. Set a number of future milestones, like what you hope to achieve in three months, six months, and a year. Then specify what actions you need to take to accomplish those milestones.

Remember to review and revise your plan periodically during your first year in business.

Determining Your Business Structure

It is important to examine the possible structures of your microfarm in order to decide which is best suited to you and your family. Pick the simplest structure that provides the most protection from risk. You should discuss these options with your attorney or other business advisors, like your accountant.

Sole Proprietorship

Definition: This is the simplest and one of the most common structures. The business, even with a trade name, is an extension of you. You own it, you run it, you receive all the income and are personally responsible for the debts, losses, and liabilities. Freelance writing is a good example of a sole proprietorship.

Conduct your research to formulate a structure for your microfarm and a business plan.

Formation: You don’t have to take any action to form a sole proprietorship, but of course you are subject to all the laws, regulations, licenses, and permits that would apply to any other business structure.

Taxes: In a sole proprietorship, the business income is part of your personal income. Along with your regular personal income tax, you would file a Schedule C (Profit or Loss from Business—Sole Proprietorship) and transfer the bottom line of that form to your personal income tax form.

Advantages: This structure is inexpensive and easy to form, you have total control of the business, and taxes are simple to file.

Disadvantages: You will be held responsible for all obligations, debts, and other liabilities of the business, including those related to any employees you may have. Since you can’t sell any interest in the business, including stock, it may be more difficult to raise or borrow money. Banks are often reluctant to loan money to sole proprietors because of perceived repayment difficulties if the business fails.

Partnership

Definition: A partnership is a company where two or more people share ownership, all contributing money, labor, and skills and sharing the profits of the business. There are three types of partnerships. A general partnership assumes that management, liability, and profits are split equally among the partners. Often used for short-term projects, limited partnerships permit partners to have limited liability as well as limited input with management decisions. These limits vary according to the extent of each partner’s investment percentage. Joint ventures are general partnerships, but for only a limited period of time or for a single project. Partners in a joint venture can become an ongoing partnership if they continue the venture, but they must change their agreement and file as a partnership. The terms of any of these partnerships are formulated in a partnership agreement. For a microfarm, a partnership might be one person handling the growing and the other managing value-added products, which are usually processed food products from produce grown in the microfarm.

Formation: Partnerships must register the business with their state, a process usually done through their Secretary of State’s office. A business name must be established, usually an assumed name, trade name or a DBA (“doing business as”) name. Once the business is registered, the usual licenses and permits must be obtained.

Taxes: Businesses will need to register with the IRS, state and local revenue agencies, and obtain a tax ID number or permit. A partnership must file an “annual information return” to report the income, deductions, gains and losses from the business’s operations. Profits or losses are passed through to its partners. Partners include their respective share of the partnership’s income or loss on their personal tax returns. Partnership taxes generally include employment taxes. In addition to income tax, partners in the partnership are responsible for self-employment and estimated taxes.

Advantages: Partnerships are usually an inexpensive and easily formed business structure. The most time is spent on developing the partnership agreement. Partnerships have the advantage of pooling resources to obtain capital. This helps with securing credit, or by simply doubling your start-up money. Partnerships also utilize the strengths, resources, and expertise of each partner. Partnerships can have an employment advantage over other entities if they offer employees the opportunity to become a partner.

Disadvantages: In a partnership, partners are not only liable for their own actions, but also for the business debts and decisions made by other partners. With multiple partners, there are bound to be disagreements, so partners should be prepared to consult each other on all decisions, make compromises, and resolve disputes as amicably as possible. Since each partner must share the successes and profits of their business with the other partners, an unequal contribution of time, effort, or resources can cause discord among partners.

Limited Liability Company

Definition: This structure provides some of the limited liability features of a corporation combined with the tax efficiencies and operational advantages of a partnership. The owners of an LLC are referred to as “members,” who, depending on state law, might be a single individual (one owner) or two or more individuals, corporations, or other LLCs.

Formation: There are variations state to state, but basically you must choose a name that’s different from any other LLC in your state, that name must have “LLC” tagged on to the end, and it must not have words prohibited by your state, such as “bank” or “insurance,” which cannot have this structure. Then, you must file “articles of organization” for your state: a short, simple document that has the business name and address, the names of the members, and the business type and purpose. States vary on the necessity of the members having an operating agreement; this is quite important for any group of people working together. Then you must obtain all necessary permits, and some states require that you publish a statement in the media that announces the creation of your business.

Taxes: Like in a sole proprietorship, profits are passed through to the members in the percentage indicated in the operating agreement, and members add this income onto their personal income taxes. Single member LLCs file a Schedule C, while partners in an LLC file a Form 1065, a partnership tax return, like owners in a typical partnership. An LLC member that is a corporation adds the LLC income when it files Form 1120, the corporation income tax return.

Advantages: Members have limited liability, which means that they don’t have personal liability for the company’s decisions and debts, but they are not protected from wrongful acts. Compared to an S Corporation, there is less registration paperwork and the start-up costs are less. There are also fewer restrictions on profit sharing within an LLC, as members distribute profits as they like.

Disadvantages: Many states have regulations that result in the dissolution of an LLC if a member leaves it, so the company could have a limited life. And some states allow provisions in the operating agreement to extend the life of an LLC if a member leaves. Also, all individual members of an LLC are considered to be self-employed and must file and pay the self-employment tax contributions towards Medicare and Social Security; the entire net income of the LLC is subject to this tax.

C Corporation

Definition: A C corporation is an independent legal entity owned by shareholders. The corporation itself, not the shareholders that own it, is held legally liable for the actions and debts of the business. Corporations are more complex than other business structures because they have more tax and legal requirements. This structure is usually suggested for established, larger companies with multiple employees. A C corporation offers the ability to sell ownership shares in the business through stock offerings. “Going public” through an initial public offering (IPO) can attract investment capital and high-quality employees.

Formation: A C corporation is formed under the laws of the state in which it is registered. State laws vary, but generally corporations must include a corporate designation (“Corporation,” “Incorporated,” or “Limited”) at the end of the business name. To register your business as a C corporation, you need to file articles of incorporation with your state’s Secretary of State office. Some states require corporations to establish directors and issue stock certificates to initial shareholders during the registration process. Contact your state business entity registration office for precise details about forming a C corporation. Once your business is registered, you must obtain the usual business licenses and permits.

Pets cannot be legal partners in a corporation, sorry.

Photo by Dwight Sipler.

Taxes: C corporations are required to pay federal, state, and in some cases, local taxes because they are separate tax-paying entities. Regular corporations are called “C corporations” because Subchapter C of Chapter 1 of the Internal Revenue Code is where you find general tax rules affecting corporations and their shareholders. Unlike sole proprietors and partnerships, C corporations pay income tax on their profits. C corporations use IRS Form 1120 or 1120-A, U.S. Corporation Income Tax Return, to report revenue to the federal government. The corporation and the employee each pay one half of the Social Security and Medicare taxes, but this is usually a deductible business expense.

Advantages: With a C corporation, shareholders’ personal assets are protected from the debts and liabilities of the company. Shareholders can generally only be held accountable for their investment in stock of the company. C corporations have the ability to raise funds through the sale of stock. Owners of a C corporation only pay taxes on corporate profits paid to them in the form of salaries, bonuses, and dividends, while any additional profits are awarded a corporate tax rate, which is usually lower than a personal income tax rate. C corporations can offer employees partial ownership through stock options and thus attract high-quality workers.

Disadvantages: A C corporation is a more costly and time-consuming structure to use than the other options. Incorporation requires startup, operating, and tax costs that most other structures do not require. Because C corporations are highly regulated by federal, state, and in some cases local agencies, there are increased paperwork and recordkeeping requirements associated with this business structure. And C corporation owners are usually taxed twice: once when the C corporation makes a profit, and again when dividends are paid to shareholders.

S Corporation

Definition: What makes an S corporation different from a C corporation is that profits and losses can pass through to your personal tax return. The business itself is not taxed—only the shareholders are taxed. The shareholders must be paid fair market value, or the IRS might reclassify any additional corporate earnings as “wages.” For shareholders, liability protection is limited. S corporations do not necessarily shield you from all litigation, such as an employee’s lawsuit as a result of a workplace incident.

Formation: To file as an S corporation, you must first file as a C corporation. After you are considered a corporation, all shareholders must sign and file Form 2553 to elect your corporation to become an S corporation. Once your business is registered, you must obtain the usual business licenses and permits. You can request S corporation status for your LLC. Your attorney can advise you on the pros and cons of doing this. You’ll have to make a special election with the IRS to have the LLC taxed as an S corporation using Form 2553, filing it before the first two months and fifteen days of the beginning of the tax year in which the election is to take effect. The LLC remains a limited liability company from a legal standpoint, but for tax purposes it’s treated as an S corporation.

Taxes: States do not tax S corporations equally. Most recognize them similarly to the federal government and tax the shareholders accordingly, but some states (like Massachusetts) tax S corporations on profits above a specified limit. Other states don’t recognize the S corporation election and treat the business as a C corporation with that tax structure. Some states (like New York and New Jersey) tax both the S corporation’s profits and the shareholder’s proportional shares of the profits.

Advantages: While members of an LLC are subject to employment tax on the entire net income of the business, only the wages of the S corporation shareholder who is an employee are subject to employment tax. The remaining income is paid to the owner as a “distribution,” which is taxed at a lower rate, if at all. An S corporation designation allows a business to have an independent life, separate from its shareholders. If a shareholder leaves the company, or sells his or her shares, the S corporation can continue doing business relatively undisturbed.

Disadvantages: S corporations require scheduled director and shareholder meetings, minutes from those meetings, adoption and updates to bylaws, stock transfers, and records maintenance. A shareholder must receive reasonable compensation. The IRS takes notice of shareholder red flags like low salary/high distribution combinations, and may reclassify your distributions as wages.

Cooperatives

Definition: This structure is a business or organization owned by and operated for the benefit of those using its services. All profits and earnings generated by the cooperative are distributed among the members, also known as user-owners. Usually, an elected board of directors and officers operates the cooperative while regular members have voting power to control the direction of the cooperative. This is one of the more complicated business structures and anyone reading this book to start a microfarm is unlikely to use it, so I’m not going to explain it in more detail here. You should consult a business attorney if you are interested in this option.

What’s in a Name?

The naming of my microfarm was accidental. After I decided to use five-gallon pots for many of my superhot chile plants, I realized that I would need a soil expander, namely perlite, a naturally-occurring amorphous volcanic glass that when heated turns into very light, inert granules that prevent soil-packing in containers. And I needed a lot of it, but the product is expensive in the small bags sold by the big box home centers. I decided that I needed an account at a wholesale supplier. When I opened one, I thought of the name “Sunbelt Microfarm” on the spot.

The first step in establishing your brand is to give it a name. Hopefully, you will spend longer thinking about it than I did, because your identity—what other people call you—is more important than you think. Face it, “Dave’s Farm” is not an imaginative name at all, nor is “DeWitt’s Farm.” They both sound too small and a little amateurish. You want a farm name that sounds substantial and a little impersonal, but memorable. There’s a small farm here in the South Valley called “Red Tractor Farm,” and I like the whimsical nature of the name. I thought about changing the name of mine to “No Tractor Farm,” but I didn’t want anyone to think that I was using a mule and a plow.

Since you have to plan ahead, even from the very beginning, you should think about what you might call some value-added products. Does Sunbelt Microfarm’s Pickled Superhot Chiles have a ring to it? Sort of, but if someone’s not already using it, Sunbelt Pickled Superhot Chiles is stronger and better. It is also possible to have an overall company name, and then a different brand name or names for your products. For example, an exhibitor in our National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show, Apple Canyon Gourmet, has differently named brands because they bought several failing companies and turned them around. They didn’t want to rename the products because they were already branded.

And you want to avoid triteness. Because the Sandia Mountains hover over the city of Albuquerque, there are many, many businesses with the name “Sandia” in them. So many, in fact, it’s become both trite and absurd, once you understand what “sandia” means in Spanish. Near sunset, the low sun in the west causes the west-facing slopes to have a distinct reddish tint that is exactly the color of the flesh of a watermelon, and that’s precisely what “sandia” means. The translation reveals the absurdity of calling your business the “Watermelon Mental Health Clinic.” Likewise for “Watermelon Dog Obedience Club,” or “Watermelon Crust Pizza Company,” which is a pun on the highest point of the Sandias, Sandia Crest. Often, regionalism is confusing and is not a good thing.

My mentor, the late, great Frank Crosby, was a show producer too and would never in a million years have called his business “Sandia Entertainment Company”—he had a much larger vision than that. He named it the Entertainment Corporation of America. Before you say that the name is a bit grandiose for a small Albuquerque company, I should point out that Frank had once been a standup vaudeville comedian who always told jokes like, “Did you hear the one about the farmer’s daughter who sits among the beans and peas?”

My point here is to think big. If your microfarm is in the Midwest, I plead with you not to call it “Little Microfarm on the Prairie.” It’s clever, but make it a brand for your products rather than your company name. Likewise for “Pacific,” “Rockies,” “Bayou,” and so on. Think more symbolically than locally—that’s why I chose Sunbelt Shows, Inc. for my corporate name. It says what the company does primarily but is deliberately vague as to regional location, allowing for easy expansion into other markets, which we did successfully for a while with food shows.

The Small Business Administration has some good advice about choosing a name for your business. Don’t get lazy and just name the business with your family name because that makes it more difficult to present a professional image and build brand awareness. You must consider how your name will look as part of a logo, on a website, and in social media. Does the name directly reflect what business the company is in, and most importantly, is it unique? You should select a name that has not been used by others, either online or offline. There are several ways to check the name you’ve selected: a simple web search, a trademark search through the U.S. Patent and Trademark website (Uspto.gov), a domain name search through the WHOSIS database (NetworkSolutions.com), and through your state filing office. Registering your “Doing Business As” name is simply the process of letting your state government know that you are doing business as a name other than your personal name or the legal name of your partnership or corporation. If you are operating under your own name, then you can skip the process.

Value-Added Products: How to Manufacture and Market Them

The first thing you should do if you’re interested in this type of expansion is to buy a copy of From Kitchen to Market: Selling Your Gourmet Food Specialty, by Stephen Hall. It is the most comprehensive book on the subject and will probably lead you to making the right decision. Of course, Hall wrote an entire book on this, so I can’t include all of it here. But since I’ve been producing a show for these types of products for the last twenty-five years, I know a lot about this subject, so I can give you the highlights of what to expect.

What type of product(s) should you make? The most obvious ones to me are concentrates of what you’re currently growing, assuming that’s possible. This is why I’ve turned my ripe tomatoes into purees and sun-dried slices. This is basic “manufacturing” and as long as you’re selling to chefs and not to the general public, usually you won’t need a particular license or even a manufacturing facility. Make sure you check your state’s regulations on this issue. Assuming you have some basic equipment, concentrated forms of your products will be simple to make and will require freezing or drying after they are processed. After the basics, there are an astounding number of products that can be made, and research into the specialty food market will be required. One of the simplest ways to learn a lot about the different products out there is to go to a trade show where they are on display. The Fancy Foods Shows, produced by the Specialty Food Association, are a good place to start, as is my show, the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show.

Who will buy them? Generally speaking, your first customers will be your farm customers who already know and trust your unprocessed farm products. The next wave of customers will come from your contacts at farmers’ markets, so be sure that you have your new products well-displayed and even offer them for tasting. From there, you want your products continually on display locally at specialty food stores and even supermarkets. After that, I suggest (of course), exhibiting in food shows as your first form of advertising beyond the basics explained earlier.

Where are they made? Most states do not allow food made in home kitchens to be sold to the general public, with the possible exception of baked goods like cookies, pies, and cakes sold at nonprofit bake sales. This means you need to use a commercial kitchen if you want to produce and pack the products, or find a contract packer (called a co-packer) to do it for you. (The best way to find a co-packer is to ask manufacturers of non-competing products who packs theirs.) I think that usually you should go with the latter option because how much can you do? You’re a farmer, a food producer, and a marketer all at the same time? You’re going to need employees, and that is very expensive. Better to let someone else worry about paying the help needed to pack products. Yes, there are often problems with co-packers changing recipes to cut expenses, or using cheaper containers, but you can monitor all this in a lot less time than spending all day on your feet packing food into jars. And don’t even think about building your own commercial kitchen. How many headaches do you need?

What kind of packaging is right for the products? Some are easy. Your microfarm grows seventeen different kinds of mustard seed, and you’re going to make packaged gourmet mustard. Have you seen it packaged in anything other than glass jars, plastic squeeze bottles, or tiny plastic single-serve pouches? But some ingredients, like chile peppers, have a myriad of packaging possibilities. Today, for example, I discovered a squeeze tube of chipotle pepper paste. Who woulda thought? Again, attend a gourmet products trade show and speak with some product packaging companies. Since they want your business, they will give you plenty of free advice that should all be taken, as the Roman cooks used to say, cum grano salis (look it up).

How will you store and ship these products? No, your greenhouse can’t be your warehouse. It would be wonderful if you just moved your products from the co-packer to a food distributor’s warehouse, but that’s not going to happen for a while. So you will have to play it by ear and move slowly as you learn the business. Now is the time to consider mail-order sales, whether you might need a delivery truck or van, and how far away you want your products distributed if you have to do it yourself. All of this begs two questions….

How will you distribute them? And, How will you market and advertise them? You need to pick some people’s brains. Find the owner of a company that has products that will not compete with yours, get to know him or her, buy them some coffee or a drink, and start brainstorming. Find out what they do with their products and keep two lists—one of ideas you like, and one of ideas you don’t. Talk with some managers of local markets and ask them about their most popular locally made products, and what makes them sell. Discuss the situation with your co-packer, if you have one, and get some advice. At food shows, casually ask exhibitors (at slow times) how they advertise and if they have a distributor they could recommend. You’re researching, assembling the data you will need to plan a direction to take, a strategy.

I wish I could be more specific here, but there are hundreds and hundreds of specialty food products, each one with its own wants and needs. There are just too many variables to give more detailed directions about marketing specific products, or even product categories. Besides, you need to do this anyway. It’s part of your microfarm education.

Other Ideas for Your Microfarm, Some Crazy

Agritourism rules! Since my wife and I can never enjoy a normal vacation, like lying on the beach reading trashy novels, or seeing all the cathedrals in Spain, we have essentially become agritourists. In that capacity, we have visited fascinating agriculturally related places all over the world. I mention these to give potential microfarmers ideas of how they might exploit the agritourism aspects of their farm. As the Small Farm Center at the University of California notes, “Agricultural tourism or agritourism, is one alternative for improving the incomes and potential economic viability of small farms and rural communities.” We shopped for Scotch bonnet peppers in the produce markets of Ocho Rios, Jamaica, then snuck into the ganja fields, and we kept our balance when we visited the steeply sloped herb fields of Paramin, Trinidad, and then examined a Congo pepper plantation with ganja fields next door. (The agricultural Caribbean is like that!) And of course, we went to the Royal Botanic Garden in Port of Spain, and the Botanic Station in Tobago, where the first superhot chiles probably originated. We bought bags of peppercorns at a black pepper plantation in Costa Rica and visited the rain-soaked red habanero fields of the aptly-named town of Los Chiles.

In Italy, after visiting the Olive Oil Museum near Lake Garda, we stayed in an agriturismo stone house in the middle of a vineyard, visited an olive-pressing factory, a grappa-making plant, the largest ornamental chile field in the world, and met a pack of truffle-hunting puppies on a farm outside of Parma. We also stayed on a microfarm near Bardi in Emilia Romagna, owned and managed by Maurizio Bovi and Luisa Sgarbossa. The couple purchased and remodeled an old rock-built farmhouse named Ca’d’Alfieri that they run as a bed and breakfast and also a restaurant for the guests. They grow fruit and vegetables that they sell at markets around northern Italy, raise farm animals including black pigs, and live off the land they own and work. In Germany, we visited numerous breweries of varying sizes, and sticking with beer, visited a hop processing plant and museum.

Michael Coelho and Dave DeWitt in the Herb Fields of Paramin, 1992.

Photo by Mary Jane Wilan.

In Mexico, we cooked mole sauce in the middle of a farm of chile plants grown only in Oaxaca, shopped in numerous outdoor markets including Mexico City’s enormous La Merced, the largest retail traditional food market in the city of nine million people. We went out to catch hamachi (yellowtail) with the local fishermen in Baja in a ponga boat (that’s called harvesting from nature), and visited with a tilapia and neem tree farmer in Yucatán. On another trip to Yucatán, we visited the habanero chile fields, sorting and processing plants, and the laboratories devoted to that crop in Mérida.

On our culinary tour of India, led by England’s King of Curries, Pat Chapman, we watched paneer cheese being made in the open kitchen at the Shikarbadi Hunting Lodge in Udaipur, took cooking lessons, and enjoyed the meals that were specially prepared for us by the head chefs of the Taj Hotel Group. Singapore was market after market, each representative of the major population groups of the country: Chinese, Malay, and Indian. No, there was not a British market. We took cooking classes, had a drink at Raffles Hotel, and ate fish-head soup.

The Chile Pepper Institute’s teaching and demonstration garden at New Mexico State University. Photo courtesy of NMSU.

In Johor Bahru, Malaysia, we shopped in a mall supermarket and discovered two forty-foot aisles of racks eight feet high filled only with chile sauces and pastes. Some of the best spicy food we ate in Asia was in Thailand, so we had to go to the wholesale market and see their gigantic display of chile peppers packed every way you can imagine. A vendor warned me in sign language not to eat a tiny prik kee nu chile but I just grinned and popped it in my mouth. The vendor just shook her head in amazement that a farangi could actually eat one.

The United States offered us many agritourism delights like the largest produce show in the country in New Orleans, and I marveled at the weird warehouse of Melissa’s, the specialty produce company near L.A. in California, where I could only identify twenty percent of the fruits and vegetables I saw. In the Texas Hill Country, I went on a feral hog hunt and helped smoke some of the delicious pork we, ahem, harvested. We have dropped in on chile farms all over the country, and I did a demonstration on cooking with curries at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival before a crowd of eight hundred in a theater.

And, of course, we have visited a few cactus and succulent microfarms and they were every bit as interesting as botanical gardens, which is precisely what they were—with the exception that every display was for sale. The Demonstration Garden of the Chile Pepper Institute, on the campus of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, gets hundreds—if not thousands—of visitors during the growing season every year who want to see what 150 varieties in the same field look like. There’s no way to count the number of visitors because the field is in the open near Main Street with no fences, and when the pods are ripe, anyone can harvest them. Imagine a field like that as part of your “you pick ‘em” microfarm with, of course, a little more security and a cash register.

Now I will reveal five microfarm ideas with both value-added products and agritourism appeal. As far as I know, none of these really exist, but they could. Some would require a sizable capital investment; others, long hours and weekend work; and one, additional liability insurance. Now, can I write a coherent microplan for each of them? We’ll see.

The Mushroom Grotto and Pâté Factory. Not too many microfarms will have a natural cave on the premises, so you would have to build one like those winding “underground” zoo displays, or the museum designs that take you through the exhibits until you end up in the museum store. Of course, as a mushroom professional, you would not actually be growing them in the displays, but rather in separate, special houses that also could be visited by guests and customers.

It would probably be considered insensitive to hire children dressed like elves to work in the grotto, but I couldn’t resist mentioning the idea. Promotions to draw customers would obviously include Halloween, but don’t forget about Walpurgis Night, a traditional spring festival in central Europe on April 30 or May 1, exactly six months away from Halloween. Legend holds that mushroom fairy rings mark the spots where witches were dancing on that night. You could have a mid-summer mushroom festival modeled after the Telluride, Colorado Shroomfest, now in its thirty-third year. Activities could include mycologists giving mushroom and toadstool identification clinics, a mushroom cook-off contest, hands-on growing workshops, showings of mushroom movies like Shrooms (horror), Know Your Mushrooms (documentary), Attack of the Mushroom People (horror), or Now Forager (drama).

Value-added products for the Grotto Gift Shop include mushroom supplements and nutraceuticals for health, and edible mushroom-growing kits for morels, shiitakes, and oysters. Also, you could sell dried and fresh mushrooms, plug spawn, truffle oils, pâtés, herbal teas, books, and posters. There are dozens and dozens of mushroom-related gifts and accessories, including clothing, candles, art and sculptures, jewelry, magnets, and even lamps.

The Edible Aquarium and Sushi Bar. Everyone’s seen the live lobsters in tanks in the supermarkets, and Asian markets often have large aquariums with live fish swimming around in them. This idea for a microfarm expands those concepts and the choices for the consumer for the freshest seafood possible. If some microfarms are “you pick,” this one could be “you catch,” so that your customers could enjoy a fishing experience as well as a shopping one. It’s a good idea for attracting families with kids. There’s no charge for catch and release, but if they want to take the catch home for eating, they pay by the pound.

Admittedly, aquaculture has its technical challenges, but it is the “wave” of the future. Here are some of the methods used.

—Open-net pens or cages enclose fish such as salmon in offshore coastal areas or in freshwater lakes. Note that this practice is regarded as environmentally destructive.

—Ponds hold fish in a coastal or inland body of fresh or salt water. Shrimp, catfish, and tilapia are commonly farmed in this manner.

—Raceways divert water from a stream or well, so that it flows through channels containing the fish. In the U.S., farmers use raceways to raise rainbow trout.

—Recirculating systems in tanks treat and recirculate the water to keep the fish healthy. Tanks can be used to farm such species as striped bass, salmon, and sturgeon.

—Shellfish culture is a method farmers use to grow shellfish on beaches or suspend them in the water by ropes, plastic trays, or mesh bags. The most commonly raised shellfish are oysters, mussels, and clams.

A seafood restaurant with a sushi bar could be part of the microfarm, making it an even more popular destination, but of course not everyone wants to be a restaurateur. The Rappahannock Oyster Company has three such restaurants in Virginia, and their oyster farm provides the basis for them. Instead of value-added products, the aquaculture microfarm would have a gift shop with seafood related merchandise including cookbooks, seafood cooking tools and supplies, and fresh seafood for sale.

I would recommend that anyone attempting such a microfarm take university courses in aquaculture. Some universities offering them are Auburn, the University of California-Davis, Hawaii, Louisiana State, Maryland, Cornell, South Carolina, and quite a few more.

The Beautiful But Deadly Microfarm and Poison Museum. This microfarm would grow and sell beautiful, ornamental, and poisonous—but legal—plants. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about just such a microfarm in 1844: “Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener examined every shrub which grew in his path…. The man’s demeanor was that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which should he allow them one moment of license, would wreak upon him some terrible fatality.” Hawthorne was way ahead of his time in his portrayal of Dr. Rappaccini’s poisonous garden. There are now similar gardens around the world, including the Alnwick Poison Garden in Northumberland, England, the poison section of the Botanical Garden of Padua, the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, the Toxic Plant Garden within the Montreal Botanical Garden, the Medicinal Garden at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, and the W.C. Muenscher Poisonous Plants Garden at Cornell University. There are also drug plant gardens in various locations. The Maynard W. Quimby Medicinal Plant Garden at the University of Mississippi has what it calls the “correctly identified living plant collection” that grows about 1,500 species from all geographic regions of the world. Another drug garden is under development at the University of South Florida.

Poisonous plants like deadly nightshade (Datura wrightii) would be growing in the The Beautiful But Deadly Microfarm and Poison Museum.

NPS Photo by Neal Herbert.

Many people are unaware that some of the more beautiful ornamental landscaping plants are poisonous. Here are just a few examples of the plants in this microfarm.

—Datura or jimsonweed, with its large and beautiful flowers, has a long history of use both in South America and Europe and is known for causing delirious states and poisonings in uninformed users. Most parts of the plant contain atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine.

—Henbane is a biennial herb that grows up to one meter tall and produces spectacular veined yellow flowers and large quantities of seeds. It was historically used in combination with mandrake, deadly nightshade, and datura as an anesthetic potion, as well as for its psychoactive properties in “magic brews.”

—Oleander, a common landscaping plant with beautiful flowers of many colors, is extremely poisonous. Every part of the plant affects the heart, produces severe digestive upset, and has caused death.

—Deadly Nightshade, or belladonna, is a one- to two-meter tall perennial herb that produces small red to black berries from bright purple flowers. These berries contain atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine and have a long history of use as a medicinal, poisonous, and ceremonial herb.

Others include castor bean, lantana, lily of the valley, lupine, mistletoe, philodendron, azalea, Boston and English ivy, clematis, holly, hydrangea, sago palm, Virginia creeper, and wisteria. The microfarm would sell seeds, bedding plants, large specimen plants, books like Mark Mills’ The Savage Garden, Albert Hofmann and Richard Evans Schultes’ Plants of the Gods, and Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants. Special promotions could include seminars on protecting your pets and farm animals from poisonous houseplants, garden plants, and weeds, and talks on drug plants. I would imagine that Halloween with a witches’ brew of plants that cause spells would be a big hit. The possibilities for promotions on local, regional, and national media would generate a lot of traffic to this microfarm because people are fascinated by deadly things—and especially the ones that seem so innocent.

The Gourdgeous Garden and Squash Courts. Gourds might seem an unlikely crop for a microfarm, but I think a cucurbit enthusiast could make go of it with gourds and squashes because they are so versatile. Gourds can be your dinner or the serving bowl for it, the dipping spoon for your squash soup, your vegetable sponge, your birdhouses, your works of art, your vases, your fishing bobber, your herb planter, your weird wall hangings, and even your banjo, rattle, flute, marimbas, or drums. And when I write “squash courts,” I’m not kidding: both gourds and squashes will grow vertically, so theoretically, with the right structure and some netting, you could give the illusion of a squash or racquetball court. Google around for “chayote” and note that to save ground space, they usually hang from netting and trellises.

For promotions to attract customers, a gourd art show and competition would be a lot of fun. After all, some of the most gorgeous painted gourds are the jicaras from Mexico and Guatemala. And gourd carving is a celebrated art in Nigeria and New Zealand. What about a concert featuring the Berry Gourdy String Band, with all the musicians playing with gourd-only instruments? For value-added products, what about bottled winter squash pasta sauces? I’ve tried some splendid ones. You could even serve them over spaghetti squash. There are canned acorn or butternut squash soups, and squash flour is popular for baking in the Philippines.

Worried about squash bugs? Hint: keep chickens or guinea fowl for eggs or meat and give them access to the squash garden for an hour each day and soon you won’t have any bugs—or grasshoppers for that matter.

The Popcorn Crazy Farm and Family Fun Maze. This would fit into the category of agritainment. There are plenty of corn mazes around the country, but I’ve never heard of one tied into popcorn. There is some method to my madness because popcorn is a profitable value-added product, especially if you’re growing your own.

Corn mazes usually have some value-added entertainment in addition to the maze. These include hay rides, zip lines, live zombie scarecrows or other Halloween figures, corn cannons, which can shoot an ear of corn quite a ways, elaborate children’s playgrounds, a live pumpkin princess, and a you-pick pumpkin patch. Some have pig races, a petting zoo, play areas for children, and picnic areas. Some are open after dark for Flashlight Nights. Admission to all entertainment events is usually between $8.00 and $20.00.

The elaborately designed mazes used to be hacked out of a main field using machetes, and that was exhausting work. Now farmers have wised up and use spatial management computer software to fashion the designs. When the corn is about two feet tall, the maze design is transferred to the cornfield using global positioning technology. The corn is then mowed or tilled under, but some farmers use herbicides to kill the corn plants for paths wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and strollers.

A corn maze in Delinsdorf, Germany.

Photo by Karsten H. Eggert.

Maze operators develop yearly themes for their mazes, like Wild West, Egyptian, or political candidates, and they can tie quizzes into the themes. Of course the maze themes can only be viewed from the air, but customers are usually given a map so they can guide themselves around. There are usually Maze Masters to help people around the maze so we don’t read headlines like “Five South Korean Tourists Go Missing in Hilary Clinton Corn Maze; Helicopters Called In.” Think that’s just my imagination running rampant? Well, the Adventure Acres corn maze in Bellbrook, Ohio, just outside of Dayton, consists of sixty-two acres of corn maze with over eight miles of trails!

Value-added products for sale at the maze could include flavored popcorns (cheddar, caramel, chocolate, brown sugar and cinnamon, coconut, toffee, curry cashew, red chile—the list is very long), and custom popcorn boxes and bags with your microfarm name and logo on them. Since this microfarm will be both agritourism and agritainment, you should have the usual souvenirs for sale (they double as promotional items): popcorn maze postcards, aerial photos, stickers, coasters, caps, t-shirts, mugs, and whatever else crazy you can think up.

Brett Herbst is probably the king of corn mazes; he began designing them in 1996 and now has his own maze design and consultation business. “People don’t pay to walk through a corn maze,” he says. “People are paying for a memorable experience. No one ever comes to a corn maze alone.” When you’re with a group, “You have to make all these decisions together and you know that everybody is going to be wrong at some point in time going through the maze. That’s what relationships are built on—sharing ideas and thoughts and challenging one another.”

Of course, these are just fantasies until someone takes an idea and runs with it. I’ve written these with a bit of whimsy, but I think a microfarmer should have a good sense of humor. Perhaps one of these ideas will inspire a future microfarmer to come up with a truly imaginative—and profitable—farming operation. If you do that, you’d better learn how to sell what you produce.