Book Excerpt IX Product Pricing Tips

Starting a small farm business is a lot of work, but for many the fruits of labor are just what they’re excited about. When I give speeches and workshops, I am often asked about pricing, specifically how to price products to get the business started. Today’s excerpt deals with a few tips of setting your [...]

Book Excerpt VIII-Liability Insurance

Good morning! It’s a sunny day in Central Indiana and I am inspired to head outside later for a run. No wind, 40 something and sun is a rarity around here until about April (and then, there is usually the wind) so I’m off for some exercise. Before I go, however, the next book excerpt [...]

Book Excerpt VII: Food Safety Priorities

Today I was just day dreaming about my springtime garden and the farmer’s markets of summer. I know, it is an awfully long time to pine-Christmas is barely over and I’m ready for spring-aren’t we all, right?
As I think about plans for the summer, I am reminded of one of the single most important topics [...]

Book Excerpt VI. Choosing a Business Structure

Christmas is over and I’m feeling blue. It is always like that for me that day after such a wonderful holiday with family. I am blessed just to be with them, I know.
For the rest of this month, and year, I am continuing to offer excerpts from my book. Today’s selection deals with working with [...]

Merry Christmas

 
It’s Christmas Eve and cold and rainy here in Central Indiana. Not the lovely and pristine white Christmas we all supposedly long for. Problem is, white Christmases are actually a problem in themselves. I suppose whenever the song I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas was penned people naturally stayed at home with families who already [...]

Book Excerpts V: Outside Ownership in Your Small Business

From Chapter Three of my book:
“Outside investment in your small farm venture may not be your first idea, but it could work for you. For some people, the idea itself is totally appalling-it was in my case when I started Aubrey’s Natural Meats, LLC. In my case, I viewed starting my own company as the [...]

Book Excerpt IV: Researching your Local Market

In today’s post I’m going to offer a few comments about starting simple market research in order to learn enough about your local market to decide if your business idea makes sense.
“Focus on quality, not quantity. If you’re starting somewhat small and locally, more than likely you don’t need to send out hundreds of quantitative [...]

Part III Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Chapter One:
“Very few people now ever get to know the daily joys and trials of building their lives from the land and homes where they live. Today, farmers make up roughly two percent of the population of the United States. The agrarian way of life is being replaced by new technology, industrialization, [...]

Part II Book Excerpts: What this book is about

This volume is meant to be a guide to the basic concepts I’ve found important when considering, launching, and then running my own small farm venture.
The chapters focus on specific topics and are organized in the order I recommend completing, or at least contemplating, each task. If you gain only one thing from this book, [...]

Sarah Aubrey’s Book Excerpt Part I

This week I’ve decided to offer you readers a short sneek peak inside my book “Starting and Running Your Own Small Farm Business” so each day I’ll post a small excerpt for your perusal.
 
From the Introduction:
“For generations, farms have been growing ever larger to make them work. Now, we are enjoying a quiet revolution [...]