Farmer and author Ben Hartman proves it doesn’t take a ton of space to grow enough food to sustain a business. Ben joins me on the podcast to explain how he maximized efficiency on his lean micro farm to grow enough crops to satisfy his most loyal customers while reducing the effort and resources required to be successful.
Ben and his wife, Rachel Hershberger, run a small urban farm in Goshen, Indiana, that they named Clay Bottom Farm, where they grow specialty crops to be sold locally. They farm on just a third of an acre, ensuring that every square foot is as productive as possible while focusing on just a handful of loyal clients. The farm has twice won Edible Michiana’s Reader’s Choice award, and Ben’s first book, “The Lean Farm: How to Minimize Waste, Increase Efficiency, and Maximize Value and Profits with Less Work,” won the Shingo Institute’s Publication Award. His latest book is “The Lean Micro Farm: How to Get Small, Embrace Local, Live Better, and Work Less.”
Farmer and author Ben Hartman of Clay Bottom Farm, a lean micro farm. (photo: Courtesy of Ben Hartman)
In “The Lean Micro Farm,” Ben shares how he and Rachel downsized to a third of an acre without taking a pay cut. The book also offers a step-by-step guide for setting up a lean micro farm.
“We need farms of all sizes to feed the population,” Ben says. “However, there’s just something special and unique about setting some boundaries, living within the boundaries that you set and being present with your work in a way that’s really only possible if you choose a small lifestyle.”
For a complete write-up of my conversation with Ben, see the show notes from the original airing. Or read on for a condensed version that still hits the key points.
Going Lean
In his book “Small Is Beautiful,” economist E.F. Schumacher wrote about a concept he called “right livelihood.”
“How we make a living has a spiritual impact on us, and how we make a living should have minimal harmful effects for the environment and should be ultimately positive for the community,” Ben says. “But for ‘right livelihood’ to really be possible within a capitalist economy, the owner of a business really needs to set firm boundaries for the business. And that was our first step, was to sit down, and draw some boundaries for our new farm so that the farm would work for us and not the other way around.”
Ben encourages farmers to name and embrace their boundaries like he did. He calls the practice “leverage constraint.”
Rachel taped a large sheet of paper to the wall where they drew circles, each representing a core piece of their lives and business, such as selling to farmers’ markets, selling to restaurants and greenhouse production, and then asking a simple question: How much is enough?
“And that’s rarely asked,” Ben says. “It’s always assumed that enough is more, but we actually put some dollar figures down, said this is enough income. And how much time is enough time to devote to the task?”
They agreed on capping their workweek at 35 hours. “We wanted to have time to be with our kids,” Ben says.
The second goal was to limit themselves to one-third of an acre, and the third was to sell exclusively in Goshen. Because they limited how much produce they grow and how far they will transport it, they no longer needed to pay to operate a walk-in cooler.
“We came up with this system where we’d start our harvest at 8 in the morning, and we deliver the food usually by noon,” he says. “And so we have about a four-hour turnaround time, from the time an order comes in to the time the customer receives it.”
This is an example of how they leveraged a constraint. They eliminated the two biggest costs that small farms have: refrigeration and transportation. “We have happier customers. We have much lower costs,” Ben says.
This concept reminds me of a book I read every year on my month-long sabbatical, “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.” The same book taught Ben the phrase “less but better.”
“The farm that we moved from, there were 11 buildings or 11 roofs that we had to manage and weed eat around, walls to paint and that sort of thing,” Ben recalls. “At our new farm, we said, well, let’s do better than that. Let’s have two, just our barn house and our greenhouse.”
Clay Bottom Farm grows food on just one-third of an acre. (photo: Courtesy of Ben Hartman)
Pursue Just Enough
The principle of just enough is not too much, not too little — just the right amount. It’s the Goldilocks approach.
In another of Ben’s favorite books, “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau writes “keep your accounts on a thumbnail” and “Simplify, simplify, simplify!” Thoreau spent two years in a cottage that he built while working as a market gardener, and he realized he was better off growing just a few crops and selling to a few customers rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
To consciously dial back to just enough is admirable, and it doesn’t require painful sacrifice. By design, Ben and Rachel have a very good life.
Farmers have thousands of seed varieties and tools to choose from in seed catalogs every year, Ben points out. But they sought to pare farming down to its bare essentials.
“For thousands of years, humans have been growing food with just a few tools and a very simple process,” he says. “We’re talking about a grubbing hoe, maybe, to work the ground, and perhaps a knife to harvest. And really, that’s it. And it’s only been in the past 100 years or so that we’ve added so much complexity unnecessarily, in many cases, to the work of growing food.”
They sent wagonloads of tools off to auction and retained just the seven tools they touched the most.
Clay Bottom Farm has just one greenhouse. They only needed one to sustain their food-growing operation and business.
Small Farms Are Being Gobbled Up
Ben points out that 70% of the food consumed daily, globally, comes from a farm that is 10 acres or smaller. However, he also notes that it is projected that by the end of this century there will be half as many farms in existence, according to a University of Colorado study. The farms that remain will be twice as large as they are now, due to small farms being gobbled up.
“That trend, of course, has been going on in the U.S. for a long time,” Ben says. “In 1960, more than half of the U.S. population was engaged in agriculture for a living. That’s not that long ago, and now we’re down to less than 1% farming for a living.”
Rural places are seeing a rapid consolidation within agriculture, he says. In fact, that farm he grew up on is now leased out to a large corporate farm. “By some measures, we’re losing more than a thousand farms a month in the U.S. right now,” he adds.
Farm Like a Tree
Ben and Rachel are planting chestnut and northern hearty pecan trees as they rewild their property.
“It’s incredible how productive a single tree can be, and a tree doesn’t even move,” Ben says. “And here I feel like I’m moving around all day long wearing myself out, and I’m barely productive sometimes.”
Ben considered how a tree does this. What are the principles a tree is using? “We tried to nail down a few of those and apply them to our farm,” he says.
First of all, trees work years ahead. A northern hardy pecan, for instance, spends 10 to 15 years on its roots before it becomes productive. “The tree recognized that it needs that time to build a root system that can pull minerals from the soil that can support the productivity,” he says.
But, he says, farmers often don’t think about fertility until the day the seed goes in the ground.
To model Clay Bottom Farm after how trees work, Ben is now working ahead on composting, bringing leaves to the farm and piling them up to be used three years later.
“The pile is about 9 feet in width, 6 feet in height, and 50 feet in length, and that’s the right size for a third-acre farm,” Ben says.
They use a low-input composting method.
“Iit relies on a minimum number of well-timed turns instead of shredding the leaves and pulverizing the leaves and turning them dozens of times and trying to get a hot compost pile,” Ben says. “So this is cold compost.”
Ben’s never measured a temperature warmer than 150° in the pile. It’s usually 120° to 130° at the core, where the microbes are doing most of their work.
“You do need to turn it a few times so that the leaves on the outer edge of the pile make their way into the middle at some point, but we don’t need to be overworking ourselves and overpulverizing those leaves,” he says.
The leaves naturally break down into a cake-like consistency after a few seasons of nature doing the work.
Trees are said to be dormant in winter, but Ben points out that trees are expanding their root systems in search of water and nutrients in anticipation of spring bud break. Clay Bottom Farm takes a cue from this idea as well, preparing for summer during this period of quiescence.
Ben and Rachel have found that the winter is a great time to lay down compost because when the ground is frozen there is no risk of compressing the ground. It’s also a great time to sharpen tools.
Ben only needs one greenhouse to sustain his business and make a living.
Five S’s for Small Spaces
The Japanese lean production system has an organization method called 5S. The S’s are seiri (sort), seiton (set in order), seisō (shine), seiketsu (standardize), and shitsuke (sustain).
“Each of the S’s corresponds to a step in the organizing process,” Ben explains.
On Claybottom Farm, 5S was put into practice by first sorting their tools into the essentials and then making every tool visible by storing them on a central outdoor rack — as close as possible to their place of use.
Ben translates “shine” as “no dirty corners.” “Make sure you know what ‘zero’ is on your farm or garden space,” he says. “And what zero means is that your potting bench is cleaned, your tools are clean and sharp, and there’s a baseline to get back to. And also make sure your workspaces are well lit if you have an inside processing room. Hang really bright lights and make sure you can see your work.”
According to lean principles, cleaning should be done on a short, high-frequency basis rather than a long, low-frequency basis.
“Long, low-frequency is how we used to do it, which is to say we’d junk up the property all season then think we’d have time and energy to clean up over the winter. And of course, we never did. We just started the next season more cluttered,” Ben says.
The cleaning supplies they use are kept in easy-to-reach locations. Two to three times a day on a harvest day, they try to bring things back to zero. By 4 p.m., their workspaces are as clean and uncluttered as they were at 8 a.m.
Put the Customer at the Center
Once a year, Ben meets with the chefs Clay Bottom Farm sells to and asks them three simple questions: What do you want, when do you want it, and how much?
“I’ll take seed catalogs in, and that chef will help me to essentially design the farm for the year,” he says.
This deepens relationships with customers and delivers core value to clients, Ben says, calling it key to making their business work.
For a serious gardener who wants to sell extra produce, in the back of Ben’s book is a plan for selling $20,000 worth of produce in a 5,000-square-foot garden space. “But the first step in that is to listen to your community, print out a couple of value sheets, have a couple conversations, and let your community — to use lean language — pull your product from the farm, to really weave your farm into the community,” Ben says.
In “The Lean Micro Farm,” Ben shares how to earn $20,000 a year with a 5,000-square-foot growing area. (photo: Courtesy of Ben Hartman)
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Ben Hartman. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
How have you used lean micro farm principles in your garden? Let us know about your experience in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 140: The Successful Journey of a Market Farmer: Conor Crickmore of Neversink Farm
Episode 158: The Agrihood Movement: Cultivating Food & Community with Farmer D
Episode 287: No-Till Gardening and The Living Soil Handbook, with Jesse Frost
Episode 243: Always More to Learn in the Garden, with Margaret Roach
Episode 345: The Lean Micro Farm: Raise Crops with Maximum Efficiency
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
“The Lean Farm: How to Minimize Waste, Increase Efficiency, and Maximize Value and Profits with Less Work” by Ben Hartman
“The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables: More In-Depth Lean Techniques for Efficient Organic Production” by Ben Hartman
“The Lean Micro Farm: How to Get Small, Embrace Local, Live Better, and Work Less” by Ben Hartman
“Small Is Beautiful” by E. F. Schumacher
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown
“Walden” by Henry David Thoreau
Proven Winners ColorChoice – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Corona Tools, Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Earth’s Ally, Proven Winners ColorChoice, Farmer’s Defense, Heirloom Roses and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
