Tag Archives: planning a farm

Seeds, Spring, Software, and Spreadsheets

So I posted several months ago about choosing seeds and planning fields for the 2015 season. Well, now that the season is finally starting, our plans have come a long way, and it’s funny to think how much has gone into it.

As you place specific varieties of crops onto your Garden Plan in Mother Earth Garden Planner, it generates a sheet with the number of plants, when they need to planted, and more useful data.

As you place specific varieties of crops onto your Garden Plan in Mother Earth Garden Planner, it generates a sheet with the number of plants; starting, planting and harvesting dates; and more useful data.

After we looked over what crops and varieties we wanted to grow, we had to consider what farm planning software to use to mock up LaFarm. Last year we worked with AgSquared but it wasn’t able to do everything we wanted in the most convenient way, so we switched. First, we were considering the open source Farm Data, being developed by some friends at Dickinson College, but given its relatively rough current state, we chose to go with the Mother Earth Garden Planner. Though the Mother Earth Planner is not actually made for a full sized farm and is more apt for smaller gardens, we were able to fit it to our fields, and the useful visuals as well as the printable data sheets give us the information we’ll need in the field in a good form.

With a rough idea of what we wanted and where, we made a preliminary plan with this software. After that, it was time to narrow down some details. I looked through all our saved seed and made a very extensive inventory with Microsoft Excel that I was able to cross reference with information from our Garden Planner as well as from seed catalogs about growing and pricing.

With that information, I was able to revise our Garden Plan to be much closer to what it will likely look like. This office farming has been happening concurrently with the start of our outdoor work and the purchasing of our earliest crops like leeks, potatoes, and onions, (the last of which we already have in the ground!) The Plan will be indispensable for us in knowing what else we need to get, and keeping track of what goes where and when, and having it now means not having to do extra office work when there’s too much to do outside. Even in cases when we might have to change the plan because of unforeseeable circumstances like weather or a failure in someone’s greenhouse, having a plan already makes recouping from something like that much more manageable.

-Joe Ingrao, Spring 2015 EXCEL Scholar

Setting Up for the 2015 Season

Please excuse my poor handwriting.

A farmer’s job never really stops. There are definitely sudden lurches in the amount and form of work to be done, but even in the dead of winter, the LaFarmers are still hard at work, office farming.

Office farming is the vernacular we use for the plethora of activities farmers need to do in an office to make sure everything goes right on the farm. Probably one of the most important thing farmers can do to support themselves. Definitely more important advancement than a tractor, in my opinion (and it doesn’t guzzle fossil fuel like there’s no tomorrow to boot!)

We like High Mowing for their exclusively organic seed collection, their positive business structure, and their ease of reading.

We like High Mowing for their exclusively organic seed collection, their positive business structure, and their ease of reading.

The two things currently on the LaFarm office farm agenda are key to any garden or farm. We are planning what we are going to grow and where. We have some saved seeds from the last few years, but we also have to look in this year’s catalogs for the rest of what we want. Our personal seed catalog of choice is High Mowing (pictured at right) but for some of the crops and varieties they don’t have, or run out of, we turn to Johnny’s Seeds.

Please excuse my poor handwriting.

I like a good old pencil and paper, but Microsoft Excel is also conducive to this sort of index.

Choosing seeds isn’t easy even on a scale like that of LaFarm. There are so many factors to take into account; disease and pest resistance, nutrition, weed resistance, soil type, tastiness, reliability, germination rate, you name it; so farmers often have to be very careful in choosing what will work best. I was tasked with taking a look at our catalogs and creating a preliminary list of varieties that would be useful (pictured at left.) This is only the basis for what will eventually be our seed order, because we to not only confirm which varieties we want, but also determine how much of each we need, and then how much we can afford.

Simultaneously to the seed selection process, we are trying to plan the layout of our fields, which is easier than it could be thanks to our 10 year crop rotation strategy for our main fields, and our several satellite fields for growing whatever crops we need. That’s another thing we start out with on pen and paper, but software helps tremendously to finalize.

Preliminary, hand written notes which will be the basis of our crop plan this year. This year we are planning on using the Mother Nature Garden Planner, but there are alternatives like Farm Data and Ag Squared.

Preliminary, hand written notes which will be the basis of our crop plan this year. To finalize with software we are planning on using the Mother Nature Garden Planner, but there are alternatives like Farm Data and Ag Squared. Many farmers also swear by the adaptability and raw power of Excel to be the only software intense enough to handle a full plan.

These efforts are only the beginning, the metaphorical seeds for our whole 2015 year, but they are important steps. And maybe it’s nice to be able to work away from the blistering sun for some of the year. Long live office farming!

-Joe Ingrao, Winter 2015 EXCEL Scholar