- You may have been watching my YouTube videos
about growing microgreens and microgreens business,
but I've never really shown much of my farm.
I'm sure you're curious about my growth space,
so I'm gonna give you a full walk through,
along with commentary, explaining all the
different parts of my farm and what's in here.
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Before we jump into the farm tour,
I just want to mention that I would not
even have a farm if it wasn't for Nate Dodson
at microgreensfarmer.com.
I want to give him a huge shout out
because it was really his content and his resources,
which gave me the tools I needed to start
my microgreens business in the first place.
I would have never started growing microgreens
if it wasn't for his course that I purchased
in the very beginning that helped guide me
through starting my business.
It's a great course, I highly recommend it.
And if you want to use the same course that I used
when I first got started, I'm gonna put a link
right below in the description so you can
support Nate and use the resources that I
used when I first got started.
By the end of this video, you will have seen
my whole farm, inside and out, and you're gonna
have a better understanding of the space
that I'm working with.
So lets dive right in.
Welcome to my urban farm.
So this is kind of like the customer area
right when they walk in, we're gonna be right here.
Um I got a little couch to hangout on,
uh these are the coolers that I use
to deliver all the products.
They hang out over here.
This is the service table,
so I can serve with my customers.
I'm usually on the other side of the table
as they walk in.
Got my little standing desk over here.
And uh this is what I use for payment processing.
I use Square, so if people want to use a card
they can use a card.
And you can also take cash and ring it up
right on there on the iPad.
I got a desk over here for my employees.
And a little coat rack to hang up our stuff.
A sign that I use usually during farmers markets
and things like that.
I got my vacuum over there.
The wifi and everything.
Um, got a bunch of jade plants on the floor,
those are my favorite plants.
Uh, sorry microgreens are not my favorite, jade plants are.
And they're inside right now because we got a
cold snap last night so I don't want them to freeze.
So uh, yeah as we walk through, this is kind of
just a little table.
I have some books and what not that people can buy.
This is my desk over here.
This is where I do a lot of work, get a lot of work done.
And then at this point we're kind of in the employee area.
So the customer area I consider the least sanitary.
The employee area is a bit more sanitary,
and then as we move into the farm area,
that I consider sanitary.
So over here, you know, we have my desk.
We have a fridge that we share.
I have my couch here.
And then obviously this is the other side
of the service table.
So this is a standing desk.
Like I mentioned before, you can use the
iPad to ring people up.
And this is all just storage, random stuff in there.
And then as we walk into the farm area,
everything is supposed to be kept sanitary.
I use these special markers, so it's simply
just different colored electrical tape.
Below, the red is unsanitary.
If I need to get in here, if my hand aren't washed
or something like that.
Um, and then above, the green is sanitary.
So this is the fridge I use.
This is all I need to service my customers.
It's a full-sized fridge, there's no freezer.
Two shelves, I just load it up with product.
I use the door as well.
Um, and it gets the job done.
So, and this is part of the reason,
you guys are gonna be learning more about this
later on, but this is one of the reasons why
every time I reach a thousand dollars in my
delivery route I split the route into two
because I can't really fit much more than
a thousand dollars worth of product in here.
And in the future, I'm actually gonna get another fridge
that's more of a display fridge with a clear front.
Um, and that'll be good for like a grab and go option,
and also if I need extra room for fridge space.
These are the fans I use.
Uh, I don't use any fans on the shelves.
That may or may not be better.
I'm gonna do some experimenting with that later on,
but these big fans keep the air moving through
the whole facility.
As you heard in the mold videos, that's very useful.
Uh, so these tend to get the job done.
I got stools for my employees if they want to sit down
while they work and sort through sunflower shelves.
These are my harvesting tables.
Stainless steel, I highly recommend.
I love these tables so much, more
than I thought I would.
So, then I got the shelves over here.
This is where we keep gloves, the scales,
um and obviously all the plastics.
So, you know, I got the boxes, I have
the small containers. We have the bags under here.
And then, this is what the orders get packed up in.
These are like the uh take out bags.
They're called t-shirt bags.
I got my sticker station over here.
So um, as we're packing orders, they come down here,
we sticker them up, and then put them
in the fridge after that.
You know, paper towels, handy.
And also I forgot to mention the board
that's on top of the fridge.
This is kind of how I know what we
need to harvest on each day.
So as you can see, I have four harvest days,
which also correlate to four delivery days,
and the different colors represent
different varieties of microgreens.
So, that's a great way to just see a snap shot
of what we have for the week, as well as
informing us what we need to pull off of the
shelves on each harvest day.
Got the garbage hanging out.
Underneath this counter is really just a bunch of
personal stuff. You know I have my food processor,
I have a dehydrator, a blender, and I really
just use that for my own, for my own use.
It's really not for my customers, I don't
do any prepped food in here.
I have a bunch of my own sprouting seeds.
Uh they came from True Leaf.
So, got some buckets of seeds under here.
Some more space for harvesting, and then
obviously all the grow racks down the whole room.
So, you can see the different varieties that I have.
The pea up top, radish up here, I put all the
grass in the middle.
Grass is more prone to mold, so I keep
them at the same level as the fan so they get
most of the air movement.
Uh, all the broccoli down here, and then
the sunflower always on the bottom.
I always keep the pea up top and the sunflower on the bottom
Sunflowers shed their holes, so you want
those falling on the floor rather than
into other trays of microgreens.
And then the peas are just, I find the easiest
out of all varieties, so I keep them up top.
You don't have to really see what's going
on with those as much.
So, yeah I got a little drying rack
when I wash stuff. They can dry on there.
Uh, this is my triple sink.
Got my magnetic board for my knives,
and then this is my hand sink.
So, you typically want two separate sinks,
one for hand washing, one for washing equipment.
And then again, some more paper towels.
Um, I do a lot of storage of supplies,
like packaging, gloves, t-shirt bags, paper towels.
I store a lot of that up on top of my shelves,
as just a way to better utilize my space.
I think that's a great great idea.
Um, you don't really want to waste any space
in your microgreens farm, cause as you
grow you're gonna run out of space very quickly.
These are my wheel barrows, so after the
trays are used up and they're spent,
um, I'll take them out of the tray,
put them in the wheel barrows,
and then these actually get dumped outside.
So I'll show you that right now.
And uh, this urban farm, this building,
is actually
on an organic farm.
So surrounding this whole building is
a property where we do organic farming.
I'm not as involved with the outdoor stuff,
as I am with just running my business in here,
um but it's really cool that it's surrounded by a farm.
Yeah, you open this up.
I got these bins down here, so we just
dump it right into there, and those get taken away.
I actually have teamed up with a guy that does composting,
and uh and worm farming, so he takes this away
and turns it back into compost.
So and you can see, out in the distance,
a bunch of farm stuff going on.
That's a bunch of garlic, and I used
to just dump all my stuff from one wheel barrow
into another wheel barrow and then dump it
into this area over here, but we've since
cleaned that up and it looks much nicer.
And now we can use it for production, for veggies.
(door closes)
Got my brooms over here, those are important.
Uh, I have super racks. That's what I call these.
It's essentially just a rack with a bunch of shelves on it.
More than these racks, and they're on wheels.
Uh, the spacing is tighter and they're is no light on these,
so this allows you to move trays around the farm
very quickly and easily for improved efficiency.
And I talked about that in my efficiency video.
This is where I store all my seeds.
Uh, I always keep them stocked up.
One of the last things you want is to
run out of seeds or supplies, so I always
keep a ton of seeds around.
Ideally you would want them in a cool environment,
with low moisture. Um,
that's uh probably dark as well, but I've had no problem
just throwing my seeds just right out here
in the main grow room.
I got some lights stored up, for expansion.
Just some random stuff over here, I have
a tent for the farmers market.
Uh, this is just some supplies for my other business,
where I pack up seeds and ship those out
so people can grow their own sprouts.
This is the other side of the grow room.
Uh, a whole bunch of sunflower seeds over here.
These only come around every once in a while.
I get my sunflower seeds right from Italy.
So, when they're available I buy a bunch
so I don't run out.
Because I don't want to use seeds from another
company, because these have been definitely
the best performers.
As you can see on top of the racks,
just a bunch more supplies.
More plastic and what not.
This is uh, this is an experiment,
so this borage over here, and nasturtiums over here.
These are gonna get transplanted outside very soon,
and I want to try to do some edible flowers.
So I think that would be a lot of fun.
A nice new value added product.
Then I have some arugula and some mustard
that are actually I bought as microgreen seeds,
but I just planted them. I'm trying them out.
I want to grow them out to full veg just for myself,
not really for customers.
So yeah, this is the other side of the racks.
So, I have essentially 12 racks in operation right now,
and growing every week.
And then this is just a bunch of supplies for a
flood and drain system that I'm working on.
Um, I've been procrastinating a bit on this,
but I think we'll probably get this going in the next month.
So this will essentially do automatic
watering of the trays so I don't have to do that anymore.
And theoretically, it should do like
perfect watering as well.
So, reduces human error.
I'm excited for this.
Also, um,
you can see up there
I have a bunch of outlets I have mounted.
There's outlets over here on the wall as well.
And this is something I felt was important, you know
as I grow I'm gonna need more electricity,
and just the outlets in this building weren't enough,
so I had electricians put in a few more breakers.
And they actually put in a timer that's linked
to the box, so I don't have like wall timers
that I was using in the beginning.
It's actually like a, an electrical box with a timer in it
that comes in and controls all these outlets
that are used exclusively for the lights.
This is my hose, so I use this to water.
Uh, we rent some plumbing and some water lines
when I first moved in here.
And at the very beginning of all my water lines
is um, very nice water filtration systems.
So all the water that I use, uh, for washing equipment,
and for watering plants, and also for my drinking water,
it goes through a really nice filter.
Um, so comes up, and then I have this line
to water the plants with.
And then I have another line, a hose, that goes
down the length of this building
that I can then water my outdoor plants with
when those go outside.
So yeah, that's the main grow room,
and then back here is the germination room.
So this is where I keep my soil right
back here, ready to go.
I got everything germinating over here.
I got some seeds soaking over here,
so these are actually gonna get drained out,
right after I shoot this video actually.
These will get drained out.
So I got some weed grass soaking, some
sunflower, and some pea.
This is an automatic, uh seed soaking system
that I've built, and I'll definitely
make a video on that in the future for you guys.
This has been very useful for me instead
of coming in at 8 o'clock every night to soak seeds.
Uh, this goes off automatically in the middle of the night,
and then when I get into the farm in the morning
I can just drain the water out and
they're ready to go.
So, um, I'm excited to make a video about this.
It will be fun.
You can see all the trays germinating.
I use weights on top of my trays.
These are about 14 pound paving stones,
is what they're called. I got them from Lowe's.
Pretty simple.
And uh, I stack the trays and they germinate.
So these will go actually under the lights today.
These are all radish, and then it looks like some um,
some salad mix from True Leaf.
Um, so you can see these are not quite ready to go out yet.
These are all my seeds that I soak.
So I have peas, sunflower, weed grass, and barely.
And then I put the soil into here, I'll break it up
on the counter, push it into the bin, and then
it's ready to use.
And then, this is my seed cabinet, so I store
all my seeds in here so that way they're ready to go.
Weigh them out on the table over here, and then
I make my trays right on this table.
And then back here we have another board
that's similar to the board over on the fridge
back there that I showed you,
but this is more about when we're making trays
and when the trays are going out on the lights.
And the other board is more about harvesting and
what's ready for that day.
Um yeah, so this is where the whole process starts.
I have a sink back here to wash buckets.
And, I don't know. That's about it.
That's my farm, so hope you guys like this and
I'll see you next time.
Now you've seen what my urban farm looks like,
but what if you want a resource to help guide you
and starting your business step by step.
Like I mentioned in the beginning of the video,
there's a link below in the description
to the course that I used when I first got started,
and I think it will help you to get started as well.
It actually has a lot more information in it now,
compared to when I first bought it.
So, lucky you. Nate keeps on adding more
information and content into the course,
so even though you only pay for it once,
you're gonna keep on getting more value
for years to come.
If you liked this video, be sure to hit the like button
below, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and share
this video wherever you see fit.
If you want to learn what materials
are needed to start a simple microgreens
farm setup, click the videos below,
and click the other video if you want
to learn what it's actually like to run
a profitable microgreens business.
Thanks again and I'll see you guys next time.