The Urban Farmer: Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land

by Curtis Allen Stone

Strategies and techniques for making a living with intensive food production in small spaces There are 40 million acres of lawns in North America. In their current form, these unproductive expanses of grass represent a significant financial and environmental cost. However, viewed through a different lens, they can also be seen as a tremendous source of opportunity. Access to land is a major barrier for many people who want to enter the agricultural sector, and urban and suburban yards have huge potential for would-be farmers wanting to become part of this growing movement. The Urban Farmer is a comprehensive, hands-on, practical manual to help you learn the techniques and business strategies you need to make a good living growing high-yield, high-value crops right in your own backyard (or someone else's). Major benefits Growing food in the city means that fresh crops may travel only a few blocks from field to table, making this innovative approach the next logical step in the local food movement. Based on a scalable, easily reproduced business model, The Urban Farmer is your complete guide to minimizing risk and maximizing profit by using intensive production in small leased or borrowed spaces.

Genres: Gardening, Agriculture, Nonfiction, Plants, Business, Health

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 2015

Reviews

[Rhode PVD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely one of the best how-to instructional books I've ever come across on pretty much any topic. Loaded with practical advice and plenty of useful illustrations. I was BLOWN AWAY (can you tell?)

Author Curtis Stone is famous in the urban farming field. Even people who don't know his name, know about his achievements. He's that guy who turned a few small spare lots into a profitable business. Freakishly profitable in fact. Most urban and local farm-to-table farmers are not profitable. It's the dirty secret of the biz. By innovating and experimenting, Stone was able to gross $75,000 per year on a 15,000 square foot lot. That's unprecedented. By way of comparison, most market gardeners would be thrilled to make less than half of that per acre.

Profit aside, this is a super useful book for home gardeners as well. He includes details on how to rip up your lawn and get a high yield garden instead. He includes step by step info on plot layout, irrigation, fencing, organic pest control, harvesting, processing, packing, etc. And it's all written assuming you are a novice, but with enough advanced tips for experienced farmers to get something new as well.

Curtis Stone is now my hero. If you are at all interested in this topic, he should be yours too.

[Alli Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's nice to see a farmer making money. It's a good description of operating an urban farm as a business and I would use it as such. The farming techniques themselves are common knowledge and I would use other sources if looking for that kind of information.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent book. Curtis's youtube channel is decent so I figured I would check this out to get a more in depth understanding of what he's talking about. Urban farming isn't for me but it would be cool if you have dreams of living on top of other people like many do.

This point he made about lawns was interesting:

Right now in the US, there are 40 million acres of lawn. Between 30% to 60% of the fresh water in cities is used to water those lawns, and 580 million gallons of gasoline are used to mow them.1 When we factor in all the costs it takes to maintain a lawn — such as watering, mowing, weeding and manicuring — it’s easy to come to the conclusion that a lawn is nothing but a cost center, one that a lot of North Americans simply cannot afford.

I agree, lawns are useless. Sorry to Hank Hill for this opinion.

I see this more as a guide for beginners who want to get into farming. This book takes a very conservative approach to how you approach starting out then makes a mistake by telling you that you will make 65k a year farming microgreens when you start out. I don't doubt that this is a possibility, but it ain't a possibility for most.

[Leo Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE URBAN FARMER by Curtis Stone is a good, practical, and very detailed look at making a small, urban farm (or a market garden) profitable. Stone covers everything you need to know to set up your operation, from irrigation to planting schedules to building a greenhouse. He even covers the all-important "selling" aspects, hocking your produce at farmers markets, to local groceries and restaurants.

Downside: Stone can be long-winded, so the book could use a fair amount of text-editing. Still, a solid read. Four-stars.

[Graham Seibert · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than delivers on the promise of urban farming –offers a useful philosophy as well
Curtis Stone succeeds extraordinarily well in the primary objective of this book. It is an attempt to tell the reader how to establish an urban farm. As the table of contents below indicates, he covers just about every aspect of the question.

How to acquire the needed resources: urban land, primarily lawns and some equipment. He advises how to locate customers. He advises what crops to grow.

The book is intensely practical. Although he is known as "the bike farmer" in this Canadian town where he lives, and thus might be taken for a counter-culture sort, he is very forthright in saying that this identity is a marketing tool. It identifies him to his customers, and a bicycle is the cheapest means of transportation. The book is relentlessly focused on the bottom line rather than being wedded to any idealistic principles. Farming is a business, and he tells you how to
optimize every aspect of the operation to make it profitable.

Obviously, locally grown organic food appeals to a well-defined sector of the population. Call them crunchy cons, yuppies, urban aesthetes, or whatever one calls them, anybody familiar with the American or Canadian social scene will recognize his customer base. There are people who did not want mass-produced, mass marketed food, and are willing to pay a premium for fresh, pure, locally grown produce. Stone serves three sets of customers: local farmers' markets,
Community Supported Agriculture, and restaurants. Community supported agriculture (CSA) are groups in the community that contract with a grower such as Stone to take produce over the course of a growing season or year. This provides a steady customer base and some predictability. The other outlets being more profitable, Stone devotes more space to describing how to establish oneself with farmers markets and restaurants.

Stone starts with several key insights. The first is that there is a broad market in North America for the kind of high quality, organic produce he is able to grow. The second insight is that lawns are a vast underused resource. There are 40 million acres of lawn in America. They account for between 30 and 60 percent of urban water use, and take a lot of time and gasoline to mow. Moreover, many homeowners see them as a pain and bother. Many lawn owners are happy to allow an urban farmer to use the land in exchange for some produce. A third is that urban land is very close to the end
consumer. A crop can go from field to table in a day. A fourth insight is that cities have their own ecology. There are warmer and better protected from wind than rural farms. Stone's approach all of these advantages to form a profitable business.

The most amazing observation I found in the book is how little land it takes to succeed in urban farming. A half-acre is the most area he discusses in the book. Even that small amount, he observes, requires hired help according to his system. Observe that quarter acre lots are extremely common in the suburbs, and you can conclude that it is not difficult to satisfy the land requirements.

Going to the bottom line, Stone writes about generating incomes in the five figure range, comparable with teachers and other professionals who will be among his customers. I will venture some observations that Stone only implies. A five figure income to an urban farmer is a lot more than it is to a teacher. The urban farmer doesn't need to spend a lot of money on clothes, a car to get to and from work, and the other trappings of a professional life. Being reliant on a bicycle
(perhaps battery assisted, to pull around a Rototiller on a trailer) is an immediate money saver. A social life is built-in to an urban farmer's life. He is in constant contact with neighbors, chefs, customers in the farmers market. Stone writes that he is often called upon to speak to community organizations. In the words of Nicholas Nassim Taleb he is "antifragile." He can handle customers coming and going, and he does not have a foundation of debt to be serviced. In fact,
Stone is rather adamant on the subject of debt: don't use it.

There is a lot of value in the book even to somebody who does not want to implement Stone's model. I live on a third of an acre in Kyiv, Ukraine. We do not have the yuppie restaurant market here. You could never get seven dollars a pound for fresh spinach – one or two is more like it. However, the book will be useful to me in planning how to lay out our garden plots, how to use plastic tunnels to extend the growing season, how to control pests and weeds, and how to
decide what to plant. I would recommend it to almost any gardener. Stone's bottom line perspective is useful even if you are only deciding what to grow for your own use.

Stone writes about the qualities one looks for in an employee "Paying for labor is worth it only if it allows you to do tasks that cannot be delegated as easily." He comes across as a fair boss, but not one who is in any way committed to socialist notions. Using an employee is a business decision. If they don't contribute to the bottom line, you don't need them.

An assessment of the capital that Stone himself brings to the business is illuminating. In terms of financial capital he is talking about $10,000, give or take. In terms of the human capital that he himself evidently brings, it includes yeoman farmer attributes that we would all like to impute to our ancestors, but we have to observe are rather rare today.

Here is the human capital that Stone himself appears to possess:
• An innate sense of entrepreneurship. He looks for opportunities, and assesses each situation in terms of possible benefit.
• Hard work. Stone finds what he is doing interesting and is willing to put the time and to make it successful.
• Facility with tools. Like any farmer, Stone has to invent, construct, repair, and jury-rig equipment to get the job done.
• Gregariousness. Throughout Stone's day he comes in contact with many, many potential customers, and has the patience and the graciousness to talk with all of them.
• Fairness. He does what it takes to be fair to customers, employees, and all around him.
• Curiosity. Stone acquires the knowledge he shares in this book by talking to people, reading, and tinkering and figuring things out.
• Facility with numbers. Stone describes how he uses spreadsheets extensively to plan his operations and record his outcomes.
• Facility with language. He is in constant communication.
• Facility with computers and technology. This is essential to support work with numbers and language in today's world.

Stone's background prior to farming would not at first appear promising. He concluded after a decade and a half as a rock musician that that was not going to be his profession, so he looked for something he could do. He credits his father with an entrepreneurial streak that the son seems to have inherited. So, on the one hand, he started from nothing: no education in farming, no real experience, and precious little capital. On the other hand, in terms of human capital he
was extremely well endowed. He had what it took to succeed.

Stone's story is a parable for Millennial youth. These kids emerge from the University chock-full of formal education but with no practical experience, and quite specifically, little notion of the fact that one earns a living by providing the kinds of goods and services that people are willing to pay for. What a blessing it would be to a 16-year-old with no discernible direction in life to get involved in something basic like urban farming and learn the self-discipline and the talents required to make a success of this fairly basic undertaking. It would prepare one for life. In our yeoman farmer
ancestors, such a basic understanding of how things work was implicit. Stone provides a recipe for going back to these fundamental values.

It is a five-star effort all around. The table of contents below gives you an idea of the breadth and depth of the book.

Contents
--- A Farm in the City
1. Why Urban Farming?
2. Connecting the Dots: An Urban Farmer’s Place in the Community
3. Quick Breakdown of Economics
--- A Viable Farming Business On ½ Acre Or Less
4. The Zones of Your Farm and Your Life
5. Crops Better Suited for the City
6. Introduction to Urban Infrastructure
7. Start-Up Farm Models
--- The Business of Urban Farming
8. Starting Small
9. Market Streams
10. Working with Chefs
11. Labor
12. Software and Organization
13. Self-Promotion
14. Finance Options
--- Finding the Right Site
15. Scouting for Land
16. Urban, Suburban and Peri-Urban Land
17. Multiple or Single-Plot Farming
18. Urban Soil
19. Land Agreements and Leases
20. Urban Pests
--- Building Your Farm, One Site at a Time
21. Turning a Lawn Into a Farm Plot
22. Choosing A Site
23. Garden Layout
24. The Perimeter
25. Irrigation 6 Infrastructure and Equipment
26. Base of Operations
27. Tools
28. Special Growing Areas
29. Inexpensive Season Extension
30. Transportation
--- Operations
31. Work Smarter not Harder
32. Harvesting
33. Post-Harvest Processing
34. Portioning and Packing
--- Production Systems
35. Beds for Production
36. Planting
37. Microgreens
38. Extending the Season
--- Basic Crop Planning
39. Determine Your Outcome
40. The Base Plan
--- Crops for the Urban Farmer
41. Parting Words

[Tacoman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really could have used a further proofread.
The first 200 pages or so are covered on the author's youtube channel. The last 50 pages are where any value lies, which is strongly tied to his specific climate. Author calls revenue, 'profit', apparently unaware of the difference. There was no distinction between gross and net either. This results in his business conclusions not being clearly logical. Nearly all the information within this book is available in other, better, more complete sources. The flow of the book was very odd and difficult to follow to boot.

[Pam Dawling · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Urban Farmer is part of the movement to make a good living as a farmer on a small area of land, without big machinery, as exemplified by Eliot Coleman, Jean-Martin Fortier and Ben Hartman (and as Colin McCrate and Brad Halm do for home gardeners). Curtis Stone supplies fairly high-end restaurants with leafy greens and a few other carefully chosen crops which bring a fast return. He also sells at a farmers market once a week. Curtis has figured out how to make the best use of small plots of urban land, and in the same way, he has figured out how to make best use of his time, so that he can earn a good 5-figure income from his one-third acre farm. He pays exquisite attention to what works and what doesn't. Oh, and most of his transportation is by (electrically assisted) bicycle.

Curtis wrote this valuable book after only about 6 years as owner/operator of Green City Acres, a small commercial vegetable farm in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. He writes as an independently-minded entrepreneur engaged in sustainable agriculture, in being part of a better future, supplying very fresh produce to city-dwellers. He shows how would-be farmers with no capital, no land and no truck can get a start. This book will quickly earn its keep. If Curtis Stone is speaking at an event near you, be sure to go to it!

This is a very well-organized and well-written book. The language is clear and straight-forward. The short sentences are made for high-lighting! No skirting of sub-clauses is required. The 41 chapters divide into ten sections. Some chapters are very short. Curtis is not going to waste time filling blank space when he can explain the important stuff in a paragraph. He covers the why and where, and the business aspects, then finding and developing various plots of land into a cohesive small farm. He advises on infrastructure, equipment, production, harvest and post-harvest systems. He also covers basic crop planning.

This isn't a book about growing a complete diet, or supplying a full range of vegetables for a CSA. Nor is it about how to grow carrots. There are 25 pages devoted to cameos of twenty recommended crops, but if you are a new grower, you'll need more production info than you find here. Instead, this book can inspire and educate on how to make decisions likely to lead to successful sales, while focusing your hard work on the tasks that will get you there.

If you want to do multi-site urban farming to grow selected crops for restaurants in the Pacific North West or British Columbia in zone 7a, this book has most of what you need. But its usefulness isn't at all confined to people in those regions, or to urban farmers, or to super-fit cyclists. So if your town already has a restaurant supplier of bio-intensively-grown salad crops and greens, do not despair. All vegetable growers can find something of value in this book, whether it is in his analysis of different crop types, growing microgreens, becoming more efficient, choosing good tools or keeping good records.

Curtis is a believer in farming smarter, not harder (but hard enough to make it all work). He puts the work in, in a timely way, is very observant, keeps good records, analyses his results and makes changes based on what his records show. He's not one to grow red peppers "because everyone wants them." If we follow our hearts only and ignore our sales figures and production costs, we won't last long earning a living as farmers. Likewise, it's good to have ethics and ideology, but if you go broke, you'll be out of a job. If ten crops bring in 80% of the income, why not focus on those? After his first four years, Curtis reduced his farm from 2½ acres to 1/3 acre (5 plots close to each other). He cut his crop portfolio down to the most lucrative fifteen; he parted ways with his fellow worker, his CSA and most of his employees. His hours went down from 100 per week to 40 (and fewer of those were spent managing other people, more in planting and harvesting). His clients then were mostly restaurant chefs and his weekly farmers market. He had his best season that far, making a much higher dollar per hour.

Curtis is willing to change plans for a better idea, or to transform a crop failure or over-abundance into a baby beet greens opportunity. He sees the coming end of suburbia as a great opportunity to reclaim all those lawns for food growing: modern-day self-reliant farming communities. Being an urban farmer means interacting with lots of people every day, which leads to opportunities to educate about food, to be part of the local community, and to benefit from what local people will offer in terms of land, help and free advertising.

One aspect of the book I found particularly useful is the way Curtis divides crops and land into categories:
1. Quick Crops (maturing in 60 days or less) mostly grown in Hi-Rotation plots: mostly salad greens and radishes. The Hi-Rotation beds might grow 4 crops in a single year, with no pre-planned crop rotation. Sometimes a Steady Crop like carrots is grown in a Hi-Rotation plot.
2. Steady Crops (slower maturing, perhaps harvested continuously over a period of time): kale, tomatoes, carrots. These beds will be in a Bi-Rotation plot, which often will grow one Steady Crop as the Primary Crop, followed or preceded by a Quick Crop, especially one that can be cropped out at a single site visit, rather than requiring daily harvests.

It works best to have the Hi-Rotation plots nearest to the home base as they need the most frequent attention. Bi-Rotation plots can usually be further afield, except for indeterminate tomatoes which Curtis grows on a close spacing and prunes hard to improve airflow and encourage early ripening. Slow long season crops aren't included, nor are ones that take a lot of space, like sweet corn.

The Crop Value Rating (CVR) is a useful way of comparing the advantages of various crops when choosing which to grow. Clearly this is important if space is limited. Less clear is the value of assessing crops this way when some other factor is limited. We do this when labor is limited. It clarifies stressful indecisive confusions. Here are the 5 factors Curtis assesses:
1. Shorter days to maturity (fast crops = more chances to plant more)
2. High yield per foot of row (best value from the space)
3. High price per pound (other factors being equal, higher price = more income)
4. Long harvest period (= more sales)
5. Popularity (matched with low market saturation).
To use this assessment, give each potential crop a point for each factor where it deserves one. Then look for the crops with the highest number of points. Spinach gets all 5 points; cherry tomatoes only 3. The smaller your farm, the higher the crops need to score to get chosen.

Winter crops can be grown in hoophouses (polytunnels). Summer crops can help level the weekly sales out over the market season.

Various start-up models are spelled out, along with the caution to start small, say with ¼ acre, and low overhead expenses. Various market options are compared. The section on software and organization lists the ten spreadsheets Curtis prepares: Plantings, Yields, Crop Profiles, Weekly Orders, Weekly Sales Totals, Land Allocation Data, Budget and Expenses, Seed Order and Inventory, Plot Progress, and Spoilage.

There is a section on scouting for land and how to choose the best of your offers, and which to decline (heavy metal soil contamination, neighbors spraying herbicides, Field Bindweed, too much shade, too many rocks, owners needing too much caretaking. On the other hand, don't be over nervous about invasive grasses, they can be conquered. There is information you won't find in many other farming or gardening books, such as how to remove sod.

There is a thorough section on irrigation, set up for low management with timers and many sprinklers covering an area, or many lines of drip tape. I learned for the first time about flow through drip systems, where both ends of each drip tape are connected into the mains tubing, so that water can flow in both direction, and blockages will not be a problem. The costs are all spelled out (so get the book and buy the gear before prices go up!). Every section contains a gem that will save you time, money, mental strain or wasted crops. It hadn't occurred to me that box fans could be laid flat above vegetable drying racks to dry washed greens and preserve the quality.

All of the equipment Curtis puts together is inexpensive and relatively easy to move to a new site. Two medium size coolers instead of one big one! Standard lengths of rowcover! Little decisions can have big benefits. Microgreens production indoors (in shallow flats) and outdoors (much less usual, but oh, the returns!) Curtis explains his special board technique for getting fast even germination.

The crops section focuses on providing the basic information through the perspective of factors already mentioned: Quick Crop or Steady Crop, months of harvest, Crop value rating, Days to maturity of recommended varieties, Yield per bed, Gross profit per bed, and also Planting Specs.

Here is a great book for those who want to make their farming time count and be as productive as possible, with best value for time and the land available.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A guide to growing food that is simple and direct.
The style of food production that is covered is applicable anywhere on the scale from large backyard garden to small farm. While Curtis designed his layout to maximize cash-flow since this is his job, you could just as well use a similar system but change the crops to suit a different goal, provide X% of your calories or Y% of your vegetable needs for example. Either way the information covered is well organized and concise and features plenty of tables and charts.
Need to know what you should purchase to set up an a low cost irrigation system? Check. What's the best way to turn a lawn into a garden? Well how much time do you have? Here are three approaches. Check. How much should you seed each intensive bed for a specific crop? Look there's a table. What do you need for a small nursery to save money on transplants? Check. (Also there are YouTube videos)

However, the real benefit of this book is that it serves as a good counter to the "cute" factor often found in some gardening books. For example the narrative, "Oh no, modern agriculture is bad, let's solve things by planting a garden, oh look 3 tomato plants. Look at us saving the world". To really make things work at scale (and make a difference) you need efficient layouts and systems to produce the most value (in whatever form that takes for you) with the least long term effort. So you can either make or good living or grow food in your spare time without burning out. The real value in this book is coming up the learning curve quickly, being efficient, and realizing you can do a lot with a small land space but you're not going to save the world.

[Sourabh Rohilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the surface, this book is about Curtis Stone showing how you can convert backyards in US into profitable farming business. When a guy talks about making "$19,200 on a 2400 sqft in 7 months", and you know that farming is not even considered a viable business in your country, you take notes. Curtis outlines the way he operates his business in the book. He talks about farm selection, irrigation, fencing, fertilisers, crop selection, seeding, harvesting, packing, processing, marketing, customer mix. His rigour of business model shines through in the book. All I could think about was, if every farmer in India knew what's written in this book and then evolve our own models for agriculture and optimise a farm the way we obsess about optimising manufacturing processes and business processes, the possibilities are simply a lot. India has 50% population working in agriculture, has second largest arable land in the world (behind US), is second largest producer of fruits and vegetable in the world, and yet contribute 17% to GDP. You know something is broken, and we got to fix it.

[Danielle Billetz-Reppert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Practical and Inspiring Guide for Aspiring Urban Farmers

Curtis Allen Stone’s “The Urban Farmer: Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land” is a must-read for anyone interested in urban agriculture. Stone provides a clear, step-by-step guide to turning small plots of land into profitable farming ventures, making this book both practical and inspiring. His real-world experience shines through in the detailed advice and strategies he shares, from soil preparation to marketing produce. What makes this book stand out is its focus on efficiency and profitability, proving that you don’t need a large farm to make a significant impact. Whether you’re new to farming or looking to optimize your current operations, this book offers valuable insights and motivation to succeed in urban farming.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stone's book is a wealth of information for the bio-intensive or urban market grower. While many things might be site specific, there is plenty of information here that could be applied to any intensive gardening or farming system, whether growing for profit or not. But the book's niche is certainly for the market grower, with his emphasis on efficiency, value, and reducing labor. Topics include choosing sites, marketing, equipment, crop selection, and a plethora of practical tips for preparing soil, harvesting, and post-harvest handling. He also provides you glimpses throughout into how he plans for his crops and markets as well as how he tracks and organizes data.

[Marc Schneider · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great idea and valuable info, but the writing is dry as hell. Also, there were some statements like “if you aren’t making money off your employees then what’s the point?” that gave me pause. Serious questions regarding political economy remain to be asked by many of these alternative agriculture types. So much of their ideology rhymes with the “Financial Independence, Retire Early” crowd. Too petit bourgeois for me!

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I daydream of becoming a professional peasant, and I've always wanted to know how viable the business is.

Although Stone's strategy is less about self-reliance and is more about commercial specialization, I got some tremendous insight into the nature of running a profitable farm on a small piece of land.

I'm still several years from even attempting it, but now I know what questions to ask and how to think about the potential challenge of becoming a modern farmer.

[Tucker Cross · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent how-to for anyone interested in joining the world of market gardening. Curtis Stone provides an abundance of clear and communicable introductory concepts and language. The only reason I have not given this 5/5 is because there are a few online resources he offers through the book which appear to no longer be available through his website. Fortunately, the lacking of these resources should in no way deter someone from accomplishing their market gardening objectives.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, if you want a step-by-step instruction book on how to make a living as an urban farmer, here's your guide.

Stone is very thorough in teaching: the benefits of urban farming, how to find land to farm, how to run a successful farm business, how to find people to buy your produce, how to make a profit as a farmer, how to keep costs low while still providing a quality product, etc.

[Navjeet Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great book and reference if you want to enter commercial urban farming. My goal of reading this was to have a sustainable garden of my own and this book might be a bit overkill for that goal. I'll probably recommend it to my dad who always wanted to have a small commercial operation in his back yard.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but there are better books to spend your time on if you're interested in growing food for market. The writing in this is fast and unfocused and it didn't really seem like Curtis ever settled into a given topic for long. Curtis' attitude can be a bit grating at times, and I get the impression he hypes up his business model a bit.

[Dayton Outar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this a 4 out of 5, primarily because I read books with similar content before this one and those that I have read were more insightful. Credit must be given to this book for the organization of the content.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and inspiring.

[Matthew Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great information for not only how to grow market crops, but how to market them!

[Sergei Silnov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book on how to earn in small scale agriculture

[Andrew Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely helpful and practical, even if just trying to backyard garden more effectively.

[Adam E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great resource for a newbie
Mr. Stone does a great job

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book for 'how to' grow food and make a profit, even when you don't know land!! He has a great story, and has progressed to teaching others and financial success. Catch him on You Tube!

[Logan Streondj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thorough overview of his highly successful operation, from seeds to spreadsheets and customer relations.

[Will G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Garnish growing.

[Entropic Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revolutionary

[kathy reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book. Curtis shares many tips about starting his own farm. So much information on how to start your own farm and make a living on it.

[Kate Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well written and to the point. Lots of valuable information for anyone interested in making money off of a small amount of land.

[Patrick Reeves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a YouTuber making a buck. Pass on this one. There are better options.