The Garvey's Gardens Podcast · Sydney Garvey + Audrey Estrada

#87 - Soil, Food, and Farm Conference Replay

·1 hr 3 min·3 clips

Sydney Garvey says, "If you don't have a profit, you don't have a business."

1. The Garvey's Gardens Podcast episode replay centers on Sydney Garvey's Soil, Food, and Farm Conference talk in Montrose about building a business beyond the farm. 2. Sydney Garvey is the speaker and owner of Garvey's Gardens, and Madre Estrada introduces the replay because Sydney's talk matters to flower farmers, ranchers, and other growers. 3. The episode asks how a farmer can move from a small operation to a larger business without losing control of the work. 4. Sydney says she noticed more ranchers than flower farmers at the Montrose Pavilion, and she says the audience included farmers and ranchers from all over Western Colorado. 5. She explains that the talk is not about pricing flowers, pointing listeners back to episode 65 and a free pricing guide on girveysgardens.com. 6. Her story starts with teaching middle school and high school math before moving to Palisade almost nine years ago. 7. She describes buying a farm that had been a 4-H livestock property and trialing veggies, herbs, and flowers during maternity leave and COVID. 8. The flower farm grew into farmers markets in Palisade and Grand Junction, a CSA subscription model, weddings, and then a flower shop in downtown Grand Junction in February 2023. 9. Sydney says the shop and farm now work together to supply flowers, and she is trying to stretch production through the year with hydroponic tulips and heirloom mums. 10. Her first growth lesson is systems, and she says standard operating procedures should exist before any new revenue stream is added. 11. She defines SOPs as a binder of written instructions for seeds, planting, harvesting, irrigation, and timer changes. 12. She says the farm uses Google Calendar for weddings, shop work, and farm work, replacing a paper wall calendar that became too messy. 13. Automation is part of her system list, and she names irrigation, grow lights, and email as things that should be automated when possible. 14. Shared ownership is another system, and she says staff members adopt beds, weed them, and carry hours tied to crop timing and profit levels. 15. She also describes separate daily, weekly, and monthly checklists for the flower shop, including opening, closing, and fertilizing the field through irrigation. 16. Sydney says EveryStem helps with pricing and recipe building for weddings, and she uses Google Drive, scheduling software, and laminated checklists to keep revenue streams organized. 17. The team section focuses on hiring for different zones of genius, and she says farm work and retail work require different skills. 18. She says she cross-trains her nine employees for farm, shop, and weddings, uses open-ended Google Forms for screening, and values punctuality, conversation, and soft skills. 19. Listeners who grow flowers, run a farm stand, or want to scale a small agricultural business would get the most from the episode. 20. Listeners looking for a narrative story or a short casual chat about flowers would probably skip it.

As heard by us

A Montrose conference talk focused on staffing and delegation for farm business advice.

Sydney and Madre turn a Montrose conference talk into a workable conversation about farm business choices: hiring, delegation, and what the owner should keep in hand.

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Why you'd press play

You want straight talk on hiring, outsourcing, and what a farm owner should keep in-house.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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