$10,000 a month growing microgreens in a basement!

hey guys I'm in a suburban neighborhood just a little north of Calgary and today I want to show you how you can have a home-based business growing microgreens and you can scale it these guys here this operation is called micro acres and these guys are doing about ten thousand dollars a month in revenue for their micro green and it's the to two people running a husband-and-wife team working about 40 hours a week and they're doing those kind of numbers in their basement so we're gonna go check this basement out and see what it's all about my name is David my name is kerstin we live in Airdrie Alberta and this is our little microgreen farm my crackers organ Airdrie Alberta just a little bit north of Calgary and we're sitting about 400 square feet of germinating area and grow area are running right now about 170 rocks give or take between both germinating off to your left here so this is kind of where everything kind of starts so right now we have about 70 trees kind of growing everything goes cat it on a small abrasca snail other things we do stacked peas radishes sunflowers we have popcorn growing right here just go to germinating nice and simple there you go maybe it's about five days in on those guys we got some micro leek germinating up there so these guys are running a vote two days old right now so just starting to pop up a little bit they run about a six-day cycle before they go under the light yeah run to six four tables this is where basically all planting harvesting everything's done yeah we use everything's biodegradable compostable corn based containers okay out of company Los Angeles so use three different sizes two for retail and two for wholesale and then yeah this is the main growing your acre so we have five fans running simultaneously 24/7 when a cursed favorites here you just show us here is our micro leak mm-hmm which is growing quite nicely right now so these ones are running at about two weeks right now and these guys are running at nine days so you're seeing a boat they actually two inches to growth within that hull stay on which is quite nice so chefs love these getting the dehydrated aspect - is that little crunchy sweet scallion a little bit wheatgrass we have kind of going out so we actually supply the University of Calgary actually takes quite a bit our product as they developed a whole new program for bringing health nutrition to the students so they did a big revamp last year and added a bunch of food stations so we do both nine different greens to them one to be wheatgrass so they can do the juicing radishes broccoli and they're adding that really cool culture of healthy you know microgreens to their project is having the typical no cafeteria food pizzas the brown golden crust stuff right there's really nice to work with them and work with those chefs and we've seen that lot in the Calgary region is that chefs are starting to love you know microgreens as nutritional valuation but also an approachable affordable price yeah and so that's that's your background is in absolutely Yellin airy and so you've got sort of an in with these guys in a way and you speak their language certainly help understanding my background I operated restaurants to last 15 years built in general managed them to opportunity work with chefs understand food cost understanding where our food comes from and ironically how much is actually increased in price over the years mm-hmm so that's one thing we try to mitigate here at the farm is to bring local fresh product but at a very foundational base root price so we're undercutting a lot of the competition by about half and we're still making you know 80 percent margins a lot of respect yeah we're because understand the culture understand how to bring that to the table through chefs through general subscriptions through our retail clients through a farmers markets we can it's double no competition necessarily is for us it's bringing just a good product to the table for families to chefs to students yeah on a multi different aspect so so on the production side you've got you were saying you're averaging around $25 a flat give or take yeah so sudden you're doing like 250 flats a week so yeah that's incredible and you guys are still working so what you said was at 40 hours a week right now we're over 40 hours a week outside of the you know the usual nighttime social media and Facebook and Instagram that includes our delivery time or cutting time and that's 40 hours accumulative of us okay combined total between harvesting cutting deliveries again we you know all the deliveries you know today I did five hours of deliveries for almost 30 restaurants because they're all within probably both five square miles of each other relatively speaking so we choose a lot of restaurants in that basis so we can kind of hit one after another to really mitigate our labor and that's a lot of the reasons we choose what we choose so we can kind of save the overhead save the which then trickles down essentially to the consumer whether it's a chef a retailer or just our neighbor yeah yeah so one question I know some people are gonna ask is I know the answer but you get on camera is why you're using two inch deep flats opposed to one inch deep most micro grain growers use one inch deep cats myself included but what is it about the two inch deep flats that makes the difference for you for sure so one of the reasons why we chose that is twofold the first one being just again on a lever and such that being the urban farm setting is obvious even beyond basement we like to keep things clean we don't have the ability to have just opened ground we just kind of swipe through the soil so we're able to put our soil into these trays with very little waste of soil yeah we've dumped it in there we can make it a lot flatter we can tap it and we go and the secondary measure is we find a lot of these act as a buffer for the sides so if something that's a little bit too big if something starts to lean beside it acts as a wall which actually that helps push up the micro and keeps a little more structured a little better air flow we find out she gives a little bit better flavor and variety the actual microgreens oh yes yeah yeah what is your guys's weak flow and I'm interested to since you guys are a couple you have kids yeah take me through your week like I want to know how do you balance it all out yeah like kind of take me through the Monday - do you have weekends off like take me through your sort of average week how you balancing out between your day jobs and all that stuff yeah so basis start off on let's start on Monday so money is in midday so I'm taking this essentially Sunday Monday Tuesday off my full time job destruction what we do but Monday's in min days so catching up with invoices reach out to new chefs it's actually structuring out a week taking meetings taking meetings so today's a meetings in in town I always again try to minimize the labor aspect so I always do Labor's either my midday or I do it after my deliveries so I'm already in town Calgary is about 20 miles out from where we are so it gives an opportunity to kind of can circumnavigate other aspects so we can kind of save our time Tuesday is brain early we're up by 3 a.m. and we do all our cutting so cut from 3m to bow 6:00 a.m. yeah and we can cut 190 trays in the time and that's including packaging so the net our daughters are both up at 6:30 so and then we're basically free to write to be fair exactly and your school breakfast for us to enjoy that family probably that balance of life and that's what I've learned running restaurants you know you're running 18-hour days yeah I don't mind running our days long as there's like a purpose behind it but this is in our own home our kids are down here they're able a test product so all those so then Tuesday basically I head out and going to restaurants in to Calgary head all over southern Alberta for that back probably Bible noon if I don't have any meetings and the rest of Tuesday is just cleaning up managing the farm and sing that forward Tuesday afternoons I head out to our local clients here in Airdrie our monthly subscription drop-offs so that it's weekly subscriptions they they come with us a orders or whatever they want and I will drop to their door free of charge so we've about two hours of delivery time usually that's a big day is a big day yeah just about 30 from drop-offs today just about two hours so we did run a bit of a sale so we had some more drop-offs as a result of that but like I said I even with about an hour to two hours depends on what comes in weekly Wow in Wednesdays just day day I'm my other full-time job Wednesday night we soak everything for Thursday morning plant sorry if the basically prepping the farm Wednesday night Thursday morning back out it up by a book 3:00 4:00 in the morning and kind of get everything done so we've run Thursdays our small once we run about 70 to 80 trees planting on that day we also cycle out all the ones there in the germinating to the light so kind of everything we've everything we do over seven day period is designed around or 9 to 10 day rotation so we're down the farm doing the cutting at the same time if I'm to do all the planting here can be doing the germinating thank you things like right so there's never a time there's not one of us working on a rotational cyclical base so we're mitigating the labor on using both fair labor I was the best we can yeah Thursday again is cutting them or planting the morning same thing our girls are up by 6:30 so it and then live all has to be done by them in the Thursday afternoons a Saturday evening really nothing goes on except is tending to the farm these are watering checking your premises all the usual stuff for that then back at a Saturday night we do all of again soaking for the Sunday morning which is our secondary plant again up at about 3:00 in the morning do all the planting on Sunday and then we do all the cutting as well for deliveries so that's another big day for delivery I deliver out to societal virtus or outside of Calgary to Kenmore and Cochrane and then that's provides from the hotels in eastern Elbert Western Alberta for that and then come back and then we have a Sunday afternoon off so why did you choose to do it that way was it because just to having delivery day like Sunday seems like a strange date yeah to do that for sure is that just because you had to line it up on certain delivery days just to make the whole thing work with everything else you were a parcel part of it is a lot of game I'm a big restaurants a lot of mostly all chefs when deliveries Thursday Friday yeah weekend's are busy that's we love it but we have a runny 10-day shelf life on our micros on a minimum we can run three weeks on our pea shoots but we actually set everything up on a weekly standing par so all of our chefs get everything so it's a very different we're changing how restaurants actually receive a lot of their produce right so we get it fresh in the week so Monday is a client you're going to a restaurant you're getting fresh product but we also known Friday it has exact same quality consistency as was received on the Monday Sunday you also did it what originally was a day off right three so we it was from your date your week the job yeah sunday was a day off so was a day to be able to throw everything and get an old time to full processes and then restaurants on Sunday longer we do some really unique places that we do some high-end bars lounges were sitting looking outside the box of just restaurants mm-hmm where you know most people don't approach you know a sports bar but these guys have the opportunity take some great product but nobody tossed them outside of the typical purveyors for produce in Canada and a lot of restaurants are actually closed on Mondays in Calgary yep so we moved it to Sunday so that they good first for Sunday on the Tuesday exactly well very cool if people want to follow you guys what's the best way to do that too full of the best will be Instagram so at micro acres yeah is our main once that's we do a blog news in the farm that also goes under a Facebook which is obviously just out of my crackers as well those are the best ways to kind of track a farm see we're doing we put out you know nutritional valuation but the biggest thing is you know really focusing in the Micron's and how they're coming to the community you have the pictures and getting some unique Micron's are not just the typical pea shoots sunflower you want to bring stuff to the market that people have heard about they see but at the same time it's they're really easy and approachable to grow yeah and then they offer great new market for you know you to bring - you know chefs to restaurants to retailers they have unique flavors you know something like spicy they can choose this it doesn't have to be just a regula it can be mustards and radishes and really need different varietals so that's what we really do through our Instagram is to kind of bring both some unique aspects and you always show pictures of farm always posting every day different aspects of a different ways to grow our lights or trays again to bring this to the average farm that's all it is here we're average farm we love what we do yeah we like growing and keep it simple that's it [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Urban Farmer Curtis Stone

Views: 1,500,923

Rating: 4.8563867 out of 5

Keywords: gardening, how to, growing, urban farming, spin farming, vegetables, greens, growing better, high yield crops, get started, sustainable, soil, local, permaculture, off grid, homestead, kelowna, curtis stone, curtis, green city acres, profitable farming, the urban farmer, suburban farming, convert lawn to garden, bc, canada, urban agriculture, market gardening, microgreens, profitable crops, high value, crops, sprouts

Id: 2opU8qMu30o

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 06 2019