My consulting work takes many forms. I’ve done work with folks who have everything from small gardens up to hundreds of acres of production. My focus is small, diversified vegetable growing for direct markets but I’m open to interesting projects of all sizes.
I offer services from hour long meetings in the office, to years long relationships in the field. I’m based in Portland, Oregon, but many of the consulting services are available remotely, without extra cost, through the wonders of telephones and the internet. Below are a few of the most common options:
Virtual Meetings by the Hour
Set up a meeting by the hour to ask specific questions, or general ones, and to get opinions, ideas, and resource suggestions from an experienced grower. These can either be over the phone or internet. $80 per hour, billed after the session
On-site Consulting
Sometimes it’s useful to have me out to your site to look over the land, infrastructure and equipment you have and to give my feedback and thoughts on those topics. Pricing depends on travel requirements but is based on a rate of $80 per hour plus expenses.
Bookkeeping
In 2022 I started offering bookkeeping services to other small farms. Since then I’ve helped numerous small farms with keeping their own books. This ranges from single meetings to answer questions on best approaches, annual reviews of books, and for a few clients regular maintenance of their books and payroll. I work primarily in Excel, Quickbooks and Onpay, but I have some clients that use other apps. The principles are generally the same across platforms. $55 per hour plus expenses
For a consultation
If the scheduling popup at the top of this page isn’t working for what you want e-mail me at josh@slowhandfarm.com and let me know what you’re looking for.
My experience is in organic vegetable production systems but the systems that I can help you with are applicable to most farms and gardens. If I can’t help you, I’ll try to be up front about that as well, and do my best to find you someone who can.
Sharing Information Freely
During my apprenticeship in farming I was introduced to the tradition of sharing equipment and information freely with neighbors in need. So much of my farming knowledge has come freely and generously from farming friends, neighbors, and friends of neighbors. This free dissemination of knowledge is crucially important to maintain, although it comes slowly. Paying for a consultation is simply a way for you to speed up the process and to guarantee that it comes in a more timely and cohesive manner. I am still happy to talk to anyone about farming, absolutely free, when I have the time. The truth is that my time is limited and there’s not as much of it as I’d like. Conferences between sessions, workshops, and farmer meetings are great places to get free or low cost information from myself andothers. I love growing food and I always learn something from talking to other growers. I’m also working on putting up as much information on production as possible at joshvolk.com and after that and my other sites were hacked I wrote a couple of books to get more of the info into print.