Start small. - Start Small Farms

Start Small Farms started as a hand-painted sign.

Back in 2016 I painted “START SMALL FARMS” on a piece of scrap wood and stood it up in my house. There was no plan attached to it. Just a feeling that one day I’d own land with a barn. I wanted to make things with my hands, build something a little weird and a little beautiful, and make small moments better for the people around me. The sign sat there for years while life happened.

The original weathered Start Small Farms sign painted on scrap wood. — The original sign. Proof that "start small" can mean "start with a sign and figure out the rest later."

This is me finally figuring out the rest, in public.

Start Small Farms is about exactly what it says. You don’t need the whole thing figured out to begin. You don’t need the barn, the brand, the five-year plan (or ten-year plan, in this case), or the perfect version. You need one small, real first step. A business. A batch. A piece of art. One good idea you actually make instead of just pinning it to a board.

Our first small step is events, but without a space to host them, we are going to focus on the pieces you need to curate a beautiful one with handmade touches. The shape it takes right now? Exquisite and practical gift boxes, themed party kits and custom favor bags, and gifting for classrooms, teachers, trade shows, conferences, and businesses. Real, good stuff, nothing cheap or throwaway. Some things we will source, but as many as possible we want to make.

A photo of a wedding favor box with a gold strip of fabric and a black ribbon that says 'A Gift From Kim and Jason'. — Wedding favors from my own wedding in 2007: not pictured are the homemade strawberry jam jars that my father made.

We’ll be learning how to create things by hand (with a lot of help from other creative people just like us). The goal is to learn in every possible way, by actually doing it.

There’s more we want to grow from here. Workshops, classes, artist and maker residencies, events, and eventually a place in the country to host all of it. Some of it we’ve been quietly practicing for years: bread, preserves, kefir, birthday parties for our own kids, planning galas for the non-profits we support. Everything handmade that doesn’t really scale, but does make people happy.

A photo of my son Isaac at a mad scientist themed birthday party with a glass jar of frozen cubes with baking soda and food coloring. — Practicing the make-events-memorable part for my son's Mad Scientist birthday party.

We’re writing it all down here from day one: the wins, the weird ideas, the things that flop, and the parts we haven’t solved yet. Not the tidy after-the-fact version where it all worked out. The actual middle.

If that’s your kind of thing, stick around. We’re just getting started. Small.

— Kim