From Backyard to $200K Farm: How Small-Scale Regenerative Farming Actually Works

Can you really make a living (or at least feed your family) on just ONE acre of land? 

In this episode of Ultra Life Today, Josh Bellieu sits down again with Kevin Marshall of Indigo Acres (Guthrie, OK) to unpack the real numbers, methods, and mindset behind high-yield, small-scale regenerative farming.

Kevin walked away from a 35-year IT career, burned out and unsure of what was next. Today he’s:

• Growing serious revenue on roughly one acre
• Turning dead dirt into living, nutrient-rich soil
• Training new farmers through internships and mentoring
• Helping launch nonprofit farms that give food away into food deserts

 You’ll learn:

⦿ How much food (and money) you can realistically grow on ¼–1 acre
⦿ Why Kevin scaled down his growing space and made more
⦿ The difference between “organic” and truly nutrient-dense produce
⦿ Why most small farms fail in the first 4 years—and how to avoid it
⦿ How local, regenerative farms can beat conventional agriculture on profit and nutrition
⦿ Simple first steps if you want to start growing food in your backyard or small lot

 Whether you’re dreaming of:

• A profitable micro-farm,
• A side hustle homestead, or
• Just better food for your family…

…this conversation will give you hope, strategy, and a clear starting point. 🌱

 Listen to the full episode here or watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BU2P4uX3Z20

Visit UltraBotanica.com to learn more about us and how you can get a free sample of our products.

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Kevin Marshall): The truth is, in a small amount of space, you can grow a lot of food. I initially tried to grow onto an acre and a half and was failing miserably. Met a guy in Tennessee that it was doing $200,000 of produce on one acre. Today he does $450,000 of gross sales on that same acre because he's got better and better. So I had to scale back to a smaller scale, and that still wasn't enough. I scaled back some more, and each time I scaled back, I got better at that small amount of space, and I grew more food in that small amount of space.

0:00:47 - (Josh Bellieu): Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Ultralife Today. I'm Josh Bellew, hanging out with one of my new friends, somebody that I am super stoked about getting to know more over the next few years and really find out how he is affecting local communities, our community around here, with what he's doing to change our dirt that's under our feet, in most places anyway, into real soil that is regenerating lives, regenerating livelihoods, and changing our planet in an impressive way. Kevin Marshall from Indigo Acres. Man, it's been really cool hanging out today.

0:01:24 - (Josh Bellieu): You know, one of the things you mentioned to me that's not on your website is, and I tell you what, I'll start here. Did you just have to get real aggressive about developing relationships with farmers markets, or is that system evolved enough now? How did you finally, I mean, here you are growing food, and it's like, okay, now how am I actually going to sell this stuff? What took place there? And is that a. Is that a good system? And how have you helped to improve that?

0:01:53 - (Kevin Marshall): Great, great question. We started out at a farmer's market when we. When we first finally decided, hey, let's grow some food, now we got to sell it. We're in the Edmond community. So we got online, found the Edmond farmers market site, got their application, submitted it, of course, didn't hear anything for a while. And we called them and Robin went down there in person, knocked on their door and pushed and, you know, really wasn't sure we'd get accepted because I didn't really feel. Felt like a farm. But we did. We got in and we showed up with our hundred dollars of produce. And it was pre rough and scary to be next to a farm that's been established for 20 years. I had a truckload and pallets of food, and here we were with one table. But we did that and just got better and better. And after a period of time, we became one of the top Produce in the Edmond farmers market before we stopped growing there.

0:02:42 - (Josh Bellieu): Brilliant. And so especially here in Oklahoma because we certainly have a core of listeners from the Oklahoma area as well as around the world. Are there tons of farmers markets these days and is it as simple as someone just getting online and just farmers markets near me and do they pop up or how does that work?

0:03:05 - (Kevin Marshall): Yeah, there's a lot of all that information's online. Like everything else. There's not enough farmers markets. There's not enough farmers that sell in specialty crop, healthy stuff. And it's kind of the chicken, the egg. We need more farmers markets, more places to sell produce for more farmers to be successful. Farm markets aren't always convenient for all families because they're generally open from 8 to 1 on a Saturday.

0:03:30 - (Kevin Marshall): And that might be when you have little league baseball games or activities or maybe you're just tired from working all week and you don't want to get up. So we do need to develop a better food system and there are some things that I'm working on in the background that hopefully will improve that. But we need to be able to get 24 or seven day a week access to the food as opposed to just a brief.

0:03:50 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, it makes sense because we are, we are such consumers and we're always looking for that way to fit 10 different things into it. And if it's not convenient, sometimes convenience wins over making the best choices.

0:04:03 - (Kevin Marshall): Grocery stores with food that was shipped in from Peru and Mexico and Brazil, that's convenience. That's, that's not local. So we need to improve a better local distribution.

0:04:12 - (Josh Bellieu): So you mentioned to me when we were talking before, before we scheduled this interview that you're trying to duplicate yourself and other people. Tell me a bit about how that started and how it has grown and what you were doing. And if you can actually point out there, you know, and go, look at that guy, look at that girl, look at that family. We, we, we help them do what they're doing now.

0:04:38 - (Kevin Marshall): Well, I don't exactly do it that way, but behind the scenes, yes, I'm very, very proud of some things. So it started out actually before I started the farm, before I even knew I could farm, when I was doubting myself. And that that year we talked about it early enough for segment in a year that I struggled with that. I felt like this might be my calling. During that time during prayer, God kept speaking to me and I'm like, show me what it's going to look like.

0:05:00 - (Kevin Marshall): And he showed me struggles for three years. And we get Better in four years. And then I felt him truly in my heart, say, in your fifth year, you're going to teach farmers. And that's kind of where I pulled back and like, no, I don't know how to farm. And like, I'll teach you. So I struggled with that. I'm like, okay. So we started the farm, kind of put in the background, other than maybe someday I can teach, because I was doubting myself.

0:05:25 - (Kevin Marshall): So we got better and got better and got better. At the end of our fourth season, a friend of mine came to me and said, hey, I got a friend. I want to come do a tour. Brought him out. His name was Evan Mosshart. He went to this guy's church, a pastor friend of mine. And we toured and he said he wants to start a non profit farm, grow food and give it away. And he said, can I come work for you in your fifth season?

0:05:47 - (Josh Bellieu): Excellent.

0:05:47 - (Kevin Marshall): And be an intern. And I kind of stopped like God said I would be doing this in my fifth year. I was just blown away with, oh, my God. This, this is my purpose. Yes, it's great to grow the food, but my purpose is to teach other farmers. Evan came on board. He worked for us three days a week for a season. He got the funding that he needed, and he has started not far from here. 8th Street Urban Farm, he grow. And now he's got six lots he's growing from, and he grows everything and gives it all away to the community for places that need stuff. I think I saw him last week where he said he's giving away 6,000 pounds of squash this year.

0:06:25 - (Josh Bellieu): Well, and what's so crazy about that, too? I've got a friend named Dale Epperson, and he used to do this incredible show called Found Causes, and it became the Saturday morning news show that everybody wanted to watch when they would get up and have their coffee and he would discover people like your friend. You said Eric is his.

0:06:44 - (Kevin Marshall): Evan.

0:06:44 - (Josh Bellieu): Evan Marston. Okay. And what I didn't even realize is there's literal places that they call food deserts all around metropolitan areas within metropolitan areas where the individuals that live in those areas, it's totally inconvenient for them to do anything but go to a 7 11. It's not even inconvenient. There's no stores where they can buy fresh produce. So, you know, you must be a proud pop of that particular thing with Evan and to know that he's giving away things that these people desperately need and they can't even get them in their own area.

0:07:25 - (Kevin Marshall): What's really proud about that moment is earlier this year, Evan was speaking at a Oklahoma Gardeners Association. I went to attend, kind of snuck in in the background, and he was teaching all these things that I taught him. I'm like, this is so cool, because not only did I teach him, it's going to be passed on to the next generation. And so we're now working with some other farms. We mentored another nonprofit farm called Natural Freedom Farms out of the Chandler area.

0:07:52 - (Kevin Marshall): They struggled for a few years and she came out and interned with us and I went to her farm and worked one day a week. We got them turned around.

0:07:58 - (Josh Bellieu): Cool.

0:07:59 - (Kevin Marshall): And she's doing the same thing. In fact, this Saturday, she's having a back to school giveaway of food that she's partnering with four farms, including us, where food is donated to these farms, families with backpacks to go back to school, but also a package of food for their family.

0:08:14 - (Josh Bellieu): So, so do any, do any of these people like. And maybe you even, I mean, you've already mentioned this interning. Are they trying to engage some of their local community people that they're giving food to to say, hey, come out and work with us, or let's do something. Get your kids out here digging in the dirt and show them how to do this where they could actually even do it in their own backyard if they wanted to?

0:08:38 - (Kevin Marshall): Yeah. The second one I mentioned, Natural Freedom Farms, Brooke Freeman and Mike Freeman, they are doing that. They brought out some schools to do some work. I went out there a couple of times with them, and we worked with 60 students all at once. It was kind of a chaos. So they bring the students out to work and dig up carrots and the kids get to eat carrots right there on site. And they learn right there at the farm. So, yeah, these other farms, they're doing miracles.

0:09:03 - (Kevin Marshall): And it's just kind of a proud moment that maybe I taught them just enough that they can go do what gifts God gave them to do.

0:09:09 - (Josh Bellieu): Fantastic. You know, let's bring it down to the really small situation. Josh Bellew raises his hand and fesses up now of the lack of things in his own life. I've never actually grown a vegetable in my own backyard. I've never done anything like that. But the more I'm around people like you and the more I see what's taking place, this, this, this explosion that's taking place, you know, one farm at a time, small, I can't help but think, are there a lot more days that are saying, you know, I could actually do this at home. I'm willing to take the time.

0:09:47 - (Josh Bellieu): Maybe there's not a farmer's market near them. Are there any resources that you would suggest to the individual that's like, you know, I can't do everything, but I'm going to go ahead and take a stab at growing a few vegetables in my backyard seasonally, where I live. What are some resources that someone can, that, that may have inspired you or that you're saying, oh, these guys are such good, passionate teachers. They can get a video on YouTube and just dive in and start doing this stuff?

0:10:16 - (Kevin Marshall): Yeah. I mentioned in our, in our first segment that I used to be a backyard gardener myself and there was a lot of stuff online. There's, there's, there's, there's groups. We now call them groups in Facebook, but they're, they're online forms. You can go post a question, get information. And I used to do that as a home gardener. Now. Now I've moved on to teaching other farmers. But a lot of online information, a lot of videos, and there's classes that can be taken.

0:10:40 - (Kevin Marshall): But the best way to learn, just do it right and plan on making some mistakes. That's how you learn. You know, go, go and screw it up. If you let a couple plants die and do it again, the likelihood is.

0:10:52 - (Josh Bellieu): They are going to grow something, right? Yeah, usually something's going to come out of that. They're going to see that miracle happen.

0:10:59 - (Kevin Marshall): You might just get weeds, but you still got to put that work in. So. Yeah.

0:11:03 - (Josh Bellieu): Okay. Did you have a different perspective? I mean, I know with a wife that's a, that is a health coach, did you have a much different perspective on food when you started growing it yourself? Did you. Was there already a shift in your mind before you did it? It kind of sounds like it found you. As we talked about in the first segment, you didn't know what to do with yourself after you left the business world. In this world of it, has that really changed the way you. When you started doing it, did you, did your own diet start changing?

0:11:40 - (Josh Bellieu): Did you really? I mean, obviously you're eating the things that you're producing, right?

0:11:44 - (Kevin Marshall): Yes, absolutely.

0:11:45 - (Josh Bellieu): But were you one of those? Drive through the. Drive through few times a week, convenience, do this, do that, put bad things in my body, did that change there?

0:11:53 - (Kevin Marshall): There was a time in my life that I considered myself extremely unhealthy. I probably weighed about 40 to 45 pounds more than I do now.

0:12:00 - (Josh Bellieu): Wow. Yeah, you're looking lean, brother.

0:12:02 - (Kevin Marshall): And it changes in diet a little bit of Exercise and the farming is exercise. But a wise health coach that I happen to live with says that about 70% of it is your diet. You can't, you can't out exercise a bad diet. So a lot of people think, hey, if I just go to the gym, you get on the treadmill and you burn 200 calories, but you eat 7,000 calories a week of bad stuff. You just can't out exercise that. So, yeah, there's been a lot of changes. And we continue to eat everything we can on the farm. And as part of what we grow, we don't grow stuff that we're not going to eat ourselves.

0:12:41 - (Josh Bellieu): So if you could go back and change anything, knowing what you know now, don't you love these loaded questions like that? You know, I would change so many things in my life. Is there anything that for someone that's out there that's going to be getting the farming bug like you did from being inspired by your story? If you could go back and do anything different, what would you do that would be different? Now it's like, oh, it would be so much easier if I had only.

0:13:07 - (Kevin Marshall): Yeah. And as I started and did my own research, everything said to start small. And the instinct is grow as fast as you can. Use more space, grow more space. You know, if you can grow this much here, then you need to double that up to make money and double that up, double that. You know, keep growing in more space. But everybody said start small, and I didn't listen. So that's what I would have to say is listen, start small.

0:13:31 - (Kevin Marshall): Because the truth is, in a small amount of space, you can grow a lot of food. I initially tried to grow onto an acre and a half and was failing miserably. Met a guy in Tennessee that it was doing $200,000 of produce on one acre today. Today he does $450,000 of gross sales on that same acre because he's got better and better. So I had to scale back to a smaller scale and that still wasn't enough. I scaled back some more, and each time I scaled back, I got better at that small amount of space and I grew more food in that small amount of space.

0:14:09 - (Kevin Marshall): So by being smaller and getting really good, I became better.

0:14:14 - (Josh Bellieu): So are you still. Do you still, as a business person have these incremental goals of what you can do just on that acre of ground you've got, and then, you know, the, the composting extra things you do on the other acre and a half, do you still have room to make Tweaks and adjustments and, you know, grow up and be like your friend. Did you say they're in Tennessee?

0:14:39 - (Kevin Marshall): Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I actually one of the people that worked for me, she's a farm manager. I pulled her aside about a month ago and said, I want you to see. We went after and stood. I want you to see what I just saw this weekend when I was doing my walkthrough as I looked through and I said, you know, we had that 200 pounds of lettuce on that bed. Here's the dollars we made on that and here's what we made on that. So we're now increased that thing, but look at all the beds that we're not doing that on.

0:15:06 - (Kevin Marshall): Not that I'm asking you to make this change, but we could very easily double our production. Before I do that, we need to have our community step up to support that production. A lot of small farms grow a lot of food and they throw away a lot of food because they're not able to sell the food. So we're working on what's next for Indigo Acres and how we can sell that food next year to see if we decide to step up or not.

0:15:30 - (Josh Bellieu): Are there any groups that you're a part of or maybe you've even started a group that will attract attention and be kind of a safe place for somebody that wants to come in and begin to learn what you do. Like I said, from the smallest thing of maybe in their own backyard or a few pots they have in their house, to actually looking at this and going, oh, I can't. I can not only feed my family, I can feed my family. You know, I can like pay for cars and, you know, pay for college education and things by doing this.

0:16:00 - (Josh Bellieu): Do you. Is there some places for people to tap in locally, especially here in Oklahoma, where they can plug into a community of people that are like minded, like you?

0:16:10 - (Kevin Marshall): Unfortunately, it's not that easy because our food system in Oklahoma is a little bit broken. There was a group that I was part of when we first started. Unfortunately, all of those farms have closed their doors.

0:16:22 - (Josh Bellieu): Oh, wow.

0:16:24 - (Kevin Marshall): That's when I was trying to learn. And early on I learned that most small farms fell within their first four years. And then of those that survive, they fell in the next. They don't fail the next three years, but they burn out and quit. And so I've seen all these farms fell and close, but I'm hopeful that I'm seeing more come up. And so I'm hoping to lead a group or start a group or train somebody to start a group. And we're hoping to revive that synergy that we used to have. But there, there's some pockets out there and I'd like to see that improved upon.

0:16:56 - (Josh Bellieu): Well, hopefully you'll get some calls after we do this podcast that are saying, yeah, I want to, I want to learn from somebody that's been through it and can help me avoid some of the pitfalls. And I'm sure there's even people out there that never dreamed they could actually support their family doing something like you're doing. And you're throwing these ideas into my head of a guy that is doing so much on one acre of land.

0:17:24 - (Kevin Marshall): So it blows my mind. I might just throw out. There's some things in the pipeline. This, this idea of mentoring and training and interning that I've done. I've been working with some different people that they took this and somebody said, hey, there's this grant out there we need to go for. And we pulled in a resource from osu.

0:17:43 - (Josh Bellieu): Beautiful.

0:17:44 - (Kevin Marshall): He wrote a grant. It's a grant called Beginning Farmers and Ranchers. And just last week we got notified that the grant has been approved. So this is a three year program that's going to provide a year of training, a year of internship from different farms will be participating, including my farm, where people can get paid to intern on my farm and then my farm can get supplemental income to help support bringing those people on.

0:18:08 - (Kevin Marshall): So we're excited about what's coming in Oklahoma. There's some huge opportunities. What that exactly means, I don't know, the grant being approved. We're kind of like, what's next? We've got this fountain hose of water pouring down us that we're getting ready to drink. So we're trying to figure out what that looks like. But we're excited about what's coming in Oklahoma. I think we're going to make some big differences in the next five years.

0:18:31 - (Josh Bellieu): Thank you for listening to God and hanging up your hat when things were tough in the IT world. And then when waiting long enough to actually hear what it was you were supposed to do. It's really cool that we're ending on that note that you throw out. This hope and potential funding may be coming from agricultural universities writing grants and things to really be able to rev up this process of duplicating yourself, teaching other people what you're doing and changing our entire planet and the health of people on the planet.

0:19:00 - (Josh Bellieu): So anyway, this Kevin Marshalls from Indigo Acres, you can contact him and Indigo Acres. Okay Dot com. I'm Josh Belew with Ultralife Today. Hey, do you love what we're doing? Do you like what we're doing? Like, subscribe, share, See you next time.