Trevor Paque left his career as a mortgage broker to launch a new company called MyFarm in the San Francisco area and he has not looked back. The premise behind MyFarm is to install organic gardens in people's backyards and maintain them at a cost of about $25 – $35 per week. The backyards then produce a box of fresh vegetables for the customer four times per month. Members sometimes also get to share in the abundance produced by other nearby backyard gardens, increasing the diversity in their box. During instillation, MyFarm interviews the customers and grows the vegetables that they specifically want. Everything is grown without chemical pesticides.
Paque's customers are either non-gardeners or people who just don't have time to maintain a garden themselves. They jump at the chance to have Paque and his workers maintain that garden for them. MyFarm even allows people without their own backyards the opportunity to join and receive a box of vegetables grown locally. They pay a fee to have a box delivered to their doorstep each week.
As part of the service, MyFarm will install drip irrigation, provide weekly maintenance of the garden and even watch over the customer's compost pile. Yes,they even do the weeding.
Since May of this year, MyFarm has installed more than 50 gardens in the San Francisco area. They placed an ad on Craigslist and received over 200 responses in the first 20 minutes. Then they distributed 50 flyers in the local neighborhoods. They have not had time to do any advertising since then. The response has been so big, they are developing an operating manual and training video for farmers to start a similar service in their areas. MyFarm has reaped close to $90,000 in revenue since May.
It sounds like a great service for people who want to grow their own food, but don't have the knowledge or the time to do it themselves. I have seen similar services popping up in Southern California but they are much more expensive and currently are only servicing a more elite crowd.
Anyone have something like this in their neighborhood?
About the Author
Theresa Loe blogs here about taking the garden full circle while striving for a more local, fresh-from-the-garden lifestyle. She is a TV producer, video host, freelance garden writer and a wrangler of chickens and children. (Not necessarily in that order.) For more information on these topics, you can subscribe to her free monthly newsletter.
Theresa Loe is the award- winning Co-Executive Producer & Canning Expert on Growing A Greener World TV. She blogs here about Living Homegrown®, local and fresh-from-the-garden. 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Heh. I blogged about this phenomenon too. Did you read about it is Sunset? I love that magazine! When you calculate it out, his services cost over $1700 for three seasons’ worth of backyard farming. That’s a little steep for me. But then again, I don’t have a yard, so it’s a moot point.
Fern-
That was my first thought too — Especially here in Los Angeles where the monthly fees are much higher. But I have read that some people join forces with other families and split the fees and the produce.
Still, they miss out on the fun of doing the garden themselves. Of course…Gardening is not fun for everyone.
Shocking! I know!