A small farm business doesn't have to mean buying land, buying a tractor, and waiting a year to see if anything works. In this story, three entrepreneurs built real revenue using controlled growing systems that fit in a backyard, a garage, or even a shipping container.
The common thread is simple: control the environment, keep the system repeatable, and sell to people nearby who want fresh food. One operator sells sustainable gardening systems (and teaches people to grow fast at home). Another built a mushroom farm from a garage setup. The third scaled leafy greens inside shipping containers until it became a commercial operation with major buyers.
The "space-tech in your backyard" idea is more practical than it sounds
All three paths revolve around the same shift: instead of fighting weather, pests, and soil, you build a small controlled environment and let plants (or fungi) do what they do best.
That's where terms like hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics come in. They can sound like lab science, but in practice they're just different ways to feed plants.
Hydroponics feeds plants with nutrient-rich water. Aquaponics uses fish waste as the nutrient source, with filtration so the water stays clean. Aeroponics suspends roots and mists them with nutrients.
One of the operators even points out that similar water-handling ideas show up in space research, including mention of NASA and the Artemis mission, mainly around water recycling and cleanliness. It's less about astronaut gardening fantasies and more about a very down-to-earth benefit: you can grow a lot in a small footprint, with less water, and with fewer variables to manage.
If you're thinking, "Sure, but can that really be a business?" the numbers in these stories say yes. You'll see models ranging from ultra-low startup (a found fish tank and a couple goldfish) all the way to scaled container farming doing millions in annual revenue.
Path 1: Selling sustainable gardening systems (hydroponics and aquaponics) with Charles
Charles describes his work in plain terms: he helps people set up sustainable gardening systems that match their space and needs, whether that's a home or a business. The pitch isn't "become a farmer." It's more like, "Let's make it easy to grow food where you already live."
He frames sustainable gardening as low impact on land and community, and also easy to maintain. That last part matters because most people don't fail at gardening due to motivation, they fail because the system is annoying. Too much watering, pests, soil problems, heat, or just the daily grind.
A detail that stood out is his use of UV technology to keep water cleaner (less algae, less bacteria). You can hear the pride in it because it's one of those behind-the-scenes upgrades that makes a home system feel reliable. No one gets excited about algae until they've battled it.
Hydroponics vs. aquaponics, explained like a normal person
The simplest way the conversation breaks it down is this:
Hydroponics uses a nutrient mix (vitamins, minerals) in the water to feed plant roots. Aquaponics uses fish as the nutrient engine. Fish produce waste, the system filters and cycles it, then plants take what they need. The water returns to the tank.
That's it. No magic. Just a loop.
If you want a more technical overview of what new producers should watch out for, this aquaponics producer fact sheet from Oklahoma State University Extension is a solid reality check, especially around labor and business versus hobby expectations.
The low-cost entry point: a tunnel system and an 8-week harvest cycle
Charles pushes a "tunnel system" as the best starter. He claims you can source materials at a big box store for around $30, then start turning a profit in about 8 weeks depending on what you grow (lettuce and salad greens get mentioned).
He compares that to traditional gardening, where lettuce might take 12 to 16 weeks before you have something market-ready.
He also makes a yield argument that will catch anyone's attention: instead of one head of lettuce giving you one harvest, sustainable systems can keep producing leaves. He describes a single plant producing the equivalent of 7 to 14 heads worth of leaves over time, with the idea that you harvest and let it keep growing.
That's a big part of why this can become a small farm business even when it starts as "just a garden."
The "Brooklyn Bridge" system for small spaces (including condos)
The question comes up directly: what if you live in a condo, no backyard, maybe 50th floor? His answer is basically, "Then we design for that."
He shows a 21-port system he calls the Brooklyn Bridge system, designed to install indoors or outdoors and save space. It's an NFT-style hydroponic setup (nutrient film technique), where water flows constantly through channels.
He points to root growth as proof of performance, describing how quickly healthy white roots show up, and claims plants can absorb up to 10 times more nutrients than in traditional gardening, which speeds growth.
The living wall: $45 to build, sold for about $800
Then comes the wild part: the living wall system.
He says it costs about $45 in materials to build at home. He also says he sells that system for roughly $800, and that it takes about 20 minutes to assemble.
He breaks "profit" into two tracks:
- Selling the system itself (higher upfront cash).
- Selling produce grown from it (recurring, but slower).
He gives a concrete example using a 64-port wall. In roughly 8 weeks, each plant can produce a salad, with salads selling for $4 to $5 each. Then he adds that each plant can produce at least three salads in a given week, which is where the numbers start to stack fast.
He also claims a health benefit: the 64-port system cleans the air in a 250-square-foot room five times a day. That's a big promise, and it's presented as a main reason someone might want it even before thinking about food.
Time commitment and the "trash to treasure" mindset
After setup, he argues maintenance can be almost nothing. His example is funny but practical: picking a salad takes seconds, so daily management can feel like that.
He also tosses out a "start from $100" challenge. His steps are memorable:
He'd save $80, buy three goldfish for about $10, and use the remaining money for water bottles. Drink the water, cut bottles, flip tops, and make a 12-station aquaponics farm.
It's a bit scrappy, but that's the point. He keeps repeating a theme: there's no waste in sustainable gardening, everything cycles.
Path 2: A garage mushroom farm with Sundown (from $5,000 to about $200,000 per year)
Sundown's story is almost the opposite of the "lifelong farmer" stereotype. He worked at Apple stores for 10 years, spent time at UPS, and had only light exposure to small community farming. Still, he built a mushroom business in Walla Walla, Washington, because he saw a simple market gap.
Walla Walla is a tourist area with high-end restaurants, and he noticed there wasn't a major mushroom grower serving the region. Demand existed, supply was thin, and mushrooms grow indoors year-round. That mix matters because it makes sales less seasonal and less weather-dependent.
He also says the business is about relationships first. Mushrooms are just the tool because they're fun, healthy, and they make people curious, which starts conversations.
A practical startup plan in three phases
He breaks starting a mushroom operation into three phases that keep you focused:
- Research competition and customers (where will mushrooms go, who isn't being served).
- Build the setup, with special focus on fruiting (you can outsource incubation and just fruit ready blocks).
- Follow up consistently with customers, especially chefs (tell them what's happening, what's ready, and when you'll deliver).
That "fruiting-first" advice is gold because it reduces complexity. Instead of doing everything from scratch, you can start by proving one key skill: can you fruit mushrooms reliably and sell them?
He also points out that chefs understand local food doesn't always go perfectly. What they don't forgive is silence or surprise. Communication is part of the product.
For readers who want an outside perspective on getting started, this guide to starting an aquaponics business is helpful for thinking through customers and operations, even though it's aquaponics, not mushrooms. The business questions overlap more than you'd think.
What production looks like (substrate, mycelium, and the "creatures")
At the farm, he shows the substrate mixing process. They use oak sawdust in pellet form, oat pellets, and water. A machine speeds up what used to be a manual tote-and-measure routine, which he says changed the business.
Then he shows grain inoculated with liquid culture, basically grain colonized by mycelium. He calls it a "creature," then laughs and admits "organism" is the normal term. Still, once you see it, "creature" kind of fits.
One jar can expand into many bags. He claims that one grain jar can make about 60 substrate bags, which can turn into around 120 pounds of mushrooms.
Pricing mushrooms: "they've got to pay their rent"
He explains pricing in a way that sticks.
Lion's mane and chestnut mushrooms take about six weeks from start to finish. Oyster mushrooms take about three weeks. Since slower-growing mushrooms occupy space longer, they cost more.
He jokes: they've got to pay their rent.
That one line explains a lot about farming economics. Time and space are inventory.
Revenue mix, sales approach, and what tripped him up early
He says revenue is roughly split 50/50 between direct-to-consumer and wholesale, with farmers markets playing a big role on the direct side.
To land restaurant customers, he goes face-to-face. He looks at menus, then suggests where a certain mushroom fits or how it could inspire a new dish. In grocery, he targets the produce manager.
His early challenge was brutal timing. He started the week the COVID shutdown hit (filed March 15, then four days later shutdown). Farmers markets closed, and while they struggled to learn growing, the main sales channel disappeared.
He moved fast with a website, got local press, and delivered by bicycle because roads were empty. They sold out anyway. The lesson is simple: when the outside world flips, you don't get time to complain, you just ship differently.
Later, when asked what he'd do differently, he says he didn't fully appreciate how many value-added products mushrooms enable. Instead of diversifying into unrelated crops like tomatoes, he now talks about freeze-dried products, powders, supplements, and using spent substrate as soil amendment.
That's still one product line, just more ways to sell it.
Path 3: Shipping container hydroponics with Shannon (from a garage to millions)
Shannon's start sounds familiar if you've ever tried to garden in the wrong climate.
She's an electrical engineer by training, not an agriculture lifer. She moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, tried gardening the same way, and it didn't work well. So she converted a two-car garage into a hydroponic growroom. Then she grew more produce than she and her husband could eat, fed the whole block, and realized the "hobby" had legs.
That became Brick Street Farms in downtown St. Petersburg.
The scale is the headline: she describes growing the equivalent of almost 70 acres of produce on about one-third of an acre using vertical hydroponics in shipping containers.
Why shipping containers worked
She explains the container choice in a way that feels very startup-friendly: it's a small, controllable space, with lower upfront cost than building a giant warehouse and hoping you grow into it.
The operation described includes 20 containers, 17 for leafy greens and three for herbs or microgreens. Each container outputs about 1,000 to 1,500 pounds per month of fresh leafy greens, and she says the stacking is what makes that possible.
If you want a broader look at how container farms are designed and why people pick them, this shipping container farm guide gives useful context without getting too hype.
Revenue growth, customer channels, and margins
Her revenue timeline is one of the clearest "scale stories" in the whole piece:
- First year: around $60,000 to $70,000 revenue, and she says they were profitable because they kept costs tight.
- By year three: around 16 containers and their first million in revenue.
- Later: they scaled further, brought in investors, and now track around $3.2 million in revenue this year.
She also explains how channel mix changed over time. They started wholesale to restaurants. Then customers tasted the product at restaurants, saw the farm name on menus, and started showing up at the door asking to buy directly.
That pushed them into pop-ups and retail, then distributors helped them reach restaurant groups with locations outside their delivery area.
Her current mix is described like this: direct-to-consumer retail about 6%, wholesale about 30 to 40%, and the remainder via distributors.
When asked about revenue per container, she gives a range of $8,000 to $15,000 per month per container. Profit margins get discussed too, with a gross range around 50 to 60% and net landing around 30% after costs settle out.
The costs that can sink you if you don't track them
She's blunt about what keeps farms from staying profitable: not knowing numbers early.
Electricity is a big one. Lights are the top energy driver, plus HVAC and dehumidification. She says each container runs about $1,000 per month in electricity, which can stack into $17,000 to $30,000 per month depending on scale.
Labor is the bigger expense overall because they're producing the equivalent of 70 acres in a tiny footprint, and that takes people.
Location and zoning, the unglamorous part that matters
Her location story is surprisingly practical. They bought the property in late 2015, and she describes it as basically a garbage dump at the time. They researched land use carefully because urban agriculture is not always a standard use. They chose industrial property, went through a zoning review, and got a special exception to operate, unanimously accepted.
Then, as they invested, the neighborhood rose around them. She frames it as catching an area on the upswing, plus being careful and methodical early.
A quick comparison of the three small farm business paths
Here's a simple side-by-side so it's easier to keep the models straight.
| Model | Where it starts | Main product | Sales channels mentioned | Scale examples mentioned |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sustainable gardening systems | Backyard, indoors, condos | Systems and/or greens | Local sales, restaurants, grocers | $30 to build tunnel system, $45 living wall that sells about $800 |
| Mushroom farm | Garage, then leased space | Mushrooms and value-added goods | Restaurants, farmers markets, grocery | Started around $5,000, about $200,000 year mentioned |
| Container hydroponics | Garage, then shipping containers | Leafy greens, herbs, microgreens | Restaurants, retail pop-ups, distributors | First year $60K to $70K, year three $1M, now tracking $3.2M |
The big takeaway: all three work because they match production to real buyers, not because they chase "farming trends."
Selling is the real farm skill (and it's mostly face-to-face)
One person says it outright: no matter what you create, the ultimate product is yourself. If you don't believe in what you're building, it won't survive.
That shows up in sales behavior, too.
The mushroom operator walks into restaurants and asks to speak to the chef, then connects mushrooms to dishes on the menu. The hydroponic operator built restaurant demand first, then let retail demand pull product through. The sustainable gardening consultant keeps pointing back to community, local grocers, local restaurants, and systems that fit normal people's lives.
There's also a quiet lesson about trust. Aquaponics comes with a funny objection: people worry they're eating "fish poop." The answer is education. Once customers understand filtration and nutrient cycling, the fear fades, and curiosity takes over.
If you want a more structured checklist-style read for hydroponics, this hydroponic farm business steps guide can help you think through permits, planning, and early operations.
Business setup and paperwork (the part nobody likes)
If you're turning any of these into a real small farm business, you eventually hit paperwork: forming an LLC, filing with the state, and separating personal from business.
The sponsor mentioned is pitched as a way to skip some of the headache, including LLC formation and a business address. If that's relevant, here's the link with the same tracking parameters provided: Bizee business formation service.
My personal experience and what I learned watching these three models
I've seen a lot of "start a business" stories where everything sounds clean on paper, and then real life shows up and smashes the plan. What hit me here was how unclean the beginnings were, and how that was actually the advantage.
One person starts because a garden failed after a move. Another starts in a garage with $5,000 and admits they overbuilt. Someone else starts because a fish tank showed up on the side of the road, and that tiny moment became a whole new direction.
That's the part I'm taking with me. Progress didn't come from a perfect blueprint. It came from building something small, noticing what worked, then repeating it.
I also caught myself smiling at the "they've got to pay their rent" line about mushroom pricing. It's such a simple way to understand the hidden math behind farming. Time, space, and consistency matter more than fancy branding.
Finally, I liked how often community came up, not as a slogan but as a real strategy. Local chefs, produce managers, neighbors, kids programs, pop-ups, subscriptions, all of that is just people. When the business stayed close to people, it stayed alive.
Conclusion: Pick the smallest system you can run well, then grow from there
These three paths prove the same point from different angles: a small farm business can start at home, stay local, and still reach serious revenue if you control the growing conditions and sell with intention. Start with the simplest version, track your costs early, and build trust with buyers one conversation at a time. If you're tempted to wait until you have more money, these stories push back hard on that idea, because the work often starts first, and the money follows.