We have finally been able to address the seemingly intractable problem of photo uploads here at Small Farm Central. The photo upload process for our farmers is not currently as easy as it should be in between resizing the photos for upload (if they were too large from your camera), selecting each photo separately, and then uploading to the gallery.

Check out our new multiple photo upload tool

As we are still testing this new uploader, it is not the default yet. If you'd like to try it out, login to your control panel and navigate to:
Create Content / Gallery / Upload photo / and click on the link in the message box for the multiple photo uploader.

Steps to Using the Multiple Photo Uploader

1. Click "add" to bring up to navigate your computer for your photos.
2. Once you find the directory that has your photos, to select multiple photos, choose the first photo in the series, hold down the "SHIFT" key and click the last photo in the series.
• There is no need to resize your photos before selecting them in this step -- the multiple photo upload tool will do the work for you!
3. Now that your photos are selected, you will see a preview of each photo that looks a bit like this: Viewing photo upload thumbnails before upload.
4. When you are ready to upload, click "Prepare for Upload" in the top right area of the photo upload tool. This may take several minutes depending on the number of photos you have selected and other factors. The progress bar will give you an idea of how long the process will take.
5. When the "prepare" process is complete, simply click "Upload" and your photos will be quickly transferred into your Small Farm Central site.

We are busy tweaking and testing our updates to the Member Assembler, our CSA Member Management platform. We have a new logo, new website look, better sign-up process, new pricing, more features, and more. I'm excited to show it off to everyone.

Look for the new Member Assembler ad in your next copy of Growing for Market. Have you seen our ads in Growing for Market over the past year? They are pretty fun -- we'd love to hear some feedback that you have seen the ads!

Hopefully we'll have the updates out by the end of the week. That's the great thing about a service like Small Farm Central -- we get to continually work for you based on your feedback and keep our services ever improving.

I hope you are having a good Fall and maybe taking a break from a long season. You will be hearing more about the Member Assembler in the coming week!

Notable harvest photos posted by our farmers in September


Salem Road Farms has a gorgeous harvest of red hot peppers.


Wagner Farms farmstand in Corrales, New Mexico is overflowing with New Mexico green chiles.


Bloomfield Farm in Charlotte, Vermont is raising a photogenic pig!


The Grass Whisperer spots a rainbow over grassfed cattle near Deansboro, New York.

America's farmers are getting older by the numbers and the next generation needs to stand up so our country can eat into the future. This demographic challenge has received a lot of attention within the agriculture community for many years and the issue is now entering the consciousness of the wider media.

40 Farmers Under 40

The Mother Nature Network released an interesting feature last month featuring the work of "40 farmers under 40". Some of the top entries include a pop signer turned avocado farmer, farmer/writer Zoë Bradbury, and filmmaker Ian Cheney of King Corn renown.

Jason Mraz on his avacado farm.

Maybe you will find someone you know in the list? We know farmer #14, Lyndon Hartz of Hartz Organics because he uses our website services.

Not surprisingly, this list features farmers in the sustainable farming movement rather than the conventional farming track.

The Greenhorns Movie

A group of young farmers, they call themselves the Greenhorns, is in the process of finishing a feature-length documentary on the young farmer movement. The filmmaker has energetically travelled around the country filming young farmers at work while in the process of starting her own farm in the New York City area.

Here is the trailer for the movie:

More Young Farmers on the Web

There's a lot more about young farmers all over the world wide web. Here are some selected articles:

• Zoë Bradbury highlights the numbers of young farming and her journey.
• Civil Eats reports on college campuses starting farms to feed their student body.
• Even USA Today has gotten in on the act with a piece about young famers on small farms.

Having young people coming into farming is not a choice, it is necessary demographic change as our farmers age. I am heartened that young farmers are so passionate about what they do and so prolific is recording their journey!

We previewed the "Photogenic" template last week and now it ready for the prime time. Get started today to take advantage of this new template. One special part of our "premium templates" is that they are limited in quantity, so they will go fast!

View the test site at: http://premium4.smallfarmcentral.com.

Customizable Options

• Each photo on both the home page and the internal pages are editable by the farmer through a new "draggable" interface we have created for this template. It's pretty slick!
• Add your own logo in the upper left hand corner of the site (to replace the default image of the windmill and the barn).
• Choose one of four color palettes. You may view the template with the various color palettes by clicking these links (1, 2, 3, 4).
• As always the title and all other content on the page is updated by the farmer through our easy-to-use control panel.

We hope you like it as much as we do!