Getting started with market gardens

[Calluna]

So, to all you CSA operators, market gardeners, and the like: how'd you get started? Why? What challenges did you face getting started? Do you enjoy your work? (That last one seems like a no-brainer, but still....)

I recently graduated from university with a Bachelor's in Agriculture, its focus in Horticulture (got a minor in English, but I'd rather grow stuff than write about it). Like many new grads, I've got a day job that works for paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head, but I'm still searching for a career. I like greenhouses, but I don't want to spend 40 hours a week on concrete under glass cranking out annuals or useless ornamentals. I'd be homeless before I worked for Monsanto or any other similar company. What I really want to do is grow food as organically as possible, to educate people and to do whatever I can against this American food system that I see as unsustainable. Problem is, I don't know how to get started.

My family has land, but it's mostly in the middle of Appalachia and not extremely close to any large metropolitan areas. The woods get timbered every now and then, the pastures go to livestock or hay. My hometown has a tiny farmer's market, but in an area where nearly every family has their own garden things like honey, herbs, and baked goods are the biggest sellers. I have connections outside of Indianapolis and Columbus, which to me seem like a better markets, but land in both areas seems prohibitively expensive, especially for someone just getting started. I'm too young to put myself massively in debt! I wouldn't mind working for a smaller existing operation, but finding them is proving difficult. A few of the smaller commercial operations I've gotten in touch with are all conventional, some moreso than others, and I'd really like to put off the chemical-induced cancers as long as possible. Would also be nice to work with developing local landraces, especially in my area (WV, PA, OH).

In short, any tidbits of advice, experience, or warning would be appreciated. I'm young and lost here. Oh, and if anyone on the mid-East coast needs summer farm help...! *raises hand*. ;D

[rowan]

You are the type of person that comes to my little market garden for training, too bad you aren't in Australia.
I am also in a rural area with only small urban centers nearby but I can make a living, it just takes a bit more 'out of the box' thinking. Anyway, I hope you find all the answers you need and a place to take you on so you can learn all about the business. Go get 'em.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Calluna: Great topic!

I started farming as a baby... But I went to college, and got too smart for the farm, and went to work for a huge corporation and misplaced my soul... To find it again I quit the corporation and wandered aimlessly around for a few years until I found myself at the post office in my hometown where there was a sign saying "Horse Pasture For Rent". I called about it and have been farming since then.

If you get your own farm, you won't have to worry about 40 hour work weeks: They will be 60 or 80 hour work weeks, or 10 hour depending on the season.

The first year I sold produce at a farmer's market in my village which was newly created and I anchored it.

The second year I started a CSA and people picked up their vegetables at the farmer's market.

The third year I started mailing boxes of vegetables to people. Priority mail service resulted in overnight delivery to the addresses on my list. In mail system jargon, the boxes went through 2 processing centers.

The fourth year I finally caved in, and went to the farmer's market 10 miles away in a larger city. I hate the 8 pages of regulations. I did not extend the CSA to larger city.

I like the higher prices and larger customer base at the larger market. I intend to let the market in my village disappear. Too many people grow great gardens, and people were unreliable about coming out, so it isn't worth my time to attend. It was a nice social event, but for most socials I don't have to work my ass off all day long and have nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

At first I liked CSA, because it was great to get paid up-front for the year's vegetables... It was nice to know that things were sold before I ever picked them. It was nice to know how much to pick. But then people started being unreliable about picking up their boxes, and I delivered, so that only made things worse... And it sucked in late fall to owe people baskets, knowing that I wouldn't make anything at the farmer's market, because I had already collected the funds and spent them months ago. This most recent growing season was the worst ever, and I felt like a bad farmer because I couldn't provide the normal range and quantity of vegetables. A drought in mid-May, before the irrigation system was active, killed the brassicas, and frost continued until June 20th (First day of summer), which severely set back the warm weather crops. I recognize intellectually that the CSA contract is that they get what I can grow when I can grow it, and that they share in the abundance and in the risks, but emotionally it hurt me a lot that I was not able to provide as well as I had in previous years.

I found it easy to market a CSA, because people had already saw me every week at the farmer's market.

Farming is great because I can set my own schedule. Farming sucks because I have to work when it's time to work. I plant when it's snowing, and when the wind is trying to blow me out of the field. I harvest in the rain, and regardless of the cold. Around here the sun is unrelenting at mid-day. There will always be more weeding to do than there are hours in a growing season. When I worked in a research laboratory I had nothing to show for my work: It was immediately whisked away to a secret room never to see the light of day again. As a farmer, my work is available for the whole town to gossip about. They see the garlic growing in March and say that I have really precocious corn. They tell me about the goldfinches that were attracted to the sunflowers. They drool over the baskets and baskets of vegetables in the truck. It is great for my self-esteem.

I used to have grandiose ideas about changing the world by farming. These days I'm leaning more towards just feeding myself, and if there is a bit extra then sharing it with others. I have been one of those farmer's that stops at the grocery store to buy supper after working all day in the field harvesting vegetables. I don't live on the farm, I commute to it from the suburbs. That really, really, really, really, really, sucks!!! If I lived on the farm I would keep animals that could help eat the excess and the seconds. I could watch over things more carefully. I could work mornings and evenings rather than having to endure the mid-day sun. I'd have a better market for my vegetables if people could knock on my door to have me pick something for them.

The big challenge getting started was germplasm: Commercially available seeds tend to do poorly in my unique climate. They are adapted to longer/warmer growing seasons in damper climates without as much brilliant sunlight. Once I started growing my own landrace seeds, that issue pretty much resolved itself.

Weeds are always and forever my biggest challenge: Dealing with weeds affects every aspect of my growing, from row spacing, to cultivars selected, to planting times, to work schedule, to crop rotation, to cultivation practices, to the types and quantities of crops planted, etc.

One thing that was easy for me, is that I made a decision early on that I would not poison my garden, regardless of how much labor it would save me. Makes it simple to deflect peer pressure. As a marketing tactic, it doesn't matter, people don't seem to care if their food has been previously poisoned.

Early on, I did not market the taste of my food. That was a mistake: When I conducted a survey, the number one reason that people offered for buying my vegetables was "better tasting".

My farming couldn't keep a roof over my head. Work outside the farm does that... I have been moving away from growing highly perishable crops for the local farmer's market, and more towards producing locally adapted landrace seeds. The seeds can be marketed worldwide, and all year long. They are not spoiled the next day. Entering into the seed market doesn't require leaving home.

"Will Weed For Food" always works really well for me. Try it out on a few of the growers at your farmer's market.

[rowan]

Fantastic post Joseph

[12540dumont]

Joseph, is always so eloquent.

How to get started in an out of the way place, with no ready market?

1. Look into something that you can process top to bottom. For example, Valerian. An herb you grow the root of, mash up, steep in 100% alcohol, bottle, label and sell on your own website, ebay or etsy. Look at selling outside of your area and within.

2. Look into something like Mason Bees and their houses.

3. Get yourself a travel trailer and a truck to pull it, and put an add in one of the places like "NOFA". Then ask for water and electricity and a place to park. Many farmers are glad to teach and glad to help.

When we started, CSA was a new word. The farmer's market had just opened. Leo and I actually started the market. The manager now let's anyone in, so there's a lot of competition. We used to only let 2 growers of the same thing in. With 10 strawberry growers, no one makes any money.

You've got woods, what about wild herbals and mushrooms?

I have a friend making a killing in bundled kindling. He goes around and sells kindling and firewood to the campgrounds.

There was a time when I was the only CSA here, now there must be 20 of them. There's farmer's markets 4 times a week.

Go to your library and look up William Woys Weaver, a seed historian of the PA area. Start with your own garden.

Oh yeah, what Joesph says, weeding, watering, weeding again, cold, heat, my aching back, broken equipment, customers who quit, more weeding...weeding again.

Good luck.

[oxbowfarm]

I would advise working on and visiting as many farms as you have time for before you start your own operation. A couple of good internships, even though the pay is terrible usually and the work is hard, will teach you a lot of things about how (and how not) to do some things. Then you have a mental toolkit to work with when you start your own place and a network of people to get advice from that are actually doing it. Every farm does something that is really clever that you should copy, pretty much every farm does some really stupid inefficient crap that you should avoid doing, until you work at more than one place you won't know how to recognize the brilliant and bonehead ideas. I wish I'd worked on more places before we started this place, I did three internships.

The big downside of farm internships is that they can often be exploitative, you get worked to the bone and no one does anything to make sure you are learning anything. It is a good idea to get references from a farm and talk to some past interns to get a better sense if you are a good fit with the place before you hitch you wagon to a farm for a season.

NOFA Vermont has a really good internship system that can get you in touch with a lot of different farms. MOFGA also has a good one. I know that PASA has some kind of thing, I'd contact PASA and/or OEFFA to see if they have an internship matchmaking program ( a lot of them are called CRAFT programs). I'd say its a bad idea to just jump in and farm on your own unless you are doing it on a micro-scale where you don't have a lot invested and you can change stuff up without losing a lot of capital.

[templeton]

Calluna,
Thanks for asking this question - I'm never going to garden at a scale to make a living off it, but have been turning my mind to pocket money gardening projects.
As Holly and Joseph have indicated, look for a value added, non-perishable product that you can eat if you can't sell. Think small scale intensive if land is a problem, or to start off.

You will need to do your own research for markets and products, but check out the story here <http://angelicaorganicfarm.com.au/farm_thefarm.htm>.
I'm not related to them, by the way.
I've thought of doing organic garlic myself - these folks sell it for ~ $40 per kilo plus shipping. No bulk discount, no commercial sales. They sell out quickly every year. No doubt they have worked hard at points of difference from cheap chinese product at about $10 per kilo.
I can get about 40 good heads to the square metre of garden bed. 50 grams per head = 2 kilos per square metre = $80 per square metre. and garlic keeps.

other thoughts - saffron
truffles
varieties of stuff that local restaurants will pay top dollar for - finger limes, herbs with flavor, not those tasteless hydro plastic wrapped supermarket types - the chef at my local good food restaurant went crazy (with delight!) when i gave them a huge bunch of outdoor grown, blistered leaf basil.( Since it's now going to seed, I'll be packaging up the seed and maybe selling it.)

Is there a niche market you can gain a competitive advantage in? Useful plants that no-one else is providing? seeds of weaving rushes and sedges, essential oils, indigenous food plants, exotic food plants, decorative gourds, fresh spices, and so on. You wouldn't believe how much I spent on saffron bulbs in an attempt to grow saffron in my backyard. I wish I had been the seller of those bulbs!

Sorry, drifted away from the market garden idea. But I suspect there are productive garden ideas that you might be able to exploit close to home, with low capital.

Looking forward to some more stories.
T

[steev]

Joseph: hilarious post, so familiar in its false starts and wasted efforts! Been there; done that; not so much in the details, but in the spirit. Eventually we come to the point of asking "what am I doing?" and then "why am I doing this?" With luck, as I think we have done, we come to "this is my life; what do I want it to be?" Then we stop spinning our wheels and get some traction. Calluna, do you understand?

[jbl4430]

Calluna,
We have hope to see you.

[littleminnie]

The hardest part is selling. There are too many people in small farming businesses now. The markets are full and not letting more produce vendors in, there are new CSAs like crazy every year and a small farmer can hardly make a go wholesale. Restaurants may be found who are looking for a new supplier. A farm store may work. Seed sales may be a good idea. Who knows? Finding a niche is really hard without being able to see into the future! I wish I knew which way to go and could break into a great market with a need for something and lots of customers or a restaurant that didn't need year round greens.

[Calluna]

Never imagined I'd get so many replies! Thanks everyone! I already found a handful of internships on PASA I'm looking into.

When I wrote that post yesterday, I was annoyed. I'd gone so far as to nearly taking someone up on their offer of editing a novel, someone I don't even know who put the ad on Craigslist. It's not that I need more money-- my SUV's paid off, only one small student loan, roommate halves the cost of the rent. I just-- I hate my job. I watch the sun rise from behind glass. I'm on concrete all day. I haven't had dirt under my nails in who knows how long. I spent all last summer on my uni's organic farm, on my knees in the dirt, pulling weeds, chasing loose sheep, and dispatching the occasional trapped groundhog. It was paradise, sunburnt, sore-muscled heaven.

I've given some thought to trying to find a niche market, and the forest products sound like a good idea. Went to the Winter Blues Farmer's Market at the WV Small Farm Conference last week and the only really novel thing I saw, given the previous markets, was an old man selling shiitake mushroom logs. Apples, potatoes, greens, and woolen goods dominated. My great-grandfather used to dig ginseng, but never told anyone where, and 400 acres is a lot of haystack to search through. Someone at my local market had found some chanterelles late last summer, but for some reason couldn't sell them. What I really like are winter squash (which reminds me, I need to check on the ones still in my basement from last fall), but I've surprised more than one shopper and cashier with the knowledge that they were, in fact, edible and not just decorative. One gem was like "Aren't those poisonous?!"

[oxbowfarm]

Speaking to minnie's comment. Some markets are pretty saturated and some are not. If you don't want to leave your immediate area I'd try and find the best market around and figure out how to be a part of that, whether or not it is full.

It would be good to get some experience on some working farms, not trying to knock a university organic farm, many valuable things to be learned on one, but the financial realities aren't there when you are on a university. The best thing would be to work on some really successful farms that have a strong focus on profitability.

You also definitely will find that you have to modify what you've learned to match your customer base. My most profitable crop is Swiss Chard. Doubt that is the case for Joseph or Minnie.

[YoungAllotmenteer]

Swiss Chard is my only profitable crop In fact last year it's the only thing I sold, just to make a bit of pocket money. I get $1.50/lb from the market man which considering my costs are more or less nil isn't bad. He normally takes 10lb a week, so $15, which helps toward my food bill for the week.

[ilex]

I started doing some CSA last summer to cover my farming and conservation costs. At this moment I don't want to become a pro, but I would like to know I could become one. I had experience in gardening, and we've grown fruit trees forever (sadly not any more).

Selling is the really tricky part. To have a chance, you must sell to the final customer, at least here in Spain. No way for a small farmer to make a living if you compete for price with the big guys. Being small allows you to be flexible, so don't try to play in the same league.

I decided to start with only CSA, and it can be tricky. Some people don't get the concept, others get tired and quit, others want you to deliver on demand, others don't show up. Takes time to build a client base and you always loose customers. I am flexible and allow them to skip weeks, skip certain things or put more or less of what they like. I can do it this way as I only do 5 CSA a week, at most. I also deliver to their homes and get paid per box based on contents. Obviously, if I grow more I'll need to change the system. I spend a lot of time and care, the good part is that I'm learing more than in college.

I recently lost 2 customer, one today, I feel sad. I think they got bored of greens every week. I plan on having dry stuff for next winter, also many more carrots, artichokes, sweet potatoes etc ... I need to get more diverse.

If you go to market, realize there's bad weather were you won't sell anything. If you go to more than one place or more than one day a week it won't be such a problem.

Restaurants are great, but most require you to deliver certain amount of produce and be reliable. They might say ... "I want 50 lb of tomatoes a week June to September". Not as easy as it looks.

I grow organically, and it takes time to learn how to do things and find what works well for you. There's always bad weather, bugs, it can be tricky to get organized and have enough produce every week (I deliver all year). More than once, I've run out of lettuce for example.

Talk a lot with your customers, and you'll always miss part of the message. Just learned that I should probably wash my vegs. In my case, I think they like my produce for the taste mostly. I also try many different things and try to introduce them to new vegetables. Not everybody wants to try new things, but I'm sure there are people out there looking for just that.

I've also considered selling seeds, but it's basically illegal here in Spain. There are niche markets out there and shouldn't be that difficult to get some income that way.

If you want to make a living of this, I would say start getting your hands dirty now and always keep learning. Start slowly as you'll make many mistakes. You better love it, because it will be hard work with long days. Learn to sell your produce and look for your market. Also, try to diversify, it's probably easier to add a bit from here, a bit from there, than having all your eggs in one basket.