John Dysinger

AdAgrA 2019: True Success

Intensive: Introduction to Market Gardening

Pamela Dysinger

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 4

So just tell who you are and where your farm is and you know just a 1 minute introduction to your farm and then tell us how you're marketing your produce.

So my husband Matt and my name is Deidre and we farm in South Dakota in the Black Hills.

And we have a small market garden there and we have kind of moved around the country and worked on different market gardens at some self-supporting institutions.

So we've been in Washington State, South Dakota and Southeast Utah and So this is we're going into our third season back in South Dakota Establishing our own farm there and we have 4 kids that help us on the farm and we homeschool and farm school them there.

So I think well for us marketing has been fairly easy and you guys can all have the same experience if you move to places where nobody grows food and there's not really a competition it's it can work pretty well so yeah North Pole South Pole you get the idea.

There are a reason that people don't grow food in certain areas though.

Yeah so we have like 1 of the probably the highest hail I don't know incidences storms like last year our kids I quit County but our kids counted like, I think 12 different hail, storm, whatever, so last summer.

Year before that, we had a storm that had like 6 inches of hail.

So it has other, you know, anyway, so if you have food to market you're doing pretty good.

But I think our, for us it's always been, you know, if you have a good product it'll sell itself for the most part.

And not being afraid to approach anybody, anybody and sell your product.

So for us, we sell a lot of salad, a lot of things to restaurants.

So basically, our experience has been with the restaurant, if you can get in the door with anything, something simple, and you can do that consistently, then they're going to want more.

And last year, we had a restaurant that we were selling to the year before, and the lady left, which pretty much always happens, which is another way you can do well, because cooks move around like crazy, and you treat them well, and they're going to go somewhere else, and then you can get that restaurant as well.

So we had 1 leave, and her mom was not interested in our product at all.

And we called her and she pretty much just, you know, not interested, hung up the phone.

Yeah, I don't have time to deal with you.

And her daughter was like, you know, she wants everything local, so it was different.

And later in the summer when we had some different things, I took some product over there and she was real concerned that we would not be able to deliver, which is a problem in our area, consistently.

But I took her some basil and she was like, well, okay, I'll try some.

We took her like 10 pounds and this lady wants like 20 pounds of basil a week but I think $15 a pound so it adds up pretty quick and So we took her the basil and then I called her next week and she said oh We're we've been talking about you all week like this is the most amazing basil we've ever seen and you know, so the product sold itself we just had to get it there and I Was I just want to reiterate what he said is that having a quality product that you're not afraid to, you know, just really consistently push people like you gotta try it, you gotta try it, because when they do, then they're really excited to have it.

And a lot of chefs, you know, talk to other chefs in the area, and You earn a reputation.

And so that's just 1 outlet that we use is we sell a lot of wholesale produce to restaurants.

So we have, we don't have a great big farmers market in our area, like a lot of big metropolitan areas like Portland or Seattle, where we kind of came from.

And so there's smaller markets, and so we attend, you know, several different farmers markets a week in different areas, and obviously we don't go to the largest farmers markets on Saturdays, so that, you know, it's kind of challenging, but we've found that there's less farmers at the midweek markets and so you know the people that come out and get really excited to find good fresh produce And so you kind of get a following that way.

And then another avenue for marketing our produce is we started a CSA program.

And when we came to this farm 2 and a half years ago and we were establishing it, we did not want to do a CSA program for a while because it comes with some risk.

You are accountable to your CSA members because you're taking money up front.

And we didn't want to get in over our heads and not be able to follow through.

So that's like the professionalism and the quality that we're talking about.

So halfway through the season, we decided, you know, we have, the nice thing about CSAs is you can move some produce that maybe isn't moving other places like farmer's market or you're not selling as much to restaurants as you thought you would.

And so it can be a good avenue for that, for challenging people with new varieties.

And so we started a small CSA program and that was really successful.

And we have had a 60 person CSA program in the area before so we know we can grow it.

So you can kind of move different product in different avenues.

And so it's beneficial to have more than just 1 area to market your produce.

So 1 more quick thing is this might seem counterintuitive or not what marketing people say, but we have felt that if We don't try and push our product.

And usually, we find out later that we didn't have enough product, or we didn't have what we thought we'd have, or whatever.

So a great example is we have a co-op that wasn't interested in our food.

And we just kind of let the doors open and it's growing a ton.

And now they've offered us to have a market there 1 day a week.

And we'll basically be the only vendor right out in front of their co-op, which is gonna really grow that market.

So let the Lord open the doors and do what you're able to do.

Do you have an idea of percentages as far as restaurants, CSA, farmers market?

Well, Last year the CSA was pretty small.

I think last year, our second year, we grossed about 60, 000 and about 20, 000 of that was wholesale and I think 18, 000 it was farmers market and then the rest was kind of local farm sales and CSA.

Okay, next, tell us who you are and where you're from and what you do.

Well, we're the Childrens, Mark and Verna and our 4 children.

And We live about 100 miles south of Nashville.

And the area we have is, we have a, you know, we're doing market gardening.

That's what we're planning to do and what we are doing.

We have a reality there because the area that we would sell to is the Muscle Shoals, Quad Cities area, and it's just not that big.

And there was a farmer's market there, and there always has been, but it's not a producer market.

And further complicating the situation is the fact that we're not the only people growing there.

We have a large Amish community about an hour north of us.

And they have a produce auction there that somebody operates.

And so the dealers at the farmer's market would just go up there and get things for the, you know, for a song while somebody else went to sleep.

We were going there, but this last summer we just said, we're not going to go there.

There was a lot of competition, and their attitude toward us was not the most congenial.

So in the meantime, somebody else started a farmer's market somewhere else in town that was a producer's market, but it takes a lot of work to do it.

And this summer they continued, But they just wore out.

So we don't know what we're going to do for our farmer's market next year.

We are just waiting on the Lord on that 1.

And then we had a small CSA and also a couple of restaurants that we supplied.

And in this case, 1 of those restaurants, it was a restaurant owner that was interested.

So you don't worry about the cook so much.

And we didn't have a very good success of potatoes, but he got those potatoes and he said, well, I'd like to pay you for the rest of them.

You just keep them and bring them when they're ready.

So we made a guess of how much we thought would still be good then and we supplied them.

So you know that's again the thing is the quality of your produce has a lot to do with it.

And We also did set up on the corner in a town about 6 miles away that has about a thousand people.

So, as you can imagine, we didn't make a whole lot, but it was a good way to get people to know us.

We, the, we, last year we decided to dive into a very small CSA.

The Disingers have been great mentors for us and Aubrey and Alan and Bob Gregory.

We were scared to do too much, not that we can't grow the food, but we just, you know, it was totally new and we were scared of not being able to provide for our customers.

And so then a little bit later, we got real good feedback from our customers.

And then there was 1 man, he said, oh, my brother, I told my brother about the CSA, would you consider taking him on as a member?

And so they joined, and then there was somebody else that wanted to join.

And so we ended up with 5 to 7, something like that total for our CSAs.

And we, Because the second market, the producers only market, had a very nice spirit there.

We were really, we really, I loved going to that market.

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 3

Okay, so let's start again, I tried to do this somewhat in order so you're gonna start a market garden and you've got this big expanse of pasture.

Well, you know, somehow that soil has to be prepared in order to make your beds.

In the Market Gardener popularized the walking tractor, specifically BCS, because that's the main 1 that's available in the US.

And he sold thousands of walking tractors from that book.

Because he literally, everybody went out and bought walking tractors or BCSs.

Of course, Elliot Coleman actually had recommended walking tractors years earlier.

But JM, there's some updated equipment, the rotary plow, the rotary harrow, and the flail mower, which are really the 3 tools that I think are, if you're gonna get a BCS, those are the tools you wanna get.

You know, it depends on, the nice thing about a rotary plow is that it can actually turn in very tall cover crops.

It's quite impressive to watch a BCS work in a cover crop.

So a rotary plow is basically a big auger screw turning like this.

And what it does is it throws the dirt to the side similar in a way to a moldboard plow but it I I thought it would really beat up the soil like a rototiller does, but it actually doesn't beat it up as much as you would think.

And if you need raised beds, If you're in an area that has a hard time drying out in the spring, it's quite an easy, comparatively easy way to make raised beds.

You go down 1 side and throw the dirt here, come back the other side and throw the dirt there and voila you have a raised bed.

The rotary harrow has teeth like this as compared to a rototiller which turns like this a rotary harrow turns like this and just incorporate stuff into the, and you have a gauge wheel that controls the depth and so you can just incorporate compost and things into the top few inches.

And the flail mower is a wonderful tool for at the end of your crop, end of the season, if you're growing broccoli, even though we told you not to.

And again, you know, broccoli is a great crop, but as far as profit per square foot, it's very low.

You've got all these huge plants that you've harvested.

You take the flail mower down that and it just, it has a barrel turning this way with teeth on it that just grind it up.

And it's a great way to get rid of crops at the end of the season.

You know, as compared to a lawn mower or a bush hog which shoots stuff to the side, The flail mower grinds it up and it sits right there.

So it does a much better job of incorporating, helping you incorporate that material, organic matter.

Okay, if you have the space and you need a tractor anyway so like for us we live on a hundred and 60 acre farm.

It's not ours it's my parents we're fortunate enough to share crop on it.

But you know we've got a lot of pasture, too much to cut with a BCS so we really have to have a tractor.

Well if you've got to have a tractor anyway for the size of your property, why not, and we didn't do this because we weren't thinking ahead enough, but why not get a tractor that would work with your 30-inch bed?

And I gave you 1 example a Kubota L3300, it's a 33 horsepower tractor that you can set the wheel spacing for 30 inches and actually Ben Hartman in the Lean Farm does this.

I never thought that you could use a tractor on a 30-inch bed system.

You get the mechanical help of a tractor, but yet the efficiency of a intensive bed system.

And of course, your other companies, I'm not trying to push Kubota, but your other companies do have similar tractors.

I will say with Kubota, they make it hard to resist, because they will offer you 0 down, 0 interest for 5 years on a tractor.

But of course, you're talking, believe me, I've looked into 1 because I'd love to have 1.

But you're talking, depending, I'll just tell you a front end loader, a bucket on a tractor, is the most useful tool on a farm.

I've said that for years, and I still stick by it.

You can do so much with a front end loader on a tractor.

But if you get 1 with that, you know, it's gonna be 22, $23, 000 for a new 1.

Obviously you can buy used maybe if you can find it.

Okay can you get the tools, the BCS tools for a tractor?

Yes you can get a rotary harrow with a three-point hitch.

I don't know about the rotary plow, but if you're gonna have a tractor, the tool I would recommend instead of a rotary plow is a spader, reciprocating spader, which is a very, very expensive tool, but it does a very good job.

All these tools come, or many of them come from Europe.

Basically a spader is going to cost you at least a thousand dollars per foot of width.

So if you want a 5 foot wide spader you're going to pay at least $5, 000.

So another option and you know I mentioned here a little further on down Connor Crickmore the highest grossing market gardener I know of, has no tractor.

So how can you do it without a tractor or a BCS?

You can actually, I mean there are 2 other options.

1 is to use the silage tarps we've been talking about.

Heavy-duty, plastic, UV treated so it's going to last for many years.

Don't go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy their plastic because it'll break down in a season.

But these are especially UV treated big sheets of plastic, black on top, white on the bottom.

You just lay that out on sod, you know, mow it close, try to get it down close, lay that out, make sure the soil is moist, and wait for a year ideally, and you pull that back, and you will have the richest, loosest, beautifullest soil you've ever seen.

This is what, that was the big takeaway from visiting J.M.'s farm that first time.

And he pulled the tarp back, and I mean, there were these huge earthworms crawling all over the surface of that tarp.

They just come up and take all that organic matter down.

It's the closest thing I have seen to no work gardening.

It's still work because you've got to lay it out and anchor it down because the wind's gonna try to blow it away.

Yeah, somebody's saying, visit a dairy farm and that's a great thing and I know people all over the world, friends in Australia we visited and they get their silage tarp from the local dairyman.

You know, they use them for 1 season and throw them away.

You know they may have a few holes but you can buy patching tape from Farmer's Friend for patching it up.

So that is a good option for used silage tarp.

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 2

Elliot Coleman, I would say is the 1 person most responsible for the market gardening movement in the US.

This was the only book I had when I started growing.

Actually this is 30th anniversary edition, This new edition just came out this year.

It's got a lot of color photographs and some updating.

I still say this is the place to start to learn about market gardening.

Others have come along and kind of stood on his shoulders and maybe gone further.

But he gives a lot of good information on basic techniques, you know, how to hold your collinear hoe and how to use the wheel hoe and some of these tools and just a very good introduction to market gardening So I highly recommend the New Organic Grower.

So some years ago, I think maybe 2008, Jean-Martin Fortier, Or for those of us who don't speak French, we just say JM Fortier from Quebec came out with this book We are blessed in that my son Jonathan who's hiding in the corner back there has developed some tools that have really revolutionized market gardening.

We believe the Lord blessed and give him the credit.

But we were able to go see JM's farm before this book came out.

And he gave me, it first came out in French.

And man, I was really motivated to learn French at that point.

I was figuring out, okay, well, what does that mean?

And anyway, fortunately, it came out in English a year or 2 later.

But this, so I say, Elliot Coleman started the market gardening movement.

JM Fortier turned it from a movement into a revolution, I would say.

And this book has encouraged thousands of young people to leave careers in the city and move to the country and start market gardening.

It's a really well, it's a very complete manual of how to run a market garden.

And the thing that I think really got people excited was that he's making 150, 000 on an acre and a half and he documents how he does that and you know you look at the prices he's getting He's up in Quebec and we get those kind of prices at our farmers market so it's like wow well if he's doing it up there then we should be able to do it in Tennessee or in Oregon or wherever.

So anyway this is just another highly recommended book.

The Winter Harvest Handbook, also by Elliot Coleman.

Elliot is the authority on winter growing.

It's the only book that I'm aware of that really goes into winter growing.

Again, if he can do it in Maine, you can do it in Oregon.

1 thing I love about Elliot Coleman is he's trying to, he's very minimalistic.

If we can get rid of it, you know, if we don't need the bells and whistles, let's get rid of them.

Let's come down to what is actually essential.

How many of you have heard of Curtis Stone?

I know a lot of people have heard of Curtis Stone because he's on YouTube.

And he, actually he's not doing market gardening anymore.

He is, I'm not sure what he's doing except making videos and videoing other people doing market gardening but he's got a young family and for I don't know all his reasons but he's no longer actively market gardening but he wrote the urban farmer book Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land, got some excellent tips in there.

And for those of you who don't have a farm yet or land, you know, again He used neighbors' yards, backyards.

He was, when he quit, he was making over $100, 000 on a third of an acre.

And I just wanna stop and emphasize something here.

I'm going to be throwing around these numbers.

And I want to make it clear that you're not going to make that when you start out.

So don't say, oh, wow, I can make $100, 000 in my backyard.

These are people who have sharpened their skills and who really know what they're doing.

And I also wanna say, Most of them are not Christian.

And so they have a different outlook on life.

And again, I hope that our number 1 goal is not making money.

I hope that our goal is outreach and service and so on.

And so I throw the numbers out just because I'm trying to get rid of the myth that you can't earn a living in a market garden.

You know, there's still this idea and it seems to be especially strong in Adventism.

Well, yeah, that's nice, but, you know, I gotta pay the bills.

We'll talk about that more later on but you know it's fair to say net is usually around 50% of gross in market gardening.

Okay, we gotta keep going because there's a lot of resources here.

This book came out a few years ago, and this was really revolutionary, in that Ben Hartman took lean manufacturing techniques that Toyota popularized in becoming the most profitable automaker in the world, I think.

And he's taken these techniques and principles and applied them to the market garden.

And as I say in the resource thing this is not going to tell you how to be a market gardener, how to grow plants but it will tell you how to be a smarter market gardener.

Gives a lot of principles and methods for being more efficient.

You know, just a simple example, the spaghetti diagram.

You know, you map out your movement on the farm for harvesting.

Back to Menu

Presenter

John Dysinger

All Recordings

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 4

51m

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 3

20m

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 2

52m

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 1

55m

Pardon Me, Your Weeds are Showing!: 12 Tips to Avoid Embarrassment

35m

Tools of the Trade: Tools and Equipment to Increase Ease and Efficiency

1h 19m

A(rtichokes) to Z(ucchini): The Most Profitable Crops for Market Gardeners

1h 3m

Market Gardening ABC’s: Looking at the Basic Building Blocks of the Market Garden

53m

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go! - Resources to Get You Out of the Starting Blocks

48m

A Perfect Fit: Why Adventists Should be Market Gardening

54m

General Forum

1h 20m

The Seed Has Germinated, But What Will Be the Fruit?

55m

Sound Doctrine