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Agriculture

Market Gardening

John Dysinger

Pamela Dysinger

Why Farm for a Living?

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you again for this new day.

Thank you for each of these people who are here to learn, and Lord, we pray that the information we share will be encouraging and inspiring, and that you will send your spirit to convict and guide and direct these individuals into your plan for them.

And we thank you for doing this in Jesus name, amen.

Just want to say last year the Purleys shared in our seminar too, and I'm looking forward to seeing what difference has happened on their farm in a year.

The other thing that I want to say is that, you know, it's not all bad to be without your notes.

You know, you just have to lean on the Lord that you'll remember and he'll, you know, so I may say things that I didn't plan to say.

So God is good, despite technological foibles.

All right, so I'm gonna give very much in brief just a little bit of our family's history.

John and I spent 6 years in Kenya where we taught missionaries' children at Maxwell Adventist Academy, and from there how we got to farming is amazing.

And we just finished our full testimony, and you can buy the book at our booth, where we really share all that God took us through and brought us to where we are today.

John's parents in their retirement bought 190 acres and we thought they were crazy.

We were in Africa, the family was spread everywhere.

But God knew, and He planned it, and we moved there in the spring of 1995.

And in the fall of 1998, we launched Bountiful Blessings Farm.

And we started as a strawberry production.

We somehow had the idea, this just tells how green we were.

We had the idea that we would earn our whole living from 1 crop in the spring, being strawberries.

It worked perfectly on paper, But it was quite a disaster.

We got them from the tip stage, so we propagated them, and then we planted them out in the field.

John and I, Kirsten was 6, Jonathan was 5, and Joshua was 2 and a half.

And it's not that we didn't have any other help, But we did the bulk of everything.

So that's just another view of that field.

And if we could zoom up there, you would see those 3 little dots are Kirsten and Jonathan and myself.

And I'll tell you, it was totally overwhelming for this.

I wouldn't call myself a city girl but I had no experience with this kind of gardening I mean I had been a gardener I grew up gardening with my parents but this was just totally beyond what we had ever dreamed So I would say this about our beginning, it was 2 things.

It was extremely hard and it was extremely humble.

We just started with nothing, just nothing.

My father-in-law had a tractor and God ordained that a family member gave us a few implements for our tractor.

And I won't tell you the 10 years that followed this year were full of mountaintops and very deep valleys but we wouldn't trade them for anything.

It was the richest experience for our family to go through.

So this is our family today and I'd like to introduce them if they're here.

Why don't you boys just come up, because you're going to be on next anyway.

So, I can introduce them from the picture.

I live in a house full of men and I love it.

So Jonathan, you'll hear more from those of you who stopped by his greenhouse.

He is the owner and operator of Farmer's Friend, which is developing and manufacturing small tools for farmers.

And so we are so pleased to have him on the corner of the farm.

And next, I'll just introduce you this time.

He is farming our winter seasons and John and I Mainly handle the summer, but he is doing the winter growing with the apprentices.

He helps us in the summer, too We couldn't do it without him Next is Zach and he is in the picture there, the blonde 1 between Joshua and behind Kirsten.

Zach is at Kibidula Farms in Tanzania right now, serving for 5 months.

He's working on the avocado plantation and doing whatever is needed to be done.

You can stop by our booth and you can see the handcrafted things that the whistling woodworker does.

And last but not least is our only girl, Kirsten, and we married her off to a fine young man, Nick Connect, almost 2 years ago, coming up on 2 years, and they are involved, they help us with the marketing and Kirsten mainly manages our social media with Nick's help and then they do, when they are on the farm, they help with 1 of our farmers markets and so that is our our current team.

Hey guys, Joshua you might as well stay up here because you're on next with dad and Jonathan.

And we live in the red barn, in a small part of the red barn and we have grown from being a 1 crop farm to running a CSA which you'll hear more about the CSA 10 months of the year.

So we start the CSA the first week of April and we run it and next week, the first week of February, Joshua will end the winter CSA, although he might still have some things to sell through the month of February.

We do farmers markets, we have a small online market, we sell to some restaurants, and we sell to some stores.

So it's just a much, We don't do anything in a grand way.

We'd like to get it up to 100, but I mean there are CSAs that have hundreds.

So we aim to keep it small, and we'll talk a lot more about the CSA.

So that's a little bit of where we are at.

We have, I'll just tell you about our structures.

We have 4 movable hoop houses, which you see here.

At The 1 very closest to the barn is our seed house.

It's the only heated structure that we have.

And then there are 4 movable hoop houses that we have 3 positions that we can move them into.

And then beyond, then there are 10 small pads.

And I'm sure John will talk about this more.

But we've gone to smaller plots as compared to, we used to have an acre and a half of just a huge acre and a half.

We've cut it down into small plots, which has just helped us in many ways.

And then beyond those 10 plots, we have 3 30 by 100 foot hoop houses that are stationary structures.

And I just want to say that, you know, as we present today, we just pray that everything that we share and everything that we do will be for God's glory.

We want it to be a testimony to his faithfulness and his goodness.

And so as we share today I hope that that will be foremost, that we want God to be glorified.

Okay, a question about question and answers.

We are, the last session we hope will, there'll be time for question and answers and then we will probably have time for just a few in between.

Did you have, you had a question on something that has already been shared?

I just wanted to mention movable hoop houses.

The Market Gardening Model: Size/Location/Infrastructure/Tools

So we're gonna talk about the market gardening model and what I want to say off the, at the start is that I'm not saying this is the only model out there.

You know there are other people who are doing it on much larger scales with tractors and everything and doing it very successfully.

So if you're more inclined to that, go for it.

I Forget what the name of the track is but the Johnson family Brad and Judy Johnson from, California they There's I think there'll be some overlap with this, but you know because it's different people in a different location I would encourage you all if you're serious about market gardening to go to their presentations but they're doing it on a much bigger scale you know California scale I mean they're not like big California scale but compared to most of the rest of us it's big.

They do vegetables, they do some, they do walnuts and some other tree fruits and they're more diversified than we are.

So anyway, my point is I'm not trying to say everybody needs to follow this but I love the market gardening model for a number of reasons.

Well I think I'll explain them pretty much as we go through here.

In these, you know, there's no dictionary definition.

So this is kind of what people have come to.

Less than 3 acres of cultivated land, and I would say most of them are an acre and a half or less.

So very intensive, very small, Characterized by intensive beds and multiple crops per bed per year.

You know this is really, this is not just growing a crop in the summertime.

Take advantage of season extension and often goes year-round.

You know that's kind of the, if you want to call it the cutting edge of small farming is season extension using hoop houses and other ways to, and again, Elliot Coleman pioneered this.

He has a book called the Winter Harvest Handbook.

It's really about all there is out there on winter growing, But he's in Maine growing in unheated greenhouses year round.

So his point is, if I can do it, you can do it.

And that's kind of an exciting new, you know, and we're growing year round.

Yeah, and again, we have the resource back there.

Bigger farms tend to be more focused on fewer crops because you have to buy specialized equipment for, you know, planting corn and harvesting corn and all of this.

But market gardens are generally much more diverse.

Nick, my son-in-law, recently got a drone, so he's getting all these cool shots.

That's our farm from a few hundred feet up, or part of our farm.

You know, I'm sure many of you are familiar with the chapter in Ministry of Healing on helping the, what is it, homeless and unemployed, something like that.

You know, she talks about how we need to be bringing people out of the city and putting them on the land and teaching them how to farm.

But you know, people say, well, I can't afford a farm.

Well, but can you afford 2 acres, 3 acres, you know, for a house and a little bit of other?

And I mean, most people could afford a few acres of land.

So To me, 1 of the biggest things about the market gardening model is it can be easily replicated.

I want to, you know, that's why I'm excited about this.

Because if we can get some of you enthused about, you know, I can do this.

You know, you can get by with a much smaller water source, obviously, if you're not irrigating acres and acres.

You know you don't need a tractor for an acre and a half.

Now I would say if you're going much above an acre and a half a tractor is a really nice thing to have.

But again, Ben Hartman is incorporating and others are beginning to incorporate tractors into this intensive market gardening model.

You know, our farms or our gardens should be a place you love to be.

And I know all of you who've done this have had the experience of the garden getting out of control.

And what happens when it gets out of control?

And so it's this vicious cycle and it goes to pot and then it's like okay.

We're gonna do better, right I mean, that's kind of the classic August comes and you know the gardens taken over by weeds And it's it's like okay.

Let's mow it down, and we'll try again next year But the point is by doing less, you can do better at it and hopefully be much less stressed.

So I talked about this, more people can make a living off the land, you know, there should be thousands where now there are a few.

You know, my vision is to see hundreds and thousands of Adventist families doing this.

I think it could be an incredible, incredible witness.

Okay, so these are some keys to success as I see it with market gardening.

1 is the intensive production, we mentioned that.

Again, you know, you're talking about tight spacing.

We're doing, We do a lot of carrots for winter growing.

Of course that means you have to have some good fertility going there otherwise you're not going to support that kind of growth.

But the intensive spacing also helps with weeds.

Again because you know rows were designed back first I guess with horses and then tractors you know they're designed for mechanical cultivation, but when you're doing mostly hand cultivation, and of course you can use like wheel hose and stuff, but you're able to tighten everything up and get a lot more on less area.

High-value crops, we're going to talk a little bit more about that but You know most market gardens do not grow sweet corn.

That's kind of a classic example because sweet corn even at good yields, you know you'd be doing good to make 10, 000 an acre.

And you know you're trying to grow crops which are you know a hundred thousand or more per acre.

Now I will say we do grow some sweet corn because we've got a CSA and we want to keep our CSA customers happy.

We'll talk about that later, but you don't do it for the money.

I mean it's great, it's easy to sell right?

Everybody loves good sweet corn, but you know we're selling it, we'll sell it for a dollar an ear for early sweet corn.

But still, that's not enough to justify the land used.

You know, again, if you're growing this intensively, you've got to really stay on top of your soil fertility so you're not at 1 of the soil fertility sessions since you're here so make sure you listen to those on audio verse because it's really important.

Get soil tested, amend as recommended, grow cover crops.

Now I will say that most of these market gardens are growing intensively enough that they don't have time to fool with cover crops.

So they are just bypassing the cover crops and using more compost and stuff which can get you into trouble if you're not careful.

We kind of went down that road, you know, we composted so much that we start getting our soil out of balance.

But the point is you do need some organic matter.

And so Connor Crickmore, I'm trying to decide whether to talk about some of these things now or save them for later.

But he has kind of taken a two-pronged approach to soil fertility.

He does extensive testing of his beds and amends to the recommendations of the soil testing, but then he also looks at what he calls the tilth, or you know, the look and feel of the soil.

And he'll amend with either compost, or he uses a lot of peat moss just to make it have the right look and feel.

So he kind of does both and I kind of like that approach.

Now, making compost can be a big job and a lot of these farms are buying it in.

Nick Knecht

Kirsten Knecht

What to Grow and How to Grow It

Welcome to our little section about marketing.

This is my wife, Kirsten, John and Pam's daughter, who you may have seen us if you were here for the first session.

I kind of first wanted to, before we really get into it, just tell you a little bit about ourselves.

We'll come back to the slide in just a second.

You can see the picture of Kirsten and I in the strawberry field.

That's where our relationship kind of started, picking strawberries together.

And so it remained a significant part of our relationship so much so that the exact field that we started our relationship on the left was the 1 we got married on the right a couple years later and now that was 2 years ago.

And the picture there on the bottom we continue to manage the farmers market for Bountiful Blessings farm That happens every Tuesday during the summer we Recently completed our tiny house.

We live in a little 10 by 22 tiny house on wheels on the farm property.

And now we do kind of a mixture of some things.

We do quite a bit of international traveling, doing filmmaking with our filmmaking business.

We've been to Africa a couple times recently, number of other places.

And just this summer, Kirsten has begun what we're still exactly defining the name, but right now it's called Local Blossoms, a flower, growing cut flowers for sale, and farmers markets have been mostly our avenue for that so far.

So for some, marketing can be 1 of the most difficult parts of the market garden picture, and I think that really, that's the area where I feel like there's a lot of room to grow.

There's a lot of resources out there for how to grow beautiful things, but just growing beautiful things doesn't automatically mean money in the bank account.

So this is a kind of a crucial step that we and many of you may find challenging at times.

So we're no experts, but we just want to kind of share a little bit about our experience, and maybe you can glean some tips from that that might be beneficial for yours.

We presented a very similar presentation last year at the market gardening track so I just like to see your hands if you were here last year and already heard this presentation.

We want to look at ideals for different marketing avenues.

Some of them we'll just brush over because they're going to be talked about at a different time.

Some pros and cons from our experience, and some practical tips for farmers marketing, something that every market gardener will probably experience at some time, in addition to a few little details about maybe social media, if time permits, and that kind of covers what we're gonna do here.

Okay, so we're gonna very briefly run through Just some, so here are just some marketing options just to get you thinking along the marketing train of thoughts.

Farmers markets, CSAs, which mom and Joshua are gonna cover in a little bit.

Online marketing, restaurants, and wholesale.

So today, the 1 that we're going to cover is farmers markets.

That's the 1 that we have enjoyed running together a lot, And Mom and Joshua are going to cover some of the other ones.

OK, so here are some of the pros that we see for FarmRoads markets.

You have a lower growing pressure on yourselves.

If you're doing it for CSA, that produce is already sold for.

Markets, you just take what you have and you sell what you have, hopefully.

You have more one-on-one interactions with customers than you're going to have at like wholesale, so that's another pro.

Financial rewards for being first at market with something.

So if you're the first with tomatoes in the spring, you can charge a lot for those tomatoes.

And whereas wholesale, you don't see so much difference in your price, your price point range.

So if you have a rainy day, your sales are going to go down and you don't make as much.

You have to really work to get your people committed to come every single week for the farmers market.

Inconsistent sales, you know, people vacation in July.

So our sales in July or August are always really low because, again, they don't have that commitment to come every single week.

So that's something that you can try to build that commitment through your marketing strategy, but that just takes time.

A competition, you know, there'll be other farmers there, and so you have to really work to make sure your presentation and the produce that you're selling is a higher quality and are gonna attract people to your stand.

So, competition could be a pro and a con.

It's kind of depending upon how you look at it.

And the more successful you are, you know, the more people that you have in line, the less time you have for one-on-one interactions.

Whereas CSA, you know, you have less people that you can spend more time with, but it kind of has, it has its 2 sides.

But it depends upon your market situation.

Like our farmer's market, somebody comes by at the end and they take whatever's left that we want to give for a food project or for feeding the homeless.

So that part, you can have less waste, you can have more waste, depending upon how you want to deal with it.

So a farmer's market can be an excellent way to kind of get your business going when you are getting your business going because there's not the pressure.

You take what you have, you sell what you have, and if you don't have what you have, they're not going to buy what you don't have.

And even if you do progress onto a CSA or other kinds of marketing avenues, it's a great idea just to have a presence at a farmer's market, just to get those conversations going with people, just to kind of get yourself out there.

And that can be a profitable addition as well.

Back to Menu

Series

Market Gardening

The Market Gardening Model: Size/Location/Infrastructure/Tools

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Market Farmers

Financing Your Farm

1h 2m

Market Gardening

The What & Why of Market Gardening

1h 3m

Intensive: Introduction to Market Gardening

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 5

56m

Roundtable

Successful Marketing, Planning for Profitability

1h 43m

Market Gardening

A Perfect Fit: Why Adventists Should be Market Gardening

54m

Market Farming/Gardening

7- How to Make it Work for You- Q&A

1h

Short Course: Beginning Market Farming

Beginning Market Farming- Part 6

46m

Plenary

The Making of “BetterTogether”

49m

Advance Farmers

Bringing Credibility Back to Certified Organic

55m

Sound Doctrine