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Eye on the Future: growing our food

29.04.09 | Ilona Erwin | 6 Comments


Article on what you might expect from planning a small market garden offers up this advice:

 

 

 

 

II. Creating Your Own Successful Market Garden
How do you prepare?
1. START SMALL! Don’t plant more than you can care for properly, and sell or use.
2. Determine the market or markets you will sell to: a) Wholesalers, b) small grocery stores, c) restaurants, d) farmers’ markets, e) roadside stand, or f) home delivery.
3. Learn what vegetables you should grow by determining those that: a) sell well, b) at a good price, c) that you can grow readily.
4. Build proper facilities including a) a seedling greenhouse with tables, b) T-Frames and c) a good watering system. These are essential for success at this level.
5. Set up a formal accounting system, including account names and numbers for every category of asset, liability, equity, income, and expense. Get help from your CPA.
6. Stock up on tools, seeds, and fertilizers, and be sure to include all those costs, as well as your labor, in figuring your market prices.

You’ll have to meet or beat your competition’s prices to sell your produce at
the beginning. However, by growing more, bigger, fresher, tastier, and healthier produce than others, you will develop a loyal customer base, and then you can adjust your prices as needed.

People around here often have little road side stands with assorted veggies, and sometimes honey. They sometimes man the stand but usually you find a “self serve, self checkout” with a little jar for the money.

I’m a city girl and just don’t have that kind of trust in people…. but it seems to work fine so far- the region is changing though. I’m thinking that developing the loyal customer base is the key of success in building your own business of this type.
Having been down South on visits, I’d observe that it is tougher to grow things down there is some ways.  Ohio has much more fertile soils and more dependable rainfall. But every place benefits from ingenious human husbandry: “where there is a will there is a way” as the saying goes.

Wendell Berry said once in an interview: “Farming is a hard life. It’s a hard life, therefore nobody ought to live it. What a remarkable conclusion! There are several steps that are left out. What causes the difficulty? Does freedom come out of it? Does family pride come with it, family coherence? Does some kind of idea of community come with it? Some kind of idea of stewardship, does that come with it? Do ideas of affection or love or loyalty or fidelity come with it?”

Beauty, respect, freedom, stewardship, fidelity, family, community, all are casualties of a mechanism that selects only for cheapness and a narrowly measured efficiency. Not for a melting bond with the land. Or farmers who farm because they love it. Or farms that have not been reduced to the mechanized, chemicalized production of a single crop as if they were widget factories.

Here’s the good news. A whole new food system, one that uses dollars but is not ruled by them, is growing so fast that no one can keep track of it. You won’t find its produce at your big-chain supermarket. You’ll find it at your local farmers market, consumer coop, or CSA farm. Here a new economics is being practiced, economics, as if, as E.F. Schumacher once said, people mattered. As if the land mattered. As if food were more than a commodity. –Sustainability Institute

Well, I do have the green house, now, but need to recap my early vegetable garden success in production. Beginners Luck 🙂 Now I need Oldtimer’s Knowhow to kick in.
Here’s a pic of the new greenhouse:

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About Ilona Erwin

I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

DISCLOSURE: I may be an affiliate for products that I recommend. If you purchase those items through my links I will earn a commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through my link. Thank you, in advance for your support! Privacy Policy

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Hocking Hills Gardener says

    April 29, 2009 at 8:45 pm

    Ilona, I just love your new greenhouse and of course I am jealous 🙂 I am so glad for you.

  2. John at JWLW says

    April 29, 2009 at 10:17 pm

    Greenhouse looks great, now you have to fill it up. Will be lots of fun and enjoyment for you, I can tell you are pleased and will make a good greenhouse keeper.

    You liked our Frog and Bird so we know you will be over for another visit when we Post “OUR FROGS”. Working on it now just a few days away.

    John and Liza

  3. Ilona says

    April 30, 2009 at 10:38 am

    John: you know I WILL love it 🙂 looking forward to your new post. Normally I am not gung ho on garden ornament- but yours really caught my fancy. Not only the ornaments themselves but that all important factor of intelligent situating, like yours.

  4. Ilona says

    April 30, 2009 at 10:44 am

    It was a long time coming, Lonadawn, thanks for your good wishes.

    + John: all in good time 🙂

  5. johanna_lea says

    May 1, 2009 at 12:05 am

    wow-i am jealous of all that empty space! what are dimensions?
    i have an old fiberglass 10×12 that
    has huge selluoum ficus tree rooted
    in the earth, alongside my grandmother’s ancient
    huge staghorn. it was big when i was a small child… hence i have a winter jungle environment, but not much room really. i have to just work around ’em.
    nice to sit in there on dark gray days, though.

  6. Rob (ourfrenchgarden) says

    May 2, 2009 at 8:29 pm

    Hi Ilona

    So now I see it! Enjoy your micro- climate.

    Rob

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Oh, hi there!

I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

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