OP
DFB
Elite Member
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2000
- Messages
- 2,897
- Location
- Southern VT, Southern ME
- Tractor
- John Deere 4100 HST /410 FEL, R4s
Soggy Bottom Outdoors you sound like a man with a plan! 
It all started with beans! That's the title of the short story essay my ex penned many years ago and sent off to a gardening magazine. But that how it started I remember...a wicker basket full of garden xtras on a card table, a big smile and she made $25 one Saturday morning at the farmers market. The following season a little larger garden with more plants and her coming home with $100 for the effort. It only got better after that
The way its going here right now there's more consumer demand than producers. A farmers markets its not so much an issue of being in competiton with other farmers but of having enough vendors to fill demand. Most CSA's have a waiting list. One farm can only do so much. Chefs and informed consumers know the real value of the product they are getting for their money. I used to argue this with the old fil...he did commericial growing/wholesale selling and lucky to get payment more than twice a year. The only guy making money most times it seemed was the middle man, like in the above movie one guy relates his dad going to to sell his stock wholesale and saying "What are you paying today?" and the standard reply was "What ever I want." Ai yi yi!
This ever growing field also creates companion industries one of biggest hurdles for new farmers is finding locally approved facilties for both commercial kitchen work and livestock processing. Both highly regulated processes these days. Locally one producer of a booming "natural" tomato sauce venture (the guy claims it his grandmothers recipe) is looking to rent the cooking facilties of a recently closed educational building. Good news for the taxpayers.
@ jymbee... we had greenhouses run off of a hydronic boiler back at the old farm. There were cast iron radiators mounted along the sides of the greenhouse UNDER THE TABLES put the heat right were you needed the most...at the root system! Natural gas/modines heaters is what we use were I work now.
It all started with beans! That's the title of the short story essay my ex penned many years ago and sent off to a gardening magazine. But that how it started I remember...a wicker basket full of garden xtras on a card table, a big smile and she made $25 one Saturday morning at the farmers market. The following season a little larger garden with more plants and her coming home with $100 for the effort. It only got better after that
The way its going here right now there's more consumer demand than producers. A farmers markets its not so much an issue of being in competiton with other farmers but of having enough vendors to fill demand. Most CSA's have a waiting list. One farm can only do so much. Chefs and informed consumers know the real value of the product they are getting for their money. I used to argue this with the old fil...he did commericial growing/wholesale selling and lucky to get payment more than twice a year. The only guy making money most times it seemed was the middle man, like in the above movie one guy relates his dad going to to sell his stock wholesale and saying "What are you paying today?" and the standard reply was "What ever I want." Ai yi yi!
This ever growing field also creates companion industries one of biggest hurdles for new farmers is finding locally approved facilties for both commercial kitchen work and livestock processing. Both highly regulated processes these days. Locally one producer of a booming "natural" tomato sauce venture (the guy claims it his grandmothers recipe) is looking to rent the cooking facilties of a recently closed educational building. Good news for the taxpayers.
@ jymbee... we had greenhouses run off of a hydronic boiler back at the old farm. There were cast iron radiators mounted along the sides of the greenhouse UNDER THE TABLES put the heat right were you needed the most...at the root system! Natural gas/modines heaters is what we use were I work now.