Ingredients...

[DFB]

The movie

I just watched it. Has anyone else seen it? I direct marketed fresh produce at farmers markets and to resturants chefs on my own for many years, and in my current postion I now get paid to promote fresh produce and to do farmer markets by my employer. In my area of the Northeast its been a hugely growing trend as as in other parts of the country too. Farm to school projects, new CSA's programs, expanding farmer markets, restaurant startups featuring local raised products. I thought it was well put together documentry on the local food movement and sustainabilty. Farm profiles, interviews with growers, ranchers, and chefs. Even see a few tractors too

The copy I just watched came from the local library, I see its also available on netflix and you can even find some free downlands out on the net too. It was done in 2009. Family oriented with excellent photography.

Ingredients : The Story

 

[300UGUY]

Folks around here are very conservative. The idea of buying local food sounds good, but they won't pay a penny extra for it. I've had neighbor's simply incredulus that I sell free range eggs for $4 per dozen. After all, wallmart sells them $1! The "foodie" thing here isn't very popular. Most restuarants here offer 2 things: 1) dead animal, 2) choice of potatoe. Some indian guy tried a indian restuarant here a few years ago. Lasted about a month. No biz at all.

 

[DFB]

Folks around here are very conservative. The idea of buying local food sounds good, but they won't pay a penny extra for it. I've had neighbor's simply incredulus that I sell free range eggs for $4 per dozen. After all, wallmart sells them $1! The "foodie" thing here isn't very popular. Most restuarants here offer 2 things: 1) dead animal, 2) choice of potatoe. Some indian guy tried a indian restuarant here a few years ago. Lasted about a month. No biz at all.

Gee thats too bad...$4.00 is about right for free range local eggs too. Around here even pizza is done with local ingredients. I used to do heirloom tomatoes just for one chef he used them especially for catering weddings. Dead anmal and choice of potatoe...way too funny. My French Canadien grandma only knew two types of food beyond her own cooking. Italian was hot sausage and Chinese was chicken chow mein. But I do sell a lot of potatoes no matter what. Even here Indian resturants aren't that popular. I use to sell most all my leftover weekend produce on a Tues to one...he says "we have buffet we use everything!"

 

[jymbee]

The movie

In my area of the Northeast its been a hugely growing trend as as in other parts of the country too. Farm to school projects, new CSA's programs, expanding farmer markets, restaurant startups featuring local raised products. Ingredients : The Story

Same here in my arera of upstate NY. With each story on the news about yet another outbreak of some kind of disease being spread by contaminated food the farmer's markets get even more popular. We grow many more veggies than we could possibly eat in our garden each season but have a thriving "business" when it comes to letting friends & neighbors help themselves during peak seasons. "Business" in quotes since we don't charge them anything-- just really enjoy gardening and sharing with folks who don't have the space or opportunity to grow their own. Not exactly a get-rich-quick strategy I guess...

I added the movie to my Netflix watch list and will check it out in the next couple of days. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Mousefield]

We sell our eggs for $4 and pasture raised beef for $3 lb. plus cut and wrap. Garlic is $1½ per large bulb or $10 per pound. Our meat chickens sells for $4 per pound. Lots of cheap but tasteless and questionable food out there. It has taken a while but we have no problem selling our products.
Every week we get culled organic vegetables from a health food store and our chickens and goats get some year round. As well the egg laying chickens get goats milk and culled cheese.

 

[KTurner]

Same here in my arera of upstate NY. With each story on the news about yet another outbreak of some kind of disease being spread by contaminated food the farmer's markets get even more popular. We grow many more veggies than we could possibly eat in our garden each season but have a thriving "business" when it comes to letting friends & neighbors help themselves during peak seasons. "Business" in quotes since we don't charge them anything-- just really enjoy gardening and sharing with folks who don't have the space or opportunity to grow their own. Not exactly a get-rich-quick strategy I guess...

I added the movie to my Netflix watch list and will check it out in the next couple of days. Thanks for the tip!

This reminded me of my great uncle. By the road in front of their house, they setup stands full of fresh produce they had grown, with prices and an honor system jar. The local govt started harassing them about not having the right paperwork to sell produce, so he removed the prices and put up a sign that said free. This was in northeast North Carolina. I don't remember exactly, but I'm thinking 10-15 years ago.

Keith

 

[DFB]

Eating seasonal is another big promotion here by local foodies and resturants. Soups, stews, oven baked or boiled dinner dishes. A more a back to your roots kind of thing. Really nothing new, most our grandparents and prior generations did it all the time because thats what they had...storage crops! Apples, cabbages, turnips, carrots, parsnips, potato, onion products, and winter squashes all keep for a long time. This has opened up opportunities for holding winter Farmer Markets. INDOORS! I remember days back in Maine when vendors were in the park during November in insulated coveralls and standing on the snow. From what I know Troy NY has a very popular weekly indoor winter mkt nowadays and here we have a local sponser holding two seasonal Holiday Markets one before Thanksgiving and one before Christmas. The turnout has been just amazing and vendor sales are awesome creating a boom for local economy. Jams, jellies. sauces, bakery produced goods, dairy products, cider, maple syrup, and even locally produced wines. We even had strawberries to sell one year! We do them all season under greenhouse cover along with tomatoes where I work. Gets expensive running a greenhouse during New England winters so now we just let nature take its course and are usually done by early Nov. I have a video file showing the strawbery production. Maybe I can get it uploaded. Taken by one of my amigos at the greenhouse. I think its pretty neat

This a link to a local organic farm. Just got the new newsletter today. I am so proud of these guys! I know them all. Young, easily half my age they produce an awesome organic farm and are a dominating presence on the local scene. Sun and heat, rain and mud, snow and cold they are out there!

Winter CSA Newsletter - Warm Up with Home Cooking! (Winter Issue 7; Seaso

Growing winter greens is also profitable for some folks. Resturants area lways looking for them. A lot of greens dont die in the cold just go dormant just waiting and will start growing again in warmer conditions Elliot Coleman pioneered that at his 4 season farm in Maine. Wrote several books on the subject. He also developed a neat movable growing structure on rails.

 

[jymbee]

Very interesting post DFB! Extending the growing season here in the NE is a challenge. I'm in upstate NY and we usually figure Memorial Day to Labor Day is the window for lowest risk of frost, although for the past number of winters frost has come quite a bit later.

Love the indoor farmer's market concept and the newsletter you linked to is making me HUNGRY! Pretty cool looking group you have there.

Would love to see the strawberry video if you get a chance to post it.

I've considered trying to get some local growers around here together to get into winter crops. Also given that were surrounded by a limitless supply of firewood, wondered about the possibility of heating a greenhouse with a wood boiler of some kind.

For anyone interested in the 4 season farm you mentioned, here's a link to their website. Very interesting what they're doing up there.

Eating seasonal is another big promotion here by local foodies and resturants. Soups, stews, oven baked or boiled dinner dishes. A more a back to your roots kind of thing. Really nothing new, most our grandparents and prior generations did it all the time because thats what they had...storage crops! Apples, cabbages, turnips, carrots, parsnips, potato, onion products, and winter squashes all keep for a long time. This has opened up opportunities for holding winter Farmer Markets. INDOORS! I remember days back in Maine when vendors were in the park during November in insulated coveralls and standing on the snow. From what I know Troy NY has a very popular weekly indoor winter mkt nowadays and here we have a local sponser holding two seasonal Holiday Markets one before Thanksgiving and one before Christmas. The turnout has been just amazing and vendor sales are awesome creating a boom for local economy. Jams, jellies. sauces, bakery produced goods, dairy products, cider, maple syrup, and even locally produced wines. We even had strawberries to sell one year! We do them all season under greenhouse cover along with tomatoes where I work. Gets expensive running a greenhouse during New England winters so now we just let nature take its course and are usually done by early Nov. I have a video file showing the strawbery production. Maybe I can get it uploaded. Taken by one of my amigos at the greenhouse. I think its pretty neat

This a link to a local organic farm. Just got the new newsletter today. I am so proud of these guys! I know them all. Young, easily half my age they produce an awesome organic farm and are a dominating presence on the local scene. Sun and heat, rain and mud, snow and cold they are out there!

Winter CSA Newsletter - Warm Up with Home Cooking! (Winter Issue 7; Seaso

Growing winter greens is also profitable for some folks. Resturants area lways looking for them. A lot of greens dont die in the cold just go dormant just waiting and will start growing again in warmer conditions Elliot Coleman pioneered that at his 4 season farm in Maine. Wrote several books on the subject. He also developed a neat movable growing structure on rails.

 

[Soggy Bottom Outdoors]

We, wife, daughter, and I did the farm fresh produce last year. Not organic, just farm fresh, right in the front yard, Saturdays only. Garden was 60' X 240' no irrigation. "Bodacious" sweet corn $4 dozen, $20 bushel (60 ears) SOLD OUT. New Kennebac potatoes, coffee can full $3, SOLD OUT, green onions about the size of little finger 6 for $1 SOLD OUT. Cabbage $2 a head SOLD OUT. Broccoli $3, cauliflower $3, Green beans, coffee can full (1 1/2 lb) $3 SOLD OUT Grean beans $25 bushel (8 gal) SOLD OUT Green Bell Peppers .50 each, Summer squash .50 each, Tomatoes big ones, big enough to cover a sandwich $1 each small .50 each, blemished 5 gallon fo $10-15 Turnips 6 for $1 SOLD OUT Beets same as turnips. Guess what we're doing this summer.

 

[charlz]

Kind of funny you should post this today, just saw this news article:


Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods - Yahoo!

Talks about 'fake' ingredients in food where the listed ingredient is not what is actually in there.

 

[DFB]

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.

 

[DFB]

Kind of funny you should post this today, just saw this news article:


Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods - Yahoo!

Talks about 'fake' ingredients in food where the listed ingredient is not what is actually in there.

I also seen an article where suppliers are delivering substitute fish to unknowing chefs and restaurants NYC Rife with Fish Fraud: Report - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience | NBC News

of course nobodys to blame

 

[Soggy Bottom Outdoors]

Now there are more pieces to my "Front Yard Market" than I mentioned in the first post. My wife and I have extensive retail business experience which may or may not have been helpful,LOL. But we watched the numbers closely. We have a good flow of traffic by the farm and wife burnt up FB with local advertising. Get "KISSed" KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. Grow stuff that everyone likes that is common to your area. If you grow the odd stuff have a buyer before you plant. We have a actual Farmers Market in my county but I decided to not participate. We had a pop up tent in the front yard under a few trees. Set up a couple tables, fill it with produce picked that morning or the evening before, if I run out I go back to the garden and pick more(150 yards away) The gross sales aren't much but the margins are fine. Lets look, a six pack of tomatoe plants $1.80 or .30 each a big handful of fertilizer, .50 total .80. One big tomatoe sells for $1 how many can I get off one plant for a whole season? Land cost. It's all paid for but property taxes on this farm is 75 acres, $600. Labor, well I have full time job I just do this in the evenings and on weekends. So I need to pay myself something, your right, so I ask myself what would I be doing if I wasn't farming or gardening. Probably something constructive like.........drinking beer........and fishing.

 

[DFB]

so I ask myself what would I be doing if I wasn't farming or gardening. Probably something constructive like.........drinking beer........and fishing.

Or motorcycle riding...for me thats what I seem to never find time for during the summer! :drink:

You know one of my original goals was to make enough to pay the property taxes...have the land pay for itself. :thumbsup:

 

[Soggy Bottom Outdoors]

Fellows I'm no financial genius or master gardener ( or is it ******* gardner) LOL nonetheless I covered the expenses, put a little money in my daughters college fund, and a lot of veggies in the freezer. Just curious DFB, just how much grilled certified Angus beef, peppers,onions, and taters could you eat washed down with an adult beverage after a long bike ride during the summer?

 

[cqaigy2]

CSA's do well here. People really like to have access to good quality food. That's why we grow all the food we do, it just taste better. :licking:

 

[DFB]

Just curious DFB, just how much grilled certified Angus beef, peppers,onions, and taters could you eat washed down with an adult beverage after a long bike ride during the summer?

Plenty! :licking:

 

[Ed of all trades]

Is Ingredients anything like food inc?

 

[DFB]

Is Ingredients anything like food inc?

No...its about good food and good folks

Ingredients - Trailer - YouTube

 

[DFB]

Neat our famous local "biker" chef doing his thing!

Red Lion Inn Executive Chef Brian Alberg cooks with WNYT's Jessica Layton - YouTube

http://www.berkshirefarmandtable.com/ ...check out those dinner prices