I was approached by my neighbor about planting something organic on a 7 acre field she owns. I mentioned just farming it as it joins another farm of mine. She said she doesn't want any chemical used on her place. I mow it for her every year with a bush hog a couple of times. This year a guy bailed it but it really isn't very good hay and he says he doesn't want to bail it anymore. I know nothing about organic farming and I told her I was not interested but I keep thinking about it more and more. I hear people say that people will pay top dollar for organic grown vegtables. Does anyone know anything about organic farming? I know it would be labor intensive. Will it pay off? I was thinking maybe I could give up my day job possibly if it paid enough.
I have several friends that are Organic certified and they all run CSA operations. One nice thing with a CSA is you collect money up front for the goods that will be grown and then deliver items weekly to each customer. Most are working 12 to 16 hours a day 7 days a week. All of them did not start out as a CSA but worked up to that and away from the local farmer markets.
Certification as an Organic farming unit is not simple and requires a pretty good understanding of the regulations. But, with that one can certainly charge more for the products that they sell. That is one side of the equation. The other side is, most have a concern as to what they put into their own bodies and elect to have a chemical free diet.
I have a small operation, which includes berries, potatoes and winter squash of all things. We have grown raspberries for nearly thirty years and never used any chemicals what so ever on our property, this includes chemical fertilizer. We do use cow manure which could have chemicals due to what the cows are feed, but I have found most people understand there is just a limit as to what one can do to protect themselves.
The cost of certification is pretty high and I decided to advertise our sales as 鼎hemical Free and would never say we run an organic operation. We get $4.00 a pint at the door and when we were doing the markets we were getting $5.50 a pint. We gross about $5,000 a year from berry and raspberry plant sales. Certainly this would not enough to live off from.
The rest of the summer we are selling cucumbers, tomatoes, beans and just about anything we can grow and get in early so we beat the over flow of stuff available locally.
We stopped doing farmers markets due to the demands of getting things ready to go and the time it consumes weekly. So everything is sold from our stand at home! Could we make a living doing it, I do not think so, but we do grow enough to pay for the seed, operating cost and we eat great stuff.
A few years ago I decided to start growing more vegetables for sale at our little stand and decided to plant potatoes. This year we have over 800 pounds of seed potato in the grown and will start digging them in September and will finish up sometime in October. One nice thing with potatoes is that I am planting when it is cool, do the hilling with the tractor and then we dig when it is cool and very few bugs around. Not too bad of a deal.
Equipment required are, tractor, plows, rototiller, cultivators, hillers, planter, and digger. So the investment into equipment is pretty high so don稚 expect to pay for it in one single years growth. Heck I don稚 think I will every get my equipment paid for!
If I was younger I think I would focus on products that have a really high selling price. This would include several varieties of fingerling potatoes. They require a very dedicated approach to digging but the cost is extremely high and most people are selling them for about $4.00 to $5.00 a pint! Problem is you have to go into the hills early and start removing the fingerlings by hand. This is on your knees and hand picking the potatoes out of the hills. I think the only way to sell them is to join a farmers market and have an area that supports that type of special cooking. In my area I have to travel to the cities and even out of state to sell them for top dollar.
With seven acres planted you might gross enough to pay for your efforts and support the operation, but there would be little profit for the first few years. But, if you are a home body type it will certainly keep you home!
Sorry I got carried away! Wayne
