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  • From: "Liz Pike" <liz AT laughingbrookfarm.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] RE: Hybrid versus open pollinated
  • Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 11:06:20 -0500

>From Mother Earth News:
Selling Great-Tasting Heirlooms

The heirloom market is hot - here's how to cash in.

By Brook Elliot

Heirloom vegetables are all the rage right now. Edible nostalgia, they've
been called. For good reason: Heirlooms bring the old-time taste back to
vegetables, and call to mind all the romance of country living at its best.
People who've never planted a seed in their lives are seeking heirlooms out
at farmer's markets, and gourmet chefs are featuring the produce on their
menus.


Savvy market growers, naturally, want to capitalize on this trend. Their
problem: Tracking down enough seed.

Heirloom Seed Sources

For the home gardener, obtaining heirloom seed is no big thing. Many seed
companies now offer heirlooms, and there are numerous seed swapping
organizations and bio-diversity groups whose sole purpose is to preserve
these varieties by distributing seed in one manner or another (see sidebar
on Page 38). But too often, this means providing only enough seed for a
sample grow-out. The idea is that the gardener plant those seeds the first
year in order to produce enough new seed for a full crop in subsequent
years.

"This is difficult for the commercial grower," points out Rich Sisti, honcho
of Catalpa Ridge Farm in Wantage, New Jersey. Sisti sells his produce at
three different locations; one in downtown Manhattan, one in Hoboken, and
one in his home town. In addition, he grows tomato transplants for a
supermarket chain. "I can't deal with just 25 seeds. I mean, what am I going
to do with that few?

One solution for Sisti, along with about 80 other farmers and market
growers, is the Garden State Heirloom Seed Society. Like most grassroots
heirloom seed organizations, GSHSS has home gardeners, market growers, and
farmers among its 600 members. Unlike most other such groups, at GSHSS the
emphasis is on helping the farmers and market growers.

"The hallmark of GSHSS," says founder Joe Cavanaugh, "is that we provide our
growers with seed at no cost. This lets them trial out numerous varieties of
heirloom vegetables, and stay up to date on what's popular." Some of his
members, he points out, test 50 or more varieties a year. "We encourage them
to save their own seed," he notes, "because in most areas seeds adapt to the
area where they're grown, and you will get better production if you save the
seed yourself." While growers are urged to save seed, it is not a
requirement by any means. Sisti, for instance, does not save seed because of
time constraints. "We deliver to our members through October," he points
out. "When you are busy making deliveries, it's hard to spend the time it
takes to save seed."

GSHSS grew out of Cavanaugh's own interest in heirloom vegetables. He'd been
a gardener from the time he was 9 years old. "I specifically remember my
mother going out to buy me plants," he recalls. "The two varieties I tried
were 'Big Boy,' a hybrid, and the old 'Rutgers' variety. I can vividly
remember a difference in the taste."

Later in life he became a Civil War reenactor. His interest in living
history and his interest in heirlooms created a natural mix. "As a reenactor
you can dress up, you can do reenactments, you can do camps. What you cannot
do is actually experience what the Civil War was like. One thing you can do
is eat their food. Trying to seek that out is what really propelled me into
heirlooms.".

After joining the international Seed Saver's Exchange (based in Decorah,
Iowa) early in it's history, Cavanaugh started growing out a wide variety of
heirlooms. Not just Civil War era varieties, but any heirloom he could get
his hands on. "I just couldn't believe the difference in taste compared to
the hybrids we'd been growing for years. Most of the hybrids are basically
horrible in taste compared to the heirlooms."

With a compelling need to share this information, Cavanaugh and his wife
Roberta started a small market garden to see what sort of interest people
would have. "This was in the early '90s," he recalls. "Heirlooms were known,
but they weren't popular like they are today. But our customers loved
everything we grew. We got nothing but superb feedback. They really wanted
the heirlooms we were growing."

After three years, they decided to try a different direction. "I told Bobbi,
'We're sitting on a gold mine, what are we going to do with it? Are we going
to start our own farm, and really capture the market? Or are we going to use
this as a vehicle to help farmers and market growers?'

"We decided we were going to put this so-called gold mine to work helping
people. Especially here in New Jersey, where farmers are really hard-pressed
with the high cost of everything. So, we formed GSHSS for that specific
reason."

Ironically, the first members were gardeners, rather than market growers.
"And I'd like to stress," Cavanaugh says, "that, although one of the major
aims of this organization is to help farmers and market growers, the things
we do are also available to help home gardeners. In fact, the bulk of our
membership is not commercial growers."

But in its six years' existence, GSHSS has become a voice for the commercial
production of heirloom vegetables. Providing seed is just one of the ways it
supports farmers.

Each year the organization grows about 250 heirloom vegetable varieties and
evaluates their flavor, productivity, pest resistance and marketability.
Varieties for these trials come from numerous sources. Some are local. "If
we know a farmer is growing a certain heirloom variety, we take seed for it
and make sure we increase production so that we have the seed available for
our members in larger quantities," he says.

Other varieties come from people who have heard about the group's work. One
bush bean came to them, for instance, from a woman in a local church who
knew of their work and handed them a jar full of seed. Her mother had come
through Ellis Island bringing the family bean seeds with her from Italy. Now
there was nobody left to grow them, and she was afraid they'd go extinct.

Another example is 'Tom Patti's Italian Paste' tomato. "It comes from a
fellow across the river in Pennsylvania," says the GSHSS head man, "and in
my opinion it's much better than the highly touted 'Amish Paste'." Tom Patti
was in a farmers market in a little town and tasted this tomato variety. He
liked it so much he bought a couple, scraped the seeds out, and took them
home. It's been very popular ever since.

Not everything is local. The Seed Savers Exchange often is the source of a
"new" variety. And the GSHSS has access to the U.S. Department of
Agrigulture seed banks as well.

In the fall, a special growers report is sent to GSHSS market grower
members. This report details the results of that year's trials. "So,"
Cavanaugh stresses, "a grower in our organization will always be on top of
things, with a wide variety of new vegetables they can test themselves."

Sometimes growers don't even test the seeds. Based on the credibility of
GSHSS reports and familiarity with their marketplace, farmers sometimes skip
the trial stage and go right to production. Ed Lidzbarski in Jamesburg, New
Jersey, for instance, operator of E.R. & Son Farm, is also the largest
wholesaler of organic vegetables in the Garden State. When GSHSS reported on
its trial of the 'Yellow Out/Red In' tomato, he immediately asked for enough
seed to grow a full crop. "He was fully confident of his ability to sell
it," Cavanaugh reports.

Lidzbarski is one of several GSHSS members who actually are selling heirloom
plants and produce to supermarkets-a sure sign that they have been
mainstreamed. But it often takes a little creative marketing to land such
accounts, because heirlooms, by their very nature, have to sell at a higher
retail price than standard varieties.

Recently, GSHSS has gotten more heavily involved in helping farmers market
heirlooms as well as grow them. "The way you have to sell heirlooms,"
Cavanaugh says, "is to get people to taste them. No matter how you're
marketing, whether it's a farm stand, a farmer's market, a CSA, or selling
to restaurants, we always recommend you cut some up and give them to your
customers to taste." He adds that if you're marketing to restaurants it's
important that your contact, in most cases, be the chef, not the owner.
"Once you get the customer to taste an heirloom, they're not going to be
buying hybrids anymore. They're coming back to you. It's the same thing
whether it's garlic, or tomatoes, sweet peppers or any of the fresh stuff."

Catalpa Ridge's Rich Sisti adds that you have to know how your customers do
business. "With supermarkets, for instance, you can't be delivering one box
of lettuces every three weeks. If you can't supply them several boxes a week
throughout the season, they're not interested in dealing with you."

Last year GSHSS started a special tomato-tasting in Hoboken designed to
bring growers and chefs together. "It was just a trial run," Cavanaugh
points out. "We brought some of our growers and had some restaurant people
there. It was very successful, so we're going to do it again on a larger
scale." Working with the Hoboken restaurant association, which will bring
the chefs, GSHSS will bring the tomatoes for a tasting. "Basically, this
brings our farmers together with the ritzy restaurants. If the chefs like
what they taste, we'll say, 'Here's the farmer who grew it. You guys get
together and work out a deal. GSHSS will provide the seed, at no cost to the
farmer, to assure he can supply your needs.'" An interesting sidelight to
this event is that it's co-sponsored by the Hoboken Museum.

"This was just the beginning," Cavanaugh says. "Next year we're going to
have a day for salad greens, in the spring. And when we have the
tomato-tasting in the fall, we'll introduce other heirloom vegetables, like
peppers, as well."

As he notes, if this works in Hoboken, it can work anywhere. He envisions
working with his growers in southern New Jersey to develop the same sort of
system for the Philadelphia market. "If it works here, than any other
organization in the country can pick up on it and do the same thing," he
concludes.

GSHSS has already spawned similar groups in other states. Using the New
Jersey group as a model, heirloom seed societies have started in Oklahoma,
New York and Rhode Island, and other states have expressed interest.
(Contact Cavanaugh for details-see address below.) "This isn't to imply that
we are a New Jersey organization only," Cavanaugh quickly points out. "We
have members across the country, and in several foreign countries." But he
recognizes that it is much more efficient to have a local organization
on-scene when acting to bring growers and customers together.

What's coming in the future? In the planning stages right now are a series
of annual market grower meetings. "We'll ask our most successful growers to
be the speakers," Cavanaugh says. "But the most important aspect is that
we'll bring all the farmers together where they can discuss their marketing
techniques, and share with each other what's selling, and how they sell it."

GSHSS is also planning to expand frequency of its publications. Right now,
for instance, it publishes an annual magazine called the Summer Solstice
edition. It includes articles on heirlooms, the history of various
varieties, gardener profiles, farmer profiles, and information about growing
and selling heirlooms. "The farmer who reads that can come up with a lot of
information on what works," Cavanaugh says. Plans are to expand the
publication to a quarterly, and to include more articles on marketing and
selling.

In the spring GSHSS publishes its Reprint Edition, which includes excerpts
from its vast collection of old seed catalogs. These are often used as
marketing tools by growers. "One of our growers in Maine, for instance,
specifically asked for copies of catalog pages that show the varieties she
grows," Cavanaugh notes. "Seems that when customers see them, they say
something like, 'this is coming out of an old seed catalog. I need to try
that.' Several of our growers have picked up on this, and we'll be doing
more of these reprints."

Since the heirloom movement's beginning in the mid-1980s, there has been one
stumbling block to its growth. Heirloom growers have been mostly home
gardeners and history buffs. The general public and restaurateurs might have
heard about the great flavor of heirlooms, but had no ready local sources.
GSHSS and similar organizations have taken several giant steps towards
closing that gap. More are on the way.

For more information, contact: Joe Cavanaugh, Garden State Heirloom Seed
Society, PO Box 15, Delaware, NJ 07833, 908-475-4861,
njheirloom AT earthlink.net.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Liz Pike
Laughingbrook Farm
Westfield NC
http://www.marketfarming.com
http://www.laughingbrookfarm.com
http://www.laughingbrookfarm.com/liz






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