Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

I bet it wouldn't turn you away if it was a very lucrative business, as it
should be if it's done right. That family's whining about customer
attitudes sounds exactly like a cover for failing in the business. 

I think: why would those sour customers be there in the first place if they
didn't want to buy the produce??? Hmmmm. Methinks there's more to their
story. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/22/2007 at 7:25 PM Laurie Ann Powell wrote:

>For me, the greatest issue turning me away from growing for market is
>the shirking of responsibility by consumers.  
>
>As consumers, we want food guaranteed, insured, hermetically sealed and
>to not look like food, but to look like plastic.  And to come in
>expensive containers!
>
>One family in our community experimented with market gardening last
>year, and it was going pretty well, though certainly not a living. It
>meant getting up at four a.m. to have the freshest possible produce,
>racing to the market, having only one day a week to sell it, and then
>having questions asked because her produce looked weird because it was
>healthy. Why are those cucumbers so big? Why are those tomatoes so red?
>Then came the spinach scare and people wanted to know, "Are you
>fertilizing with manure?!"  Well... yeah! Hellooooo??  
>People buying raw milk don't want to see manure in the barn, or animals
>in the area. Aren't animals germy??
>
>I'm not going to get into messing with that. Until people understand
>that there is poop in the food cycle, and dirt is a normal part of food
>production, I'm going to grow for myself and other farmers.
>
>I think I'm becoming a distributist: let me buy 3 acres and a cow and
>leave me alone! Or maybe an anarchist: let me buy three acres, a cow and
>a gun and really leave me alone...
>
>Laurie Ann
>
>
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