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market-farming - Re: Making a living on the farm

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: Joan Vibert <joan AT windwalker-farm.com>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Making a living on the farm
  • Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 15:20:38 -0600


The timing on this discussion is ideal. We just downloaded information
from Kansas Dept. of Health & Environment regarding kitchen certification
and are about to try this ourselves.
I sell at an upscale organic farmer's market in south Kansas City and
realized last year, my first, that value-added items were perfect for this
market. I "borrowed" a local certified kitchen in our small town and made
items such as scones, pies, pesto, chimichurri (cilantro pesto), spreads
etc. Every week I sold out and could have taken more. But it is a real
pain to drive everything into town and work in someone else's space with
their equipment. Plus the fact that this "certified kitchen" was filthy! I
couldn't believe it.
So we are looking at a corner in our basement that can be fitted out and
to begin with I intend to use an extra stove and fridge we have. We have a
line on someone with a Hobart stand mixer, triple sinks and a twelve rack
commercial oven that they used for cookies, all at bargain prices. Plus,
from what I understand the used equipment is so easy to come by if you know
where to look.
I probably won't make mass amounts of any of these items, just have a
nice assortment of each every week to start with, maybe a dozen each of
several items. And I probably won't take many "canned" foods, more like
fresh prepared items. Last year as I drove home with trays full of the
extra tomatoes in August, I was struck by how easy it would be to turn it
all into gazpacho and sell it to them in quart carry-out containers the next
week. As it was I turned most of them into dried tomatoes and sold those
back to them in one form or another.
However, we are in Kansas and our market is in Missouri and I understand
that the FDA steps in when you cross the line with all this prepared food.
Does anyone have experience with this?
I am the project manager for a local tomato grower's coop and we make
salsa every summer at a certified kitchen utilizing as much of our locally
grown produce as possible. And yes, we start with hand picked tomatoes,
peppers, jalapenos, onions, garlic, so we get to peel, seed, etc. We hope
to solve the tedious tomato peeling this year with a steam peeler and we use
a large food processor for all of it but we have a very slow garlic peeling
process. In a day we can require over 20 pounds of garlic, which is a lot
of peeling. We use those rubber peelers but its slow! If anyone has any
ideas to speed this up, I'd like to hear them. We've thought about using
green garlic that would be pulled in May or so and held in a cooler or
chopped and frozen until August.
In regard to selling our product, we have had an uphill battle getting
it into stores because it is higher priced than other "local" salsas that
don't start with fresh produce. It sells well at market at $5.50 a jar but
on a store shelf next to other salsas it appears high priced. We have

printed up a shelf hanger that explains the product and a little of the
project and hope that it helps. Has anyone solved this battle?
Its so nice to have all this discussion going on right now while we are
all dreaming about the new season. Its too bad we can't all spend a day
together in a small room, think of what we might learn from each other!
Thanks for all the good ideas and keep them flowing - by the way - please
add your city and state to your signature. I keep forgetting where everyone
is and its very helpful to know.

Joan
Windwalker Farm
Ottawa, Kansas






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