Market Farming

[Marcie Rosenzweig <fullcircle AT jps.net>]

Hi Jim and Julie,

I, too used recycled wooden boxes or LA lugs from the grocery store 
laid them in the sun for a week before I'd needed them.  I  lined 
them with newspapers and picked directly into them so as to handle 
the ripe fruit only once.  I actually "trained"  my local produce 
guys to remove the lids carefully and keep them so I had stackable 
units.

If you must go new to meet certification standards, collaboration and 
collectivism is it.  There are really nice self-lidded paperboard 
fruit boxes that come unprinted so you can use your own label.  If 
there are old packing sheds in your area, you may be lucky enough to 
find wood to use in your market display.


Hey Allan!  Come on over to Southern SAWG in Chattanooga. I'm coming 
down and would love to finally meet you.  I'd also like to see the 
"Kogelschatz/McGregor Bed Former."  Alex has it right, the fewer 
trips across the field the better for everything - the soil, you 
equipment , your bod, your time, and your bottomline.

I used a Falc "Panda" spader and it pulled enough of a bed for me, 
but I used a semi-permanent bed set-up so I was basically running in 
the same wheel tracks from year-to-year.  I have friends who are 
organic melon growers who use a bed shaper/plastic mulch layer combo 
to pull their beds  and other friends using bed shapers.  The shapers 
they use are not much bigger than the spader.  Some of how well this 
works, obviously, has to do with soil moisture when your doing bed 
prep.

You might try sniffing around Market Farm Implement Company 257 Fawn 
Hollow Road, Friedens, Pa. 15541 Phone: (814)-443-1931- they put up a 
website last year http://www.marketfarm.com/  They always seemed to 
have great stuff of appropriate scale in their catalog - new and 
previously owned equipment.


Marcie
Marcie A. Rosenzweig
Full Circle
3377 Early Times Ln
Auburn, CA  95603-7900
(530) 885-9201