Market Farming

["Steven Rogers" <singingpigfarm AT earthlink.net>]

I grow a wide variety of crops. The back bone of my operation is spring mix or mesclun. It covers all of my expenses and gives me a profit. I am blessed to be in Zone 8 where cold snowy winters are the exception. This winter, for example, has been dry and warmer and I am still harvesting salad greens from almost 4 acres outside with no protection. That could all go away next week, however, because on of the 4 local TV stations is predicting an arctic blast for next week. In the meantime I am harvesting everything I can. I have 15 restaurant customers that I sell direct to, and they are mostly located in a very tight area of downtown Portland. I sell 500lbs of mesclun/week at $4.00/lb. This covers all of my business expenses including my salary. In my position as President of Singing Pig Farm,Inc I receive a salary of $1200 every two weeks. This covers all of my living expenses and allows me to fund a Roth IRA. I live frugally and I am low maintenance.

In additon to mesclun, which I grow year round, I grow carrots, beets , fennel, basil, tomatoes, eggplant, zukes, melons, sweet corn, peas, onion, garlic, green garlic, broccoili, cabbage, artichokes, cardoon, rapini, turnips, romaine lettuce, shallots,just a wide range of crops. Because the mesclun pays the bills I have the luxury of growing experimental items every year. In my breakout year of 2002, I started the year with 6 20X96' compost heated greenhouses in full production with salad greens,escarole and baby turnips. In february, I was able to harvest cardoon ( it doesn't freeze down out here and starts to put on new growth in midjanuary when the days get over 9 hours long). I have one customer who makes delicious pickles out of cardoon so i was able to sell him 90 lbs/ week at #1.00/ pound for several weeks. Then in March the softneck garlic I planted thickly for green garlic was ready. For several weeks I sold 10-15 cases per week for $15/case.  I plant sugar snaps and english peas once per month beginning in January through March. This gives me a six week continuos  pea crop starting May 1 through mid June. This particular year I sowed Peas in one of my greenhouse in February and started the pea harvest in mid April. In january, I seeded 4 varieties of broc and one cabbage between the rows of salad greens in one of my greenhouses. In March I transplanted them out into the field.  In May I was harvesting broc, cabbage, green garlic, sugar snaps, english peas, artichokes, spring onions, turnips, rapini, and my sales on mesclun at that time was 400lbs/week. In July I started harvesting heirloom tomatoes-Off of 200 plants I sold 12,000 pounds of tomatoes at $1.50/pound. The year just continued like that. It was a situation where everything came together at one time-it was my time to be blessed. I did all of the right things that I had done in the past, and the weather fully cooperated. In January of that year I picked up a $600/week account. Praise God, I have three of them. Several of my competitors had gone out of business beacause the couldn't weather the short term drop in business after 9/11. I dialed in a proprietary organic fertilizer program I had been developing for two years that lowered my costs and doubled my yields. My investments in greenhouses and acreage-sized rolls of row cover were paying off huge. My peas yielded almost 100#/1# of seed planted. My tomatoes averaged 60#/plant. It was a bliss year and I worked it for all I could because I recognized that this was the year I had been visualizing and I wasn't going to let my action/inaction or  little things like pain or fatigue limit me. It allowed me to pay down debt that I had incurred building the business infrastructure which had contributed to my having this incredible year. It all ties together. Every action/inaction, every decision effects your life in the future. Where we are today is the sum of all the decisions we have made in the past, That is why I don't envy those who are more successful or look down on those less successful than me. I know that just one seemingly unimportant decision in my past could have put me in either one of those situations, I am just thankful to be where I am now.

 

 

Steven Rogers

singingpigfarm AT earthlink.net

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