Market Farming

["The Garden Path" <gardenpath AT primus.ca>]

Steven thank you for sharing your story it is great to hear how others have found success. I’m interested to hear about your fertility program and your methods for harvesting mesclun and washing it. Any tips you have for a beginner are greatly appreciated. Congratulations on your new farm. Enjoy it you have worked hard to get it.

 

Thank You

Neil Davidson

 

-----Original Message-----
From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Steven Rogers
Sent: January 1, 2005 3:17 PM
To: Market-farming
Subject: [Market-farming] crops grown

 

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 pick ed 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 a ll 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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