AdAgrA 2018: Something Better

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Intensive- Market Gardening: A Lifestyle and a Lesson Book

Larry Lesher

Michelle Lesher

1. Market Gardening: Why are We Here? True Education!

2. Market Gardening: How Do I Market my Produce?

3. Market Gardening: How to Meet Your Market Demand

4. Market Gardening: Appropriate Infrastructure

Alan Seiler

Aubrey Seiler

5. Market Gardening: Small Farm Irrigation

6. Market Gardening: Finding the Perfect Farm

So, a perfect farm, finding the perfect farm, it's, actually, Alan, why don't you share with them your saying about a perfect farm?

You're going to have to remind me every day.

A perfect farm, he often uses a saying about there is none righteous, no not 1.

Well that's what the same way when it comes to a perfect farm.

We have concluded that on this earth, the land, God cursed the earth for a reason.

However, there are a lot of things that we can do when looking for land or trying to figure out how to best use our land that can really save us in the long run.

We've gone through, we went through about 5, 4 to 5 years of looking for farmland before we found the land that we were actually, that the Lord opened up and that we were actually willing to go with.

And during those 4 to 5 years, we learned a lot about what to look for, how to look for it, when to look for it, tools that can save you time looking for it.

Because there's 1 thing to just jump in to it and then be like, wow, I really wish this hadn't happened.

And I really thought about actually what I was getting into.

I mean, obviously, you can think about it so long that you overthink it and then nothing ever happens.

So basically what we're doing in this presentation is going over the checklist that we used in looking for our land and that we found really helpful in helping us navigate.

Because it can get pretty tricky when you're trying to compare and yeah.

So, this looks nice and there are things about land that...

This looks, this is our, this is our old farm.

So this is our first, this is our prototype experiment.

And it looks pretty, looks pretty great on the surface, doesn't it?

But underneath you found things like this.

And this was actually all rock that we hand removed from our fields.

You know how the Great Wall of China was built?

But the thing is, is that we want to help prevent you from making these types of mistakes.

Going in, buying a lot of land, and then finding out that it doesn't have what you want.

Yeah, I mean, not that this was a mistake, this was land that our folks purchased when we moved to Oklahoma.

My folks never dreamed that they would farm, maybe have a garden, but never farm.

And so thinking about what kind of land was not on their radar.

It was just this nice little country piece of land, 2 acres, perfect place to bring a house.

But they didn't realize that the place only has like 7 inches of topsoil.

And then you've got this bedrock limestone.

So even though the top might look great just a few inches below the surface could be not great at all.

So these are things to do we're gonna walk through to help you kind of go into it with your eyes open.

Quantity, location, land resources, internet tools, and on-site test, okay?

Okay, so for a small scale, oh yeah this is actually an aerial view of our farm before we purchased it.

So this is kind of the scale that we see.

So for a country house with a family garden and fruit trees, 1 to 5 acres is probably sufficient.

If you're going to do a small market garden to sell produce, 5 to 20 acres is what you're probably going to be wanting to look for.

Anything 20 to 50 acres, a large market farm.

And there are some of those, actually, there's some really large market farms.

Not necessarily, though, we were out in California and we visited a farm called Rado Brothers, and they're a mixed vegetable production where they grow a thousand acres of mixed vegetables.

I mean, they send their product to Japan.

Yeah, they're doing a lot of good work, but it doesn't, just because you have a lot of acres doesn't mean you can't do mixed vegetable.

But we're definitely within the 5 to 20 acres.

As we talked about earlier, Earth is a good idea.

Thinking about access, I know Larry and Michelle briefly touched on this a little bit as well.

Because you have to think if you're doing it for market, you're going to have customers.

So how far are you from a potential customer base?

Are there passable roads all times of the years?

Do you have access to utilities or does it need to be off the grid?

Especially if you're doing online marketing, that's a biggie.

Yeah, internet is a really big thing for us.

It's kind of funny because with our new place, they didn't think we could get the local internet in that area.

In fact, my mom called them and asked them And they're like, no, sorry, we don't provide there.

And so she just was like, OK, they don't provide there.

So we didn't have a phone, and we didn't have internet.

And we did have cell service on certain parts of the property.

So we were using our hot spots to get our internet.

Well, that quickly realized that was not sustainable for us because between doing the farm and then the projects that I'm involved with and the projects that my mom is involved with and my dad works remotely sometimes, the data was just like gone.

And so we're just like, oh man, what do we do?

So we had some guys that do satellite internet not satellite dish internet come in not dish as in dish but like they use a dish to get internet not a you know a dish and so they get out there and they get in their big lift type crane thing and they're like way up and they're like, nope, boy, you know, we really should be getting some connection here.

Like right over there, there should be something that we're getting access to." And so the guy down on the ground calls headquarters and he's like, "'Hey, we've got this pointed right.

Why aren't we seeing anything?' And they're like, "'Oh, well, we just turned that off because no 1 ever used it.'" And he's like, "'Do you have plans of turning it back on?

Well, sorry guys, the dish isn't going to be an option.

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Series

Intensive- Market Gardening: A Lifestyle and a Lesson Book

6. Market Gardening: Finding the Perfect Farm

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Soil Fertility 101: Step by Step Directions

Part 4- How to Calculate and Amend Soil Nutrient Levels

1h

Preparing to Make the Jump

Home on the Range: Find the Right Property

1h

Starting a Market Garden

5 Ways to Design Your Market Garden for Success

1h 14m

Intensive: Advanced Soil Science

Advanced Soil Science - Part 5

37m

Soil Health

7- Choosing the Right Resources, The End Matters

53m

Session 1

Soil Sampling for Accurate Results

57m

Things to Know Before You Become a Farmer

Embarking on Your (Ag)Venture

1h

Intensive: The Life of the Plants Is in the Sap

The Life of the Plants Is in the Sap- Part 6

48m

Sound Doctrine