AdAgrA 2019: True Success

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Intensive: Introduction to Market Gardening

John Dysinger

Pamela Dysinger

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 1

Dear Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for another day of life.

We're thankful that each person is here from literally all over the country and even other parts of the world.

We know that you are raising a movement of people who are wanting to get back to your original plan, back to the garden plan.

And I just pray that today we can encourage and inspire, we can empower, or that you can do all those things through us and that There will be more people in the garden because of this time that we spend here today.

These things we pray in Jesus name, amen.

So I feel like I have the best part of the seminar and that is why, Why should we do market gardening?

So I've entitled it, Have You Left Your Pot?

This was something that the Lord just really hit as I was thinking about this presentation.

I was reading in the book of John and something there really struck a chord to me like, this fits about agriculture, not just agriculture, it could be other things too.

So why it's a blessing to be a market gardener.

I'm going to share 6 things with you this morning.

I've reduced it from another presentation where I did 12.

So this is what I think are the most important, but certainly not all.

So I'm taking my thoughts from John, sorry, chapter 4, 28.

She comes to the well and she meets Jesus and after they talk, the Bible says, the woman then left her water pot.

It just hit me, have you left your water pot?

Have you left your water pot?" And why did she leave her water pot?

So to me, as I thought about it, the water pot represents just what she was planning to do that day.

You know, So to me, the leaving the water pot represented, okay, what was on her agenda for that day?

Maybe not just for that day, but maybe for her whole life.

Let me back up and say that for our family, I consider we left our water pot when my husband and I left the academic world of teaching and started on a journey to know God's will.

And, but we left it because we had had an encounter with Christ that had given us such a yearning in our hearts for more.

And we knew that the life that we were currently living was not going to reach that end goal.

And so we left that water pot and we said, Lord, we're yours.

What would you have us to do that we might know you?

If you stay here for the marketing class, I'll introduce you to our whole family through a picture.

We're blessed to have 3 of our boys here and 2 of them with their wives, But we have others that aren't here.

So, the woman at the well, she now had a burden on her heart, a job to do, and people to tell.

You know, I don't know how much we had a testimony to share before we left our water pot, but I'll tell you, our testimony has increased tenfold since we left our water pot.

So then the message that she said was, come and see, come and see what he's done for me.

And so for us, our come and see has definitely been our farm.

It has given, it has been the vehicle for us to tell our customers, come and see what the Lord has done for us.

Look at these amazing strawberries, or look at these amazing vegetables that God spared when everyone else's crop might have been wiped out and the Lord just put his hand right over ours to give us a testimony to say look what God has done.

You know at farmers markets when our when customers come by and say your produce tastes the best You know what we can say?

Praise the Lord These are prayed over vegetables You know we grow the same vegetables that everybody else does the same many of them the same varieties But we can say because of the farm come and see come and see so 6 6 reasons that we think that market gardening, farming is a wonderful thing for families.

It's the perfect way to live in the country and yet work the cities.

You know, we hear so much about, well, we've gotta work the cities, we've gotta work the cities.

But listen to this quote from a letter that Mrs.

The cities are to be worked from outposts, said the messenger of God.

They are to be worked from outposts, said the messenger of God.

Yes, not by God's people living in them, but by their visiting them to warn them of what is coming upon the earth." So we're in our closest big city is Nashville.

We are there in the summertime twice a week.

That's a cross for us to bear to have to go to Nashville twice a week, but you know what?

That's where the people are and that's where our ministry is.

The second reason is because it is a very wholesome environment And I will say this, 20 years ago when we started farming, it was a lot more wholesome than it is now.

But now, right in your pocket, you have every sin that can be seen in the city, you have brought it now to the country setting.

So it takes more effort, but still, the message is clear.

I urge our people to make it their life work, to seek for spirituality.

Now, how many of us really can say, that is our goal, we are seeking for spirituality?

This is why I say to our people, do not consider it a privation when you are called to leave the cities and move out into the country places.

Here there await rich blessings for those who will grasp them.

By beholding the scenes of nature, the works of the creator, by studying God's handiwork, imperceptibly you will be changed into the same image.

Because, I'll tell you why it's encouraging.

Because at times I felt like our life was bringing out the worst, the worst stuff in my character.

You know, you go through hard times, you just think, ugh, this is bringing out the worst in me.

But God's promises are sure, and He is working.

So first, we want to reach the cities from the country, second it's a wholesome environment.

Third, hardship and privation are a safeguard.

How many of us would like to say, oh, I just love hardship and privation.

The parents of Jesus were poor and dependent upon their daily toil.

He, Jesus, was familiar with poverty, self-denial, and privation.

In his industrious life, there were no idle moments to invite temptation.

No aimless hours opened the way for corrupting associations.

So far as possible, he closed the door to temptation.

You know, that was our aim with our children, I'll be honest.

We aimed to keep them so busy that they didn't have idle time.

And when they did have idle time, it was used in the out of doors.

I mean, it was a hard, I was hard pressed to keep my boys inside for any purposes.

I mean, well of course they would ditch school at any opportunity.

What a blessing, especially for young men.

I think that's why the Lord gave us 4 boys, because we were on the farm and that's what boys need.

Did it shut the door and make it impossible for temptation?

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 2

Elliot Coleman, I would say is the 1 person most responsible for the market gardening movement in the US.

This was the only book I had when I started growing.

Actually this is 30th anniversary edition, This new edition just came out this year.

It's got a lot of color photographs and some updating.

I still say this is the place to start to learn about market gardening.

Others have come along and kind of stood on his shoulders and maybe gone further.

But he gives a lot of good information on basic techniques, you know, how to hold your collinear hoe and how to use the wheel hoe and some of these tools and just a very good introduction to market gardening So I highly recommend the New Organic Grower.

So some years ago, I think maybe 2008, Jean-Martin Fortier, Or for those of us who don't speak French, we just say JM Fortier from Quebec came out with this book We are blessed in that my son Jonathan who's hiding in the corner back there has developed some tools that have really revolutionized market gardening.

We believe the Lord blessed and give him the credit.

But we were able to go see JM's farm before this book came out.

And he gave me, it first came out in French.

And man, I was really motivated to learn French at that point.

I was figuring out, okay, well, what does that mean?

And anyway, fortunately, it came out in English a year or 2 later.

But this, so I say, Elliot Coleman started the market gardening movement.

JM Fortier turned it from a movement into a revolution, I would say.

And this book has encouraged thousands of young people to leave careers in the city and move to the country and start market gardening.

It's a really well, it's a very complete manual of how to run a market garden.

And the thing that I think really got people excited was that he's making 150, 000 on an acre and a half and he documents how he does that and you know you look at the prices he's getting He's up in Quebec and we get those kind of prices at our farmers market so it's like wow well if he's doing it up there then we should be able to do it in Tennessee or in Oregon or wherever.

So anyway this is just another highly recommended book.

The Winter Harvest Handbook, also by Elliot Coleman.

Elliot is the authority on winter growing.

It's the only book that I'm aware of that really goes into winter growing.

Again, if he can do it in Maine, you can do it in Oregon.

1 thing I love about Elliot Coleman is he's trying to, he's very minimalistic.

If we can get rid of it, you know, if we don't need the bells and whistles, let's get rid of them.

Let's come down to what is actually essential.

How many of you have heard of Curtis Stone?

I know a lot of people have heard of Curtis Stone because he's on YouTube.

And he, actually he's not doing market gardening anymore.

He is, I'm not sure what he's doing except making videos and videoing other people doing market gardening but he's got a young family and for I don't know all his reasons but he's no longer actively market gardening but he wrote the urban farmer book Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land, got some excellent tips in there.

And for those of you who don't have a farm yet or land, you know, again He used neighbors' yards, backyards.

He was, when he quit, he was making over $100, 000 on a third of an acre.

And I just wanna stop and emphasize something here.

I'm going to be throwing around these numbers.

And I want to make it clear that you're not going to make that when you start out.

So don't say, oh, wow, I can make $100, 000 in my backyard.

These are people who have sharpened their skills and who really know what they're doing.

And I also wanna say, Most of them are not Christian.

And so they have a different outlook on life.

And again, I hope that our number 1 goal is not making money.

I hope that our goal is outreach and service and so on.

And so I throw the numbers out just because I'm trying to get rid of the myth that you can't earn a living in a market garden.

You know, there's still this idea and it seems to be especially strong in Adventism.

Well, yeah, that's nice, but, you know, I gotta pay the bills.

We'll talk about that more later on but you know it's fair to say net is usually around 50% of gross in market gardening.

Okay, we gotta keep going because there's a lot of resources here.

This book came out a few years ago, and this was really revolutionary, in that Ben Hartman took lean manufacturing techniques that Toyota popularized in becoming the most profitable automaker in the world, I think.

And he's taken these techniques and principles and applied them to the market garden.

And as I say in the resource thing this is not going to tell you how to be a market gardener, how to grow plants but it will tell you how to be a smarter market gardener.

Gives a lot of principles and methods for being more efficient.

You know, just a simple example, the spaghetti diagram.

You know, you map out your movement on the farm for harvesting.

Okay, so I go over here to the tool shed and get my knife, and then I go down over here and harvest, and then I come back here and wash it, and then I've got to bring it here and so you just map your route.

And it usually ends up looking a lot like a pile of spaghetti.

So you're trying to straighten those lines out.

Well, what if I keep my knives at the hoop house where I harvest?

So I can go straight there, then I come straight back and I wash, dry, put it in the cooler, and then it goes into the van to go to market.

You know, you just straightened out all those lines.

So anyway, all kinds of good information about increasing efficiency.

And then a couple of years later, he came out with the Lean Farm Guide to growing vegetables because people were saying, well, this is great theory, but how do you make it work in your garden?

So this is kind of he's showing you how he uses it on his farm.

Again, he's farming under an acre, doing it largely by himself and making a comfortable living.

Ben Hartman, The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables.

Sustainable market farming, this is 1 that I consider more reference work.

I've never read it through beginning to end, but has a lot of good information and has it broken down by different crops.

So if you're wanting to learn more about brassicas that you're trying to improve your brassica production you can look at it and just a good reference manual for the small farm.

Market farming success I don't actually have here but I think we've all these books we have downstairs at the Ad Agra table.

We want to encourage you to buy them here and support Ad Agra rather than Amazon.

Anyway, Market Farming Success is just a good introduction to market farming.

If you have a family and you're wanting to figure out how to make it work for your family, and hopefully encouraging them to someday take over the farm.

I can say that it changed the course of our farm when we read it.

We realized that our children were not picturing a future for themselves on the farm and so We we made some pretty big changes on our farm You know, we're not trying to make them all into market gardeners, but we just want them to know that the farm is there for them if they want, if they feel called to that.

And so, it's just an excellent book on family farming, managing cover crops profitably.

There's a number of different issues here.

Andrew Mefford, the editor, is kind enough to send these to us.

Obviously he would like you to become a subscriber.

Well I'm 1 that loves to read and learn from others and so Growing for market is the main magazine for market gardeners.

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 3

Okay, so let's start again, I tried to do this somewhat in order so you're gonna start a market garden and you've got this big expanse of pasture.

Well, you know, somehow that soil has to be prepared in order to make your beds.

In the Market Gardener popularized the walking tractor, specifically BCS, because that's the main 1 that's available in the US.

And he sold thousands of walking tractors from that book.

Because he literally, everybody went out and bought walking tractors or BCSs.

Of course, Elliot Coleman actually had recommended walking tractors years earlier.

But JM, there's some updated equipment, the rotary plow, the rotary harrow, and the flail mower, which are really the 3 tools that I think are, if you're gonna get a BCS, those are the tools you wanna get.

You know, it depends on, the nice thing about a rotary plow is that it can actually turn in very tall cover crops.

It's quite impressive to watch a BCS work in a cover crop.

So a rotary plow is basically a big auger screw turning like this.

And what it does is it throws the dirt to the side similar in a way to a moldboard plow but it I I thought it would really beat up the soil like a rototiller does, but it actually doesn't beat it up as much as you would think.

And if you need raised beds, If you're in an area that has a hard time drying out in the spring, it's quite an easy, comparatively easy way to make raised beds.

You go down 1 side and throw the dirt here, come back the other side and throw the dirt there and voila you have a raised bed.

The rotary harrow has teeth like this as compared to a rototiller which turns like this a rotary harrow turns like this and just incorporate stuff into the, and you have a gauge wheel that controls the depth and so you can just incorporate compost and things into the top few inches.

And the flail mower is a wonderful tool for at the end of your crop, end of the season, if you're growing broccoli, even though we told you not to.

And again, you know, broccoli is a great crop, but as far as profit per square foot, it's very low.

You've got all these huge plants that you've harvested.

You take the flail mower down that and it just, it has a barrel turning this way with teeth on it that just grind it up.

And it's a great way to get rid of crops at the end of the season.

You know, as compared to a lawn mower or a bush hog which shoots stuff to the side, The flail mower grinds it up and it sits right there.

So it does a much better job of incorporating, helping you incorporate that material, organic matter.

Okay, if you have the space and you need a tractor anyway so like for us we live on a hundred and 60 acre farm.

It's not ours it's my parents we're fortunate enough to share crop on it.

But you know we've got a lot of pasture, too much to cut with a BCS so we really have to have a tractor.

Well if you've got to have a tractor anyway for the size of your property, why not, and we didn't do this because we weren't thinking ahead enough, but why not get a tractor that would work with your 30-inch bed?

And I gave you 1 example a Kubota L3300, it's a 33 horsepower tractor that you can set the wheel spacing for 30 inches and actually Ben Hartman in the Lean Farm does this.

I never thought that you could use a tractor on a 30-inch bed system.

You get the mechanical help of a tractor, but yet the efficiency of a intensive bed system.

And of course, your other companies, I'm not trying to push Kubota, but your other companies do have similar tractors.

I will say with Kubota, they make it hard to resist, because they will offer you 0 down, 0 interest for 5 years on a tractor.

But of course, you're talking, believe me, I've looked into 1 because I'd love to have 1.

But you're talking, depending, I'll just tell you a front end loader, a bucket on a tractor, is the most useful tool on a farm.

I've said that for years, and I still stick by it.

You can do so much with a front end loader on a tractor.

But if you get 1 with that, you know, it's gonna be 22, $23, 000 for a new 1.

Obviously you can buy used maybe if you can find it.

Okay can you get the tools, the BCS tools for a tractor?

Yes you can get a rotary harrow with a three-point hitch.

I don't know about the rotary plow, but if you're gonna have a tractor, the tool I would recommend instead of a rotary plow is a spader, reciprocating spader, which is a very, very expensive tool, but it does a very good job.

All these tools come, or many of them come from Europe.

Basically a spader is going to cost you at least a thousand dollars per foot of width.

So if you want a 5 foot wide spader you're going to pay at least $5, 000.

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Series

Intensive: Introduction to Market Gardening

Introduction to Market Gardening - Part 4

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Marketing

Market Stands and Local Wholesales

19m

Intensive- Market Gardening: A Lifestyle and a Lesson Book

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

1h

Short Course: Beginning Market Farming

Beginning Market Farming- Part 4

1h

Starting a Market Garden

Tips and Techniques for Farmer’s Market

1h 4m

Market Gardening

Where Do You Go From Here?

57m

Roundtable

Successful Marketing, Planning for Profitability

1h 43m

Market Gardening

Planning, Record Keeping and “Lean” Systems for Efficiency

57m

Short Course: Beginning Market Farming

Beginning Market Farming- Part 6

46m

Sound Doctrine