AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Market Gardening

John Dysinger

The What & Why of Market Gardening

Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for.

Lord, you're on your throne high and lifted up and.

So now, as we get into some nuts and bolts here, I just pray for your spirit.

I pray that you would help me to know what to say and what not to say.

There's a lot I'd like to cover, but just help me to do it in a way that would be encouraging and practical to those who are listening.

These things we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Before we dive in, I just want to point out to you that I assume by faith, I believe that I have 2 handouts on the Adagra website for this class.

Okay, so I don't like I say by faith they're there And they're really important ones in my opinion 1 is on resources for the market gardener and And I've actually put in quite a bit of time.

I updated every year You know with books with websites with Blah or what do you call them podcasts?

With Online courses There's there's actually an an incredible amount.

In fact, in my opinion, it's getting too much information out there.

You know, when I started, you had to, you were just information starved.

And now you're kind of, it's information overload.

And so you have to try to sift through it.

So I've done that in a way by just saying, these are our favorites.

Okay, Cavell says it's on there, so good.

And then the other 1 is, I don't remember what I called it, but tools and equipment.

And again, I've tried to be as detailed as possible, giving a lot of specific brands of scales and tools.

Again, not that we have all the knowledge and that this is the 1 right answer, but at least this is what we have found helpful.

So I would encourage you to take advantage of those resources.

Also, the other thing that I realized when, as I was looking at the program, was that I really didn't talk a lot about the why of market gardening.

And so I want to just take a few minutes.

I think in a way I'm preaching to the choir here.

I don't think you would be here at Agra or be in this session if you weren't convicted on the importance of it.

But, well, I'd like to read a quote and encourage you to get this book if You don't have it.

Councils on Agriculture, this is a compilation of Mrs.

There's a whole chapter entitled A Call for Christian Farmers.

So read that if you wanna know why we should be doing this.

But the clincher quote for me is from Ministry of Healing, page 183.

In God's plan for Israel, every family had a home on the land with sufficient ground for tilling.

Thus were provided both the means and the incentive for a useful, industrious, and self-supporting life." I love that.

Useful, industrious, and self-supporting life.

And no devising of men has ever improved upon that plan.

You know, what other reason do you need for going into market gardening?

No other, no devising of man has ever improved on God's plan.

I could spend an hour easy just telling you all the reasons why I think you should get into it.

It's incredible for so many reasons, incredible opportunity for outreach.

It's just such a natural bridge to people.

It's not something you have to check off every, check off your list every week.

It just happens as you meet with with your customers.

I would say I wrote it down because I thought this was kind of profound but I I really believe this I Believe market gardening is the world's greatest hope for the future That's a pretty broad statement Notice though that I said the world's greatest hope for the future.

Okay, we have a greater hope for the future.

But as far as those who aren't seeing that greater hope, I truly believe, and we don't have time to really dive into that, but I believe market gardening is the world's greatest hope for the future of this planet.

If not, you can talk to me afterwards and we can...

Well, let's start with what is a market garden?

You know, I don't think there's an official definition so this is what I define it as Less than 3 acres of cultivated land and most market gardens that I'm aware of are an acre and a half or less.

Characterized by intensive beds and multiple high-value crops per bed per year.

This is not planting your corn in the spring and harvesting it in the fall and sitting back all winter.

Takes advantage of season extension and often goes year round with Elliot Coleman's The Winter Harvest Handbook that kind of opened up the reality that for pretty much anywhere in the United States, almost anywhere in the world, you can grow year-round with very simple techniques.

And market gardens are usually very diverse.

You know, every year, I think we could ask any market gardener in here, every year they have crop failures.

But you've always got enough other things going that it's not like a major hit.

You know, when we started out, we had all our eggs in 1 basket.

And when we got hit with weeks of rain, which led to a major anthracnose outbreak, we were like down for the count.

You know, if it weren't for God's goodness, that would have been the end of our market gardening.

Now I do want to just say this, you know, I'm always sensitive because is this the only model for agriculture that is God approved I I don't think so there's no one-size-fits-all and you know, I don't know how the ad agra can bridge the gap between market gardening and big-scale agriculture because I know there's many Adventists or at least quite a few Adventists in big-scale agriculture and there's nothing wrong with that.

Now, of course, I have personal convictions about organic and those methods, but that can be done on a large scale.

I read an amazing book recently, From Dirt to Soil.

Have any of you read that book about Gabe Brown up in, I think he's in North Dakota.

It's, you know, it didn't, a lot of it didn't apply to me personally, but it was just kind of a neat overview and How he's turned his 5, 000 acre farm into this incredible incredible place of diversity and regenerative agriculture.

If you have access to lots of land and tractor availability, then go for it.

Most people trying to get into agriculture.

That's a huge barrier You know, I mean these big farm thousands of acres who could afford that in this day and age You know and and the the big equipment is just incredibly expensive, you know, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars for for pieces of equipment.

But, if that's the way you want to go, I know most young men, you know, they love the tractor, the power, the noise, right Clayton?

But I think the market gardening model fits very nicely with the spirit of prophecy model.

So again, I'm not saying this is the only model, but I think it's a very good fit for Adventists and just, you know, families working together.

You don't have to hire a lot of outside help.

You know, to work with your kids every day and not have to just see them before you go to work and after you come home.

As we already mentioned, just the opportunities for agricultural evangelism.

White talks about the thousands and tens of thousands living in the cities that if they could just have a little piece of land in the country they could Make you know They could survive and that's what market gardening is all about and we want to be teaching that to others those thousands and tens of thousands of others.

So the advantages of the market gardening model as compared to other models of agriculture.

Teriz Chuljian

Mark Chuljian

Ricky Seiler

01 Meet the Farmer: Mark & Teriz Chuljian, Sonlit Meadows Farm

So I'm going to at this time introduce, this is a brother and sister team, and yet their whole family is involved.

If my understanding, you'll tell a little bit about kind of that as we move forward.

And we'll get to know them a little better.

They're going to pick up that microphone right in front of them, and we'll get started.

But before we officially kick in, let's just bow for a brief word of prayer, if we could.

Father God, we are once again counted a privilege to be here in this time that we live in.

I know this whole conference was a bit uncertain for a period of time and just feel like it's a true blessing to physically come together and to talk and discuss about various aspects of country living and farming.

And today I just pray that you'd be with Mark and Tara as they help share about their journey so far in the market garden space and how it's working for their family and things that they're learning along that journey.

Please bless them and bless each 1 of us as we're here today and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, so our first question is give us a little overview of how did your, maybe you could give us an idea of like, who all is involved in the farm, as from a family standpoint, and how you decided to, what inspired you folks to get involved in the whole market gardening concept or the farming concept?

OK, so it's our whole family that's involved.

Some of us in different aspects, like My brother Isaac does more the blueberry business, and my sister and I do the flowers.

And we also work on the rest of the farm.

And then Mark is the 1 that's kind of heading up the market garden.

And How did you, what got you interested, stimulated, gave you the idea of actually getting involved in a farm life?

Were you, ever since you were little kids, did your parents have a farm?

Well, we weren't raised on a farm, but we always had a family garden and We More or less helped with that varied and then But I'm for me.

I've always been like attracted to farming.

Did you feel like there was a point in time where your family collectively had this kind of thought or inspiration or this pivot point where, okay, we're gonna get a little more serious about this.

So, We kind of, it wasn't a real definite point, although at 1 point we kind of got more into, we were living, well we still live, we're in middle Tennessee, and we bought a farm, not specifically.

I mean, we weren't specifically buying the farm with the intention to go full-time into farming.

But after we bought that farm, it kind of, you know, we started growing some stuff there.

And then after, yeah, we were selling some of the stuff at a farmer's market, but it wasn't like full time.

And then we went, then it was actually the summer before the first Ad Agra.

We moved onto the farm with the thought of full-time farming.

And then we came to the first Agri-Conference and all those different things together just kind of solidified it and got us into it.

So I see you have a map here up on the screen.

I take it the arrow is pointing to pretty much where your farm's located?

Was that something you guys had any influence on?

Well, we lived at Wildwood most until the time, then we moved in 2009, we moved to middle Tennessee to a small institution.

And while we were living there is when we bought our farm.

And the reason we bought our farm where we did is because it was 4 miles away from where we were living.

It's not like you moved halfway across the country and said, we were looking in Tennessee, looking in Tennessee, and we decided, oh, Tennessee was the place, right?

Well, you're kind of Tennesseans already.

Well, you know, a lot of people go about different ways to do that.

Is this your current property or Was this your previous property?

No, this is part of why we are where we are now.

No, that was at the institution we moved to from Wildwood, which was a part of Wildwood.

Now it was basically bought out by another institution.

But when we were there we were There we were gardening out there, uh-huh and after having Well, that was the worst 1 I think but after having that happen about 3 times in a year As well as other times so kind of put out with floodplains Did now I'm just curious to know so when you move to your new property did you check to see how much it flooded at the new property before you invested in there?

You know, sometimes, honestly, this is something that is, you really want to think through.

If you have not bought land, Do not assume it's always going to look the way that it looks when you're there looking at it Rain and lots of rain and lots of water has a has an amazing impact on places that you just don't realize So it's very important to understand you don't want this type of thing going on.

It doesn't help in the whole garden experience, right?

So tell us a little bit now about your current farm.

How much land are you currently growing on?

Give us a little introduction to the farm, would you?

Okay, so that right there is a rough outline of the property.

And I guess we don't have any kind of pointer here, so.

But anyway, there, you can see the creek running through the 1 the 1 that's going from top to bottom yes last Butler Creek so between Then there's another creek that comes the other direction.

So right there, between the property line and those 2 creeks, on this side, is where we have our market farm.

And actually there's another picture, but anyway...

So, who is that little kid there on the right with his hand up?

And who's the girl, the tall girl in the middle with the beautiful smile on her face?

Now, but you weren't living on this property at that age, right?

Pamela Dysinger

02 Meet the Farmer: John & Pam Dysinger, Bountiful Blessings Farm

We're putting John and Pam Dysinger in the hot seats today.

But we're glad you're joining us for kind of a meet the farmer.

We have a number of questions we'll run through and hopefully even more than are on the list.

But let's first start off with a word of prayer.

Father, we are once again grateful to be here on this day in Texas in January and to have an opportunity to just continue to learn and to experience perhaps new ways of doing things in our gardens and farms at home.

Probably in a special way, you'd be with John and Pam and all of us as we are talking about trying to understand and learn better ways of being able to be involved in such a powerful ministry as market guard.

And we just look forward to the time we get to spend together and just ask your blessing upon it.

Okay, so I kind of like to think of John and Pam Dysinger as the grandfather, no, no, no, but the experience It's coming, it's coming Yeah, that is coming, that is coming, but you know in regards to the Adventist Agriculture Association, John and Pam were very influential in starting this organization.

In fact, John was the chair of the board for the first several years.

And we have a great gratitude for the work you guys have done.

And laying a lot of groundwork in more ways than 1.

Not just in farming, but in so many other ways to reach out and touch many people's lives.

And I think only in the kingdom will we realize how many lives have been touched not just from helping other people learn and experience The idea and the concept of turning some of these market gardening principles into reality but you know obviously the many people's lives you've touched with the vegetables that you grow and the ways you just touch people.

And you know, if you were here for the earlier presentation that John gave, he was, he, you know, got me Emotional because he got a bit emotional about an experience about 1 of their Individuals who they've known and worked with for many years whose wife passed away and you know They reach out to their family to say please pray for us And these people aren't even of our similar faith.

There's just so many things that are kind of so intangible that in this market gardening space that just hard to know, right?

Because we like to talk numbers sometimes, and numbers are good.

And we'll talk a little bit about that today, but there's Just a variety of things that are going on.

So Bountiful Blessings Farm is where Pam and John actually first, I'm assuming that's kind of where you first got started.

I mean, tell us a little bit about that, John and Pam.

When you grew up, did either 1 come from agrarian-based lifestyles?

I mean, where you had the soil that was just, you came out and there was dirt underneath your fingernails?

I mean, was that kind of where your experience was?

Well, I used to actually love to eat dirt as a child.

And I think that might have had something to do with my interest later on.

I mean I came from a very academic background.

And my wife also came from a very non-agrarian background.

Yeah, growing up, we both had gardens off and on in our childhood.

But no interest whatsoever in agriculture.

Well, I think my first interest came when we were actually overseas and we were teaching in Kenya.

And in Africa at that time, you just had a yard person to do your work.

I wanted to do our own yard work, and I wanted to have a garden and I remember trying to urge my- do you remember that, honey?

I wanted to have a garden and I'm sure I was influenced by a friend of mine there who- they had a lovely big garden and so I can remember- I remember him getting the tractor and digging it out the school had a tractor but I'm sad to say that without it wasn't a cooperative effort and the garden really failed That was our first garden.

Anybody here actually read their book, The Ebenezer?

OK, so if you haven't read the book, I would encourage you to read the book.

Now, just a side note, my son, he finds it very stressful to read the book.

It's probably better to read the book before you get into agriculture because once you get into agriculture you start relating to too many things that they bring up in the book, maybe.

And you have to read it all the way to the end.

Yeah, you've got to read it all the way to the end.

Yeah, there's a lot of years of trial and error.

And I'll have to say, so what does Alan really say about it?

Oh, He says it makes him stressful, makes him feel stressed to read the book because of, well, you know, it's a roller coaster.

When I was writing it, I can remember thinking, who is going to want to read this?

It's an important, anyway, it talks a lot about the early years of their journey.

We could spend easy an hour just on talking about why they felt convicted to get into the whole agriculture.

But do you have just a little snippet of something that, do you recall a moment perhaps?

Or was it more just a tendency moving this direction?

Was there something kind of that just, I think we ought to think about this.

Was there something like that that you can kind of put your finger on that you could share with us today?

So John and I are both teachers, and I think the first call to our hearts was definitely because of our experience in Africa working with missionaries children.

We knew God was calling us to something different.

And so that was the first step, was we're going to do something where we can be a family and we can be more together.

And when we left Africa and we came back to the States, John was still teaching for 2 years, but at that point we said we are not reaching our goals.

We are not able to be together as a family.

And the Lord started laying on John's heart, agriculture, agriculture, agriculture.

If you read the spirit of prophecy, you can't get away from that theme.

And so he was reading more and more, and I did not want to farm.

But he did the right thing, and he just gave me time.

And in time, the Lord confirmed that that's what we were to do.

And so we've been united in that vision ever since we put our hand to the plow, so to speak.

What would you say when he said he gave you time?

I mean, we're talking weeks, months, a few years.

I mean, I only drill down on this because this for couples, small families, you know, this could be a real sticky situation.

I remember at this conference, at this location, at this conference several years ago when we had it here, I remember a gentleman coming up to me towards the end, and he says, I really feel convicted to do this, but my wife doesn't want anything to do with it.

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Series

Market Gardening

02 Meet the Farmer: John & Pam Dysinger, Bountiful Blessings Farm

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

The What & Why of Market Gardening

1h 3m

01 Meet the Farmer: Mark & Teriz Chuljian, Sonlit Meadows Farm

1h 1m

02 Meet the Farmer: John & Pam Dysinger, Bountiful Blessings Farm

1h 14m

03 Meet the Farmer: Joshua Dysinger, Bountiful Blessings Farm

1h 3m

Meet the Farmers— Market Gardening Panel Discussion

1h 2m

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