AdAgrA 2022: Sharing the Blessings

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Market Gardening

Ricky Seiler

5 Big Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Market Garden

Let me just start off with a brief introduction about what a market garden is, and then we'll go through, I'll tell you a little bit about the farm that we have as our family, and then we'll look at these 5, what I classify as big mistakes to avoid when starting a market garden.

You're well hydrated and you got good sleep last night.

We're going to try to roll but my slides aren't advancing.

Sometimes people also refer to it as a micro farm.

I just pulled it straight from Wikipedia.

I really don't call it a micro farm, but that's according to Wikipedia, that's what they say, okay?

So relatively a small scale production of fruits, vegetables, and flowers as cash crops.

These are actually crops that you sell for money and you're frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants.

So many people who do like market garden more direct into the consumer or maybe to restaurants not so much maybe to wholesale but we can talk about that in just a little bit.

Our next slide the diversity of crops grown on a small area of land So a market garden is where you grow a variety of crops, typically on a small area of land, typically anywhere from under 1 acre.

Sometimes they're up to a few acres and sides, but very rarely do you hear of market gardens that are much over 5 acres.

Most of the market gardens I'm familiar with run probably between, somewhere between a half a acre to a couple acres.

Sometimes people use greenhouses, that's becoming more and more common, or hoop houses, or different types of structures to help protect their plants.

And this actually distinguishes it from other types of farming.

So unlike large industrial farms, which practice maybe something called monoculture.

And you can think of monoculture, if you think of like big soybean farms or big corn farms or wheat farms, you know, where there's acres and acres and acres of the same crop.

Maybe it could even be just a large, huge orchard of some sort, a walnut orchard or an apple orchard or something.

But generally they're focusing on like 1 crop and they're doing it on a large scale.

Not so much that way in micro or market gardens.

This, In market gardens, you're focusing on many different crops, a variety are grown and there's more manual labor.

You're not using big combines and big tractors and things of this nature.

You're using much more smaller tools, maybe a lot of hand tools.

If you have a tractor, sometimes they're really small tractors, maybe what they call a walk-behind tractor, those types of things.

A market garden is a business that provides a wide range of steady supply of fresh produce through the local growing season.

You're not typically just growing a particular vegetable or particular fruit that you're growing for like 2 months and then you're done or 3 months and then you're done or you're harvesting it for a 30 day or 45 day period and then you're done.

You're layering in different variety of vegetables and produce, maybe some small fruit, those types of things like berries and things of that nature.

But there's you're trying to have your market so that it runs for several months.

Some micro market gardens actually run year round.

And we'll talk a little bit about that here in just a minute.

So the small output requires selling through such local fresh produce outlets.

So a lot of people will sell through maybe an on-farm stand or a market, a farmer's market stand, something called community supported agriculture, which are called CSA subscriptions where people buy a subscription to your farm for that particular growing season.

What's not on here is what we what we do a lot on our farm which is called an online market where people actually order online the day before and then we deliver their produce to them at certain pickup sites around our area And they'll also sell to restaurants and independent produce stores.

And so there's a variety of ways to do that.

But you're selling mostly to the end consumer.

And that why that makes such a big difference is kind of what we're talking about on this slide here.

So you're not necessarily, or rarely are you selling wholesale, you're pretty much always selling direct to consumer, which means you're selling at retail, which you're selling for basically 100% of the product.

So in other words, let's say you sell tomatoes for, I don't know, $4 a pound, but if you sold them out wholesale, you might only get $1.50 a pound.

Well, the difference between that right would be 3 and a half dollars.

And that's something you're trying to earn as a market gardener.

And not you don't have a middleman, so to speak.

And this is this is where it becomes really interesting how this whole market garden concept works.

So on a conventional farm, a mechanic, you know, mechanized farm and industrial farm, they may return to the acre a few hundred dollars per acre, maybe a few thousand dollars per acre if they're growing a high value crop.

But if you're looking at wheat or corn or soy, some of these, some of these large, huge crops, they're getting a few hundred dollars an acre, depending on what their harvest is like, but in a market garden, depending on how efficient you are in variety of different things, and how long your season is and things of this nature.

Here on Wikipedia, they say you can earn from 10 to 15, 000 per acre.

But I know personally, there's people who are earning 50, 000 to $100, 000 per acre, even more, $150, 000 per acre.

Now that's gross, but you see the difference.

Instead of just a few hundred dollars an acre, you're earning tens of thousands of dollars per acre if you can do it efficiently and try not to make too many mistakes along the way.

But that's how you make this viable and make it sustainable if you're wanting to do something as your main livelihood.

So market garden in recent decades has become an alternative business and a lifestyle choice for individuals who wish to return to the land.

That's a kind of a great message for people who maybe are here at Adventist Agriculture Association.

We're thinking like, wow, how can I return to the land?

How can I do something like this more effectively and efficiently and maybe even sustain myself and my family through this?

And the reason why is because it's kind of a niche in a smaller startup investment.

So you're not having to go out and buy you know hundreds of acres or thousands of acres or at least hundreds of acres or thousands of acres, or at least hundreds of acres or thousands of acres.

Many people get started in a market garden, maybe on less than an acre.

I'll show you a little bit about what we did here in just a minute along the way.

But it's a viable market and especially with this whole idea about organic and local food and where your food's coming from, it seems to be becoming even more important to people that we live with in our in our local communities.

All right, so let me introduce you a little bit to our farm.

I'm not going to spend too much time on that because that's not really kind of what we're here for, but I thought you might like to know at least a little bit about it.

So our farm is called Better Together Farm And we're actually located basically halfway between the Dallas Fort Worth area in Texas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

So we're technically located in Oklahoma and just outside of a little town called Dougherty, Oklahoma that sits, you can see what little red balloon there is pretty much where Better Together Farm is located.

Let me just share with you just a real brief history, okay?

So This was actually our farm when it really wasn't our farm, it was really my son's farm, Alan.

We had 3 raised beds, some very rudimentary coverings to protect our plants and things of this nature.

I think Alan would have been, oh my, he was somewhere around 14, 13 years old, somewhere like that when this all started.

This was on a 2 acre piece of property that we had that was very bad property.

We never bought this property with the intention of growing any food on it.

This is when we expanded a little bit on our 2 acre area and we first initially got our first what we call hoop house.

So that little structure there on the left with the, it doesn't have plastic on it yet but we're just putting that up.

So these were our first official kind of protective structures to be able to grow our plants in.

And then this picture here is a couple years old, but this is where our farm is basically today.

We have a fenced in area that's about 3 and a half acres total, but we're growing on just a little less than an acre of that property.

So that kind of gives you a little glimpse of kind of where our farm's at right now.

Okay, so I'd like to know a little bit about who's here today.

Like Who's sitting there in the chair watching me at this point in time.

Alan, are you still with us there somewhere?

I'd like to just find out who is here today at this presentation who's basically, they're just curious about a market garden.

Judy Johnson

Food Safety and the Basics of Post Harvest Handling

Father, I want to thank you so much for another day of life, the gift you've given us, and the wonderful sunshine outside.

I just ask that you'll bless this time together.

Okay, so I'm going to start with, I'm going to kind of go through this.

I've kind of been asked, I didn't realize it, my other presentations have been kind of more interactive.

You can ask questions during it, but I'm not going to this time They've said because of the recording so people can hear me, and it's more consistent if I just go through my my Talk and then we can talk about questions afterwards, okay?

Okay, so and this talking about produce safety, this is for worker health, hygiene and training, soil amendments, produce safety dealing with wild domesticated animals and land use.

Also your water for production water, your water for post harvest water, and your handling and sanitation, and how to develop a farm safety plan for your food.

So understanding produce safety on the farm.

You need to be able to identify types of human pathogens that can contaminate your produce.

You need to understand common ways that produce can be contaminated.

Sometimes we don't think about that all the time.

Understand strategies to use that prevent and reduce the risk of contamination by human contamination.

Understand the value of implementing food safety practices, and understanding the consequences of food safety risks.

And this will start making more sense as we go into it and I'll kind of go into it a little more detail.

So on January 4 of 2011, President Obama signed into law the FSMA Act or the Food Safety modernization act and this was the biggest regulatory step that had made for food safety for quite a long time and through the years of 2011 up to 2020 Growers Had that time to kind of get all these ducks in a row Over that those amount of years and now at this time 2020 is over so they're expecting us to follow these regulations when we're growing and processing and selling our food.

There are some exceptions and I'll get into that in just a minute.

So the areas that this modernization act is covering, there are 7 primary rules.

The first 1 is produce safety rules that include standards for growing, handling, packing, and holding of produce for human consumption, preventative controls for human food, preventative controls for animal food, foreign supplier verification programs, accreditation of third party auditors and certification bodies, sanitary transportation of human and animal food, and prevention of international contamination adulteration.

So these are the areas that this actual food safety program is focused on.

And So for every mandatory federal standard for growing harvesting packaging and holding a fresh produce Some of the growers may be eligible for exemption So that's kind of what I wanted to talk about and maybe all of you might fall into that.

I don't know where you are, but basically if you're $25, 000 or less, then these don't apply to you.

I say that, but you still want to follow food safety.

So whoever is buying your produce will not be getting a foodborne illness.

So other ways that you can be exempt is what commodities you're growing, such as if you grow things that have a kill, like a heat source or something like that, or you've processed it, so at temperatures where the food, you know, the bacteria and the parasites and all that stuff can be killed, then you're exempt from that.

And again, and then your $25, 000 comes into your annual prune sales.

And so those are some of the things that you'll want to take a look at as you're looking into the food safety and if you need to be going by these requirements or not.

And So I kind of already told you about this, 2020 was the last year to kind of get yourself together for this.

So understanding food risks, I'm going to kind of go over what the risks are and how they're caused to start with.

So first a grower must understand where risk comes from.

Contamination comes from microorganisms, the biggest food safety hazards in fresh produce and pathogens that can cause disease or illnesses in humans.

You've got your bacteria and your salmonella and your E.

Coli, listeria, some of the common ones I think you hear about on the news.

There's viruses, the norovirus and hepatitis A, and then you have your various parasites.

So conditions for growth, you have to have food, you need acidity, time, temperature, oxygen and moisture.

When you get some of these combined together, you're making a nice recipe to have food contamination.

So viruses, they're small particles that multiply only in a host and not in the environment or on produce.

Contamination is almost always linked to an ill worker handling fresh produce, whether it's not using good bathroom hygiene or blood they've gotten cut or contaminated water, those kinds of things.

It only takes a few virus particles to make someone ill.

It doesn't take very much and also they multiply extremely fast.

So it can be very stable in an environment and prevention is the key.

Parasites are protozoa or intestinal worms that can only multiply in a host, an animal or a human.

They are commonly transferred by water, often not killed by chemical sanitizers, and they can survive in the body for long periods of time before they can cause signs of illness.

So what are the areas of challenges we have with this?

We have fresh produce is often consumed raw, so that adds a step to the risk because you're not having that kill step of cooking your food.

Bacteria can multiply in produce surfaces and in fruit ones.

Any kind of punctures in the fruit or anything like that is a nice little source for those little bacterias to do their job if the right conditions are present.

So sources would be humans, but there's sources of soil, of animals, water, and then our buildings and our tools.

You know, how clean are our tools that we're using?

Are our pack sheds cleaned before we start?

Are our picking belts or packing belts sanitized and cleaned before we start working with our produce.

It can be spread by humans or it can be spread by animals.

So with humans it can be from inadequate hand washing practices, it can be inadequate toilet facilities, it can be working while sick, it can be with injuries such as getting cut and bleeding.

With animals, it can be fecal contamination in the fields, contamination in your water sources, and so that would be, you know, by their feces or manure and stuff like that that falls off into our crops.

It can be spread through irrigation, spraying crops, your post-harvest cooling, washing, cleaning equipment.

If you have a neighbor that is grazing cattle or some kind of animal and it's you have a flutter it's raining and that water is moving into where you're growing your produce that is a way that water can spread that.

Raw manure applying too close to harvest, unthorough treatment, runoff, wind, improper sanitation procedures.

And again, surfaces, your equipment, tools, buildings, any kind of standing water that in the right conditions with your temperatures can cause contamination.

So with this food safety regulations now, they are wanting us what they call to have a good agricultural practices and they call it GAP.

And you are, they want you to focus your good agricultural practices on soil, on testing and monitoring your water, on your hygiene, your hand washing and your clothing, your surfaces, your packing and transporting of your produce, and they want you to monitor your wild and domestic animals.

So illnesses can cause microbes that are always present in the soil and the soil on your harvest product and your bins.

So it's important that before you're picking your produce into your containers or whatever that those containers have been cleaned And anything that you're in your process from picking to getting it to a pack shed to boxing it, anything like that, that you are cleaning your surfaces.

Land history use, floods, any garbage, was the air you were on, did someone use it for a dump before you bought your property?

Or was someone have it that grazed animals on it.

Those kinds of things are important to understand before you start growing your food.

And then proper manage like I said of storage and application of your soil amendments and your compost.

So you want to make sure that you keep those separate from your product.

Risks should be assessed when selecting and applying all soil amendments on produce fields.

So all manures have human pathogens, and they need to be applied if you have orchards, things you're growing off the ground, that 120 days before you're going to be harvesting that product, you cannot apply any kind of raw manure on your fields.

And then if you're growing your vegetables and things that are lower to the ground, then you cannot apply your manures and raw materials 90 days prior to your picking those products.

This here I wanted to show you is a, and if you're using raw manure, you've got, you need to document everything you do.

We bought some raw manure and you have to have proof that, as you can see here, your EHEC and all those things that can cause trouble are negative.

So you have to be able to present that and document that when you're looking at putting these things on your product.

The 120, what's the difference between the 120 and 90 day?

The 120 is like your orchards, like things that aren't so close to the ground?

Was like your vegetables, those things that are growing closer to the ground.

Okay, I was sort of the understanding that you kind of had to verify your use of things Okay, so that's it so so that that draws the line from that if you can use it after 90 days or before 90 days.

Immian Wolfe

Institutional Agriculture

So if it's a bit fuzzy, we'll get past it quickly.

But agriculture and education is the topic of today.

And I wanted it to be a bit more of a primary.

I know some of you will be participating in or joining a panel discussion on institutional agriculture and this might be considered just a primer for that conversation.

And many of you, I assume, actually I should, I'm just gonna stop sharing so I can see the, you all there.

How many of you are involved in the educational work, by the way?

And how many of you are involved, if not in a career fashion, at least either in church or in your family life involved in education.

This, I think a good place to start in all education is Proverbs 22, verse 6.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it, it says.

And I had somebody tell me that this term, train up a child, is touch the palate.

Touch the palate in the way that when someone grows up in a certain culture with certain ethnic foods associated with that culture.

They eat that, that food, that flavor, that texture, it's crossing their palate all the time.

And when they get older, even into their late teens and 20s, they might go exploring other foods, but in the end, they're always going to have this longing, this hunger for the foods they had that touched their palate when they were young.

And in Korea, I spent a little bit of time there when I was younger.

In Korea, they call this phenomenon rice hunger.

So if you are traveling or you are elsewhere and you've eat a meal, if there is no rice in the meal, even though you've eaten until your belly is distended, you still feel hungry if you haven't eaten rice.

So that's in the sense, what we're talking about when we're saying train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he will not depart from it.

If we touch the palate with the things that we want the children to be having and experiencing and living and thinking and breathing and acting out when they're older, we do that when they're young, they will just return for that naturally, is really what I understand Proverbs to be saying here.

A few years ago, at Fountainview Academy, the board asked me to come and help with their vocational education program, as well in particular, as with their industry program.

They were wanting to expand the ways they earned income from business opportunities, particularly the farm and other ventures.

So I started working with them a couple of years ago and worked with them more on a consulting basis than anything for the last couple of years.

And I've learned some things that I didn't realize about the educational work that are really complicated and honestly, rightfully so, they're complicated.

So I will talk about some of those things.

When I first got there, they, so at Fountainview, they have this, the students work for half the day, or they participate in the vocational training program for half the day.

And then they participate in academic education for half the day.

And in the vocational training, they can go into a number of different departments.

They can participate with the music and the media program, they can participate with campus maintenance, They can participate with the shop, which includes vehicle repairs and heavy duty mechanicing.

There was a fabrication department for a couple of years where students could learn to weld and to do fabrication tasks.

There's also a janitorial custodial department and there's a cafeteria.

So a student can work or participate in training in any of those departments.

And when I first came there, I immediately saw some of this tension.

There was a part of the farm was a greenhouse operation and the greenhouse operation was small, just a couple of covers.

And generally in greenhousing, unless you're looking for a commercial venture, most of us approach it with a multi-crop type view.

So succession cropping and tomatoes and eggplants and lettuce and broccoli and everything, everything we can get in there.

And what I immediately noticed in, and I'll just use the greenhouse as an example, but what I noticed is that the methodology that we were using to produce the crops was not defined yet.

So we were still trying to solve different problems like what soil media should we grow in?

Should we vine the tomatoes or should we use determinants and just put them in a basket?

And a lot of the things that would be resolved and standardized in a commercial greenhouse were not in place.

Back to Menu

Series

Market Gardening

Institutional Agriculture

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

5 Big Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Market Garden

1h 12m

Food Safety and the Basics of Post Harvest Handling

52m

Institutional Agriculture

33m

The New Big is Small: Value-added Product Integration on Your Farm

1h 4m

Farming with Kids

32m

Sound Doctrine