AdAgrA 2023: Digging Deeper

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Starting a Market Garden

Luke Fisher

Chantee Fisher

Marketing Your Produce

I'll be talking about marketing your produce today.

Was anybody at my small harvest workshop yesterday?

Alright, I found 1 of the videos I was going to show you of radish harvest.

Anyway, I might show that really quickly here if I can find it.

Anyway, you can visualize what I was talking about, about moving radishes in groups.

So I guess the reason I'm showing you this is there's small things you can do to make your work more efficient.

Just think about small improvements in your process that can turn a, you know, a 1 hour job into a 15 minute job.

And it'll make a big difference over your day.

So my few email pictures I didn't get pulled up or found there, but it's okay.

As I mentioned yesterday, we've been market gardening for 14 years together.

And well, let's not entirely together because we've only been married 10 years so I guess I was market gardening 4 years before we got married.

We had our 10th anniversary this last September and and yeah we've really been enjoying the journey.

For you to hear me do I need to use this microphone?

So if you've been in this market gardening track, you've probably been learning something about how to grow, how to harvest, how to kind of get things organized.

But what are you going to do with all of this wonderful produce that you are growing?

If you're into, if you're going to do it for a livelihood, you've got to make some money.

And so today we're going to Talk about our experience and approach in selling produce when I first started out I had some Mentors in the business, and I and I think this is a I think a helpful useful way to start There was 1 of our church elders had started a small market garden operation a couple years before and and he connected me up with some of his produce buyers.

He did a Little small farmers market in the nearby town and he had made some connections with some Local food like a natural food co-op in Tulsa and Had some connections with Whole Foods back and it was a little bit simpler to sell produce to them and And introduced me to a few people that it was helpful to connect with So that's 1 thing I would say is if there's somebody in your region that's already familiar with the landscape, get their advice, have them connect you with people that are buying produce, have them tell you kind of where's the best farmers market, and basically you can get some information from somebody who knows in your local region After that I started attending our Tulsa's our largest metropolitan area and it has a strong farmers market association.

They have a super big, super busy, super financially profitable Saturday market.

If you're a Sabbath keeper then you don't, you know, most farmers markets happen on Saturday.

This farmers market had a midweek Wednesday market as well.

Much smaller, smaller group, less traffic, But I got up to where I could consistently sell, you know, basically I'd like to sell $1, 000 a week.

And we're there from like, what, 7.30 in the morning until 11.

So basically, you know, we're basically there for about 4 hours.

And we like to sell about $1, 000 of produce a week.

But, you know, you, but if it was raining, if whatever, the weather's a little bit inclement, depending on what kind of people walk by, you might only sell a couple of hundred dollars worth, 100 bucks, $200, have a big pile of extra produce.

So, what we started doing, 1 of the kind of flagship markets at that farmer's market stands had a market style CSA in which they pre-sold shares to their farm stand at the farmers market, and they let people come on a first come, first serve basis.

Like basically, they said, OK, we'll pay $200 for the season, and we'll just come pick up produce as we feel like it.

They just packed their farm stand as they would in a regular farmer's market.

But half the people that showed up at farmer's market had already paid to shop at this 1 stand and they like all went there first.

And they always sold out of their produce.

So I did something, ended up doing a slightly modified system and eventually I quit even just going to this farmer's market because it was too much trouble to get up that early in the morning to drive that far.

I did, I set up a farm stand in my local town that after I had a CSA established, I just did my own farmer's market a little bit closer to home.

Oh, This is a separate mic for the cameras.

All right, so I don't think this is on, is it?

So you have to pay attention to your seasons of life, obviously, when you're choosing your marketing scheme.

When it was just Luke and I, we could get up at 4 o'clock in the morning, which is what was required for us to be there to farmer's market on time.

The more children we had, the more difficult, basically impossible that became.

Some people I know with young children do farmer's market, but they bring along a full-time babysitter, which is great if you can afford that.

So as we started to have more little ones, we just started to look at our lives and what we could do and pray about new opportunities to market our produce that did not require such a strain on our families.

So that's why we segued out of going to the organized farmer's market and set up our own farmer's market in our local town.

We also, right around that same time, were contacted, and this is where God can really do marketing for us that we could not generate ourselves.

As we are choosing to embrace this life and give it our best effort, the Lord opens doors.

And we were contacted by the local synagogue in Tulsa.

They had heard somehow that we were Sabbath keepers, Sabbath keeping farmers.

And they had a lot of members of their synagogue who were interested in going to the farmers market, but it was on Saturday or on Wednesday during work hours and they couldn't go, so they were like, are you willing to come and set up a farmers market for our synagogue?

And that was amazing, like a whole population of people that we instantly had a connection with.

And so for many years, we have been setting up every Wednesday afternoon.

Yeah, for a two-hour window of time, we set up our market stand in the parking lot of this very large synagogue.

And we have a lot of CSA members who signed up for the season from the synagogue and we also have community members who come during that two-hour window and pick up their CSA but as Luke was saying you know we set it up like a stand so that there is there's choices that people can make.

We don't we don't quite say okay pay $300 and you can come over we can get whatever you want because you know we might very easily sell out of all the carrots and still have beets left or it just people are kind of fickle.

You just never know exactly what they're going to take.

But we'll have the root veggie pile and say, take 1 bunch from this or 2 bunches from this.

Take the things that everyone wants, the strawberries or whatever.

And later on in the season, we actually set it up.

When we have a lot of the root veggies, the peppers, the tomatoes, we will just let people take 8 pounds of produce.

And we'll set up scales and put out crates.

They're 8 pounds, they love that because then they can get exactly what they want.

You start to learn what your market appreciates and then you grow and pick accordingly.

Anyway, I think I showed that picture yesterday.

But that's basically a typical CSA setup that we have.

You can see that's right in front of the doors of the synagogue.

During COVID era, We had a lot of extra CSA business and this last year a lot of it carried over.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

So we will have people pay up front at the beginning of the season or sometime.

We usually start taking signups in January just for our tax organization purposes start taking payment in January and It basically depending on our delivery location is 25 to 30 dollars a week.

We do a 15 week season From mid-april to end of july taking off a one-week break for us to go to camp meeting is our typical season.

You can do most parts of the United States really if you work you can grow year-round but we've traditionally just done spring summer CSA, fall winter we've left a little more open for flexibility to do mission work, to kind of recuperate, to work on our homestead building project, other things like that.

But CSA is kind of the core basis of our production model and marketing model.

We actually sell at least as much wholesale as we do CSA.

But CSA is our focus because we're in market gardening for community connection, and ministry opportunity, and making friendships with families, and the CSA provides that opportunity.

When you're selling produce, you're not only selling produce.

You can sell convenience, you can sell community and experience.

So, when you're wholesaling, you're selling the produce for the produce's sake.

John Dysinger

Pamela Dysinger

A Bird’s-Eye View of Market Gardening

Okay, I want to welcome each of you here to the first session of the something about market gardening, the market gardening track.

And so, our first presentation here is just kind of, some of you may not even really understand the term market gardening, and so we're going to try to define that term and, and really focus on why we think you should be doing this.

We're here, We're giving a sales pitch for market gardening here this morning.

Yeah, and for those who don't know us, we farm in Middle Tennessee, outside of Nashville, about an hour.

We came out of teaching and the Lord called us to agriculture for our own good and for the good of our family.

And we have 5 children, blessed to have 4 of them here.

And 2, 2 of our sons are farming full-time with us.

Our farm runs 10 months of the year, so John and I and both of our sons work in the summer, but we lead out in the summer production, and then Joshua and Kelly, his wife, lead out in the winter.

So our farm right now is still in full production and will be till the middle, towards the end of February.

Then we take a short break, we start back in, in April.

So, largely we have a CSA and a farmers market is our main avenues.

And before we get into it any more, I'd like to have a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the privilege of being here, the privilege of learning, and Lord, I just pray that this time will be well spent, that at the end of this hour, people will feel like they have learned and grown and been challenged and I just pray that you would guide Pam and I in what we should say and what we shouldn't say.

And we thank you for doing this in Jesus' name.

So, just before we get started, hold your questions.

I mean, we have a lot of information that we're going to be trying to cover.

And so we don't want to stop the flow, but we also want to, we'll try to leave some time at the end to answer questions.

So just jot your questions down as we go through our presentation and we'll hopefully address them at the end.

Okay, so we'll start with what is a market garden?

And it's not like there's a dictionary definition of what market gardening is.

But I think it's fair to say that it's less than 3 acres of cultivated land and actually 3 acres is way on the upper end.

Most market gardens are an acre and a half or less.

The second thing is it's characterized by intensive beds.

So you're getting multiple high-value crops a year.

You're wanting to try to get as much of the year as you can in production just to level out the cash flow, but also Recognizing that a farmer does need a period of dormancy as well.

If you're going full on year round, you'll burn out pretty quickly.

Those of you who have read our testimony know we've learned this the hard way.

You don't want to put all your eggs in 1 basket.

You want to really, and I'll just throw in this for this year.

Last year, strawberries did amazing for us.

We had a really, really good strawberry crop.

But just in December while we were out visiting our son in Washington, the deer waltzed through the gate of our newly erected electric fence and ate our whole crop of strawberries for this year.

And there was a time when that would have just been like devastating to us.

I mean it's going to hurt us, but it's not devastating.

So you don't want all your eggs in 1 basket.

And our strawberries will grow something.

So you know if they eat the leaves, it really compromises what's left of the plant.

So anyway, don't put all your eggs in 1 basket.

We're not in any way trying to to downplay or Anything you know big farms But we recognize that for for the vast majority of people that's not even an option With the price of land now and the price of equipment, it's just out of the question.

So we love this model because it's attainable.

If you've been blessed with a lot of land and you have tractors and equipment, go for it.

We need There's some crops that don't work well on a market gardening scale, specifically your grains and beans, you need a combine in order to harvest efficiently and that just doesn't happen on an apron.

You couldn't even turn around a combine on an apron.

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

And I just want to, have any of you seen this book, Councils on Agriculture?

If you haven't, it will be available here at the conference in the booth area, and I know It seems a little self-serving since I compiled it, but I can promote it because it's not my words, right?

So the third chapter here is a call for Christian farmers, and I would just really, really encourage you all to read this chapter, because there is an incredible need in Adventism.

I mentioned last night for farmers, for educated farmers who know what they're doing.

I I Make a statement and I stick to it that small-scale Agriculture is the world's best hope for the future And now notice I said the world's best hope, because we know that there's a better hope outside of this world.

But as far as the world goes, small scale agriculture is the answer to our problems.

You know, our social problems, our emotional problems, our physical problems, our spiritual problems even.

Our spiritual problems even so we're pretty passionate about this that This kind of agriculture is so holistic and so Well, it's the answer So we are very passionate about it and and here's some why's and excuse my lack of finishing this slide.

This is 1 we were adding in and I got distracted and went to bed last night.

So you know, 1 of the whys is for us was definitely families working together.

When our kids were young, I mean, they were a part of our team.

You know, too many children today don't feel apart.

They feel like they feel isolated or they feel like they're in the way.

And parents feel they're in the way and they're unneeded.

But let me tell you, from the time our kids could stand on a chair and sift peat moss, that was their job.

So, you know, there's always work for everyone to do.

But hey, That's a better way to air, Mrs.

There is so much evangelism that can be done through agriculture.

I really, really appreciated the message this morning.

Could have just stood on my seat and said, yes.

People have no idea that evangelistic opportunities through agriculture.

But I confess that we have been that person, oh, I just don't want to, I'm afraid to hurt that relationship, so I don't want to bring the light at the wrong time.

But we have customers that have been with us for 20 years.

You know, so this is 1 of our interns from this last year.

You meet that smiling face at the market and they are kind and intentionally thoughtful.

You know, we try to train our people and encourage them.

We, well, I can't get into the marketing side you can come to my marketing class But I forget I'll just go off on that.

That's not what we should be going There's 1 more thing on this family's working together.

Ricky Seiler

5 Ways to Design Your Market Garden for Success

All righty, so I just wanted to give you a little bit of, not yet, it's on.

So I just wanted to share with you the little brief journey of kind of how all this has panned out.

We actually live in South Central Oklahoma.

If you are, you can make it in 3 and a half hours.

Yesterday we made it in about 5 hours and 15 minutes.

Anyway, that was a whole other experience.

The kid with that big cucumber or whatever over his head is standing right here.

His sister is actually there in the back of the room.

This was our experience with moving to the country and starting to grow vegetables.

But the thought is that our idea of gardening was basically putting in a few raised beds and killing produce.

That was kind of how, that's kind of was our idea of gardening.

But anyway, It was quite a little journey.

Alan, we were visiting my mom in Keene, Texas.

And there's a Black and Decker gardening book in her garage.

And he's going like, dad, look how pretty these pictures are of this produce.

Why does our produce never look like this?

I think the standard answer was, we live in Oklahoma, and you can't grow stuff like that in Oklahoma.

And so you can see the boxes are still there, right?

Those were those earlier from several years ago that laid dormant for several seasons.

But this was kind of his first little take at getting started.

This was when he was about I think about 13, 14 years old.

Okay, so this is actually we moved from that location and we moved to this new place in 2018.

And so this is a few years ago of what our market garden looked like, in essence, the first year we got started there.

Now, the journeys that you didn't see was every year on that other piece of land that we had, the garden would grow a little bit and it would grow a little bit more.

Yeah, and it would grow a little bit more and a little bit more and over time after growing there for, That was 2009, remember?

So that was a nine-year journey from that little garden you saw there to this in 2018.

So we're going to talk about, as we made this move and transition into this idea of market gardening, what, looking back on it, what are some things that we felt like were really critical keys to be able to go from there to something like this.

Okay, so hopefully you're in the right class.

Alan, you want to add anything before we go?

They're originally from Columbia, South America, and they have an amazing story about their whole lives and coming to the States and all those types of things.

There I am over on the right, my wife Vivian.

Our daughter here on the left is Aubrey, and Alan's wife of about a year and 3 or 4 months who's in the back here, Skylar.

You'll see her more, the little dog there.

And you'll see how important farm dogs are here in just a second, okay.

I wanted to share with you a quick quote and then we'll move right along.

I'll just read it, you can kind of follow along.

Farmers should not think that agriculture is a business that is not elevated enough for their sons, and I could even say daughters.

Agriculture should be advanced by scientific knowledge.

People say that the soil does not pay for the labor expended upon it and they bemoan the hard fate of those who till the soil.

In this country, where she wrote this at the time, Australia, many have given up the idea that the land will pay for working it and thousands of acres lie unimproved.

But should persons of proper ability take hold of this line of employment and make a study of the soil and learn how to plant, to cultivate, and to gather in the harvest, more encouraging results might be seen.

Many say, we have tried agriculture and know what its results are, and yet these very ones need to know how to cultivate the soil and to bring science into their work.

And that was actually from Signs of the Time, August 13, 1896.

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Series

Starting a Market Garden

5 Ways to Design Your Market Garden for Success

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Parts

Marketing Your Produce

1h 1m

A Bird’s-Eye View of Market Gardening

1h 3m

5 Ways to Design Your Market Garden for Success

1h 14m

Growing Better, Not Bigger

1h 6m

Tips and Techniques for Farmer’s Market

1h 4m

The Perpetual Harvest Hack

1h

Can You Grow Lettuce, Kale, Thin-Skinned Cucumbers and Other Cooler Loving Veggies in the South during the Heat of the Summer?

52m

How to Manage Nitrogen, In Just 15 minutes, with an On-Farm Test

58m

Growing Healthy Transplants for Efficiency and Profitability

1h 2m

Harvest Management

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine