AdAgrA Conference 2024: Growing Better

Homesteading Track

Jared Thurmon

Annette Thurmon

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Three Keys to Successful Homesteading

Well, I'll introduce and then you can take it away, okay?

Annette, unfortunately, couldn't be here in person, but she is on the screen, so close enough.

She's gonna be sharing with you some things we've learned along the way of successful homesteading that have been fruitful for us.

And we hope that you'll be able to learn something, whether you're just starting or you've been doing it a while.

And then after she's done sharing, we're going to try and take a few minutes to do some Q&A.

So if you have any questions, Annette has all the answers.

We'll try and coordinate between us if that's a better question for her or if maybe something I can help on, but glad you're here and Annette, take it away.

I'm so excited to be able to share this morning.

I wish I could have been there in person, but in the end, I feel like it was actually a good thing.

We had really cold weather and some pipes burst and a lot of farm things to attend to.

And so it ended up being good that I was here, but it's nice to have technology and I can still talk to you this way.

So Hopefully we can chat and then do some questions like Jared said.

I'll start with this thought about homesteading and how to do it successfully.

The first thing that comes to mind, And it's something that now that we've kind of been doing this homestead life for almost maybe 8 years.

I think 1 of the biggest issues that arises is when you think, I have to do it all.

I have to have hundreds of acres, all this land, all these animals do everything, and it can be really overwhelming and you really don't.

I think really homesteading can start with a mindset, just the goal to do something different and live a life more aligned with what God called us to do, being out in nature, getting our hands in the soil, caring for animals, all those things.

So I just wanna encourage you, if you are currently homesteading or thinking about homesteading or just making a change in your life.

But I'm going to go through 3 specific steps that I feel have helped us be more successful and maybe less stressed when trying to homestead.

So if you have something to write down, I would write this down.

So what I mean by that is, you know, do figure out why it is you want to homestead in the first place.

Are you wanting to grow more of your own food because you want to reap those benefits and nutrients from homegrown food?

Are you trying to be more self-sustaining?

Are you trying to learn how to live off grid?

Are you wanting to just be back in nature?

I mean, there's like a lot of different ways and reasons.

And I think sometimes if you don't have a defined why as to why you're gonna do it, you can kind of get caught up and lost in all of it.

I feel like for us, when we first started thinking about, you know, kind of changing our lifestyle a little bit, there was a quote from the book, Education, that really kind of resonated with us and we thought to be interesting.

And it was something that we were currently not doing.

I think it's page 43, but it says the occupation most favorable to the development of character is the caring of plants and animals.

So At the time in our life, we weren't caring for plants really and or animals.

We had our house cats, but that probably doesn't count.

So we decided that we needed to do something different.

And so defining our why and really helped us kind of streamline our process and go from there.

You know, if it's you just get a piece of paper, why do I want to change my life?

If you have, you know, a family, sit down with your family and come up with a family reason as to why you want to do this.

Have it be something you can easily go to and that will really help you as you go along.

So once you know your why, you're going to now sit down and dream big.

So let's say your why is that you want to garden more, get your hands in the soil, grow and preserve more of your own food.

So as you sit down to dream big, let's say you don't have a garden at all, and you're thinking of where to start.

Where on my land or property or backyard do I want to put a garden?

Where does the sun shine most so that a garden can ideally be placed there?

You kind of have to dream big and think of like as many scenarios as possible.

Are you going to think about like every single detail?

But if you sit down and dream big, it'll really help you.

There's a expression that I think, you know, makes sense.

And it says, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

And so if you don't plan, it's probably not gonna result in the best, you know, result for you.

So for example, I'll give you an example on us.

Jared and I joke about this all the time.

We put in our garden, we did all these things, but we didn't ever really think about putting in water lines to be able to more easily water the garden and help the animals with water.

Because at the time when we originally planned out the garden and did everything, we didn't have a budget to put in water lines.

So we just were like, well, we'll just have a hose from the house or whatever.

Well, we kind of wish we would have planned because after the fact when we said okay we're now able to put in water lines it was a hot mess because we were having to be really careful because electrical lines were already there we didn't remember where their electric lines were We didn't want to accidentally cut those to put in water.

And it ended up being a lot more difficult where to this day, when we've had to do some projects at the barn and do some things, Jared's always like, don't cut the lines, don't touch the electrical lines.

And planning a little better originally would have helped us avoid any stress.

And I think this number 2 point of dreaming big and writing it down is the best advice I can give you so that you can save money and not make costly financial mistakes because of not thinking it through.

For example, if you move to a property and you know you want to have animals and you say like, oh, I'm going to have, you know, I want to have all the animals.

Well, if you haven't researched, maybe you don't know, for example, in your climate, your landscape, do you have more woods?

And you might get an animal that's not suited at all for your property and where you're living, and then you'll realize that later and have issues with their health and different things.

So, you know, do some research, talk to locals in your area, read books on the subject matter.

That's your main why for homesteading, read books on that thing that's most important to you so that you are well-informed and don't make costly mistakes.

Number 3, this is probably my favorite 1 and the 1 I think is most useful.

And it is this, slow down and start small.

So write these 3 things down so you can refer them to later.

When we first moved out here, we did not do that.

I think we all have the tendency to not do that because you get so excited.

I, you know, I'm going to start this lifestyle.

Market Gardening Track

Joshua Dysinger

The Cold Hard Truth About Winter CSA

Okay, we are going to jump into this so that we have the most time to cover the winter CSA topic, which really is more than an hour worth of.

So, what we're going to do is I'm going to do kind of a brief on CSAs in general, different ways to run a CSA.

If you have questions on CSA, we'll do that after I do those slides and then we'll go over to more winter growing And kind of split it up like that So if you're not familiar with a CSA There's more room over here if I'm in the way over here.

It stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

So, the idea of a CSA is that there's a commitment on both ends.

So the customer is committed to buying the produce and the farmer is committed to providing the produce.

So generally a CSA The customer is paying at the beginning of the season a lot of times for the whole year which can be beneficial to the farmer because a lot of your upfront cost is Before you're making any money Seed orders can be expensive and just beginning your season has some expense.

So that can be a benefit to the farmer and then you've got the commitment from the customer for the season.

We run our CSAs, we have 2 seasons in the year, each of them are 5 months, and then we have 2 months without a CSA.

So You can change that however fits with your farm.

I know a lot of people will do just like 3 months in the spring or however.

It's not, there's not a set amount of time that it has to be, but that's the idea.

In the winter this is kind of essentially just winter growing in general but there's less competition.

Now a lot of times you might not even have the option of going to a farmer's market in the winter.

There's some winter farmer's markets around us, but I don't think I would want to be there.

They're even outdoor winter farmers markets So sometimes you can find good winter farmers markets, but a lot of times if you're growing in the winter CSA is going to be your best means for selling your produce if you're selling direct to consumer The winter also comes with a lower weed pressure and pest pressure.

There are certain pests that we have more issue with in the winter, but aphids being 1 of them, but in general there's less There's less weed pressure and pest pressure.

The weed pressure that we have is like chickweed Mainly chickweed some other ones, but chickweed is like a ground cover weed and So even if it gets a little bit out of hand It's like growing out like this and you pull up 1 little plant and it's like this big section that comes out So they don't It doesn't engulf your plants even if you don't stay like perfectly on top of your your weeds.

So that that is a benefit It overall takes less manpower in the summer it's it's a little bit hard to judge our manpower because we do internship which takes away some time, especially my dad will spend a couple hours doing some classes and then obviously you can't count every intern that's working on the farm as like a full manpower from the beginning when they're learning and stuff like that.

So I would say in general like 4, 4 to 5 people full-time is what I would say like we run our farm and then in the winter it's like 2 and a half to 3 people full-time.

Now we're not growing quite as much in the winter, but overall stuff's just everything's slower So you have more time to keep on top of it.

Cons of winter CSA There's not a lot of room for error in the winter.

We'll get into this later when we talk about actual winter growing but if you if a crop doesn't grow well, you can't just like replant it and get it again.

Like you kind of have a pretty narrow window of making sure certain crops are quicker even in the winter, but a lot of stuff end of the summer you're planting it and if by September you realize like my broccoli died you can't replant it and then you know get it again.

Whereas in the summer stuff grows so fast and you know a lot of times in the spring if something Goes wrong you plant it a week later your Time of maturity is like almost the same so That's 1 less daylight hours for work can be a pro and a con You know in the summer We'll end up sometimes working till 9 because we can and it's still light and we need it to work So we get it done, but in the winter you know at our place Sun goes down it gets as early as like 4.30, and we work until 6.

So you kind of have to schedule out, like we spend the afternoon harvesting, put everything in our pack shed, and then pack after sundown or stuff like that.

But overall, there's just less daylight hours to work.

And then a lot of times you'll spend a decent amount of time keeping, protecting stuff from the cold.

So this time of year Sometimes we start work after lunch and we only have like an hour to harvest stuff before we have to put the covers on at 330 so that you know that hopefully stays protected through the Through the night so CSA options, there's there's a few different ways to structure your CSA.

So, the standard CSA model is customer pays up front.

You're getting, you can either choose to get your box every week or every other week, and we're doing it for 4 months.

So, if you're getting every week that you're paying this much, if you're getting every other week you pay this much, they pay it up front, they just show up and they get their box and they don't have a choice of what they get.

That's how we started, That's how we did our CSA for, I don't know, 12 years or something like that.

And there's people out there that actually enjoy that.

Like they enjoy the idea of just like, oh, if I get something random, like I learn how to cook that and prepare it and whatever but we found that there's only a certain amount of people out there that are excited about that idea.

So we've moved away from that, but it is a simple system.

The 1 like little bit of a disadvantage of that is if you say you have a 30-member CSA, you pack all the boxes the exact same.

Well, you know, last week you harvested half of your bed of radishes for getting 30 bunches and this week you only got like 22 bunches of radishes, you know, then you kind of, if you're selling everything in the quantity of how many CSA boxes you have, it's a little bit harder to use up like the little fragments and you know we always talk about growing you know exactly what you need and and all that which is is great and like always what you strive for but you also have to put in some room for error and stuff like that.

And so, you know, a lot of times you end up with like a little bit extra of different stuff.

So that's 1 disadvantage of just like the standard CSA.

The, another method is like a market style CSA.

So what you would do with this is you would harvest, you kind of have to calculate what the amount of produce that you need, and then at your CSA drop off, you would set up a little bit of a market style thing.

You would have, you could put stuff kind of in categories of like bunch cooking greens.

So you might have like collards and kale and chard and then like root crops, carrots, radishes, turnips, maybe, you know, depending on the season, you might have some fruit, different stuff like that.

And then you would kind of tell people like, hey, you can get 2 items from this section and 2 items from this section.

And so they have a little bit of choice, but you also regulate it a little bit so that you don't have 1 person that just comes and takes like 35 dollars worth of strawberries and then no 1 else gets you know, so you have a little bit of a regulation but you can You know you can you can mix stuff and you don't have to have the full amount of 1 item.

And then the last option is a customizable CSA.

The customers can choose Obviously based on what we have available So at the beginning of the week we list up like all the produce that have available and it actually will automatically Build everybody a box When they sign up for our CSA they can shoot, they can kind of rate like all the produce that we grow like 1 to 5 stars and it will generate them a box ideally with the produce that they like the best.

And then they'll get an email like this is what's in your box and then this is everything extra that we have and they can swap stuff out and change it and stuff like that.

So, we use a system called Harvey, Harvey Farms.

And I was trying to ask a few people maybe some other, if anybody knew any other options.

The downside of Harvey Farms is that it's built for large CSAs.

We are a small CSA on Harvey Farms side of things and we have I don't even know because it's hard to know like exactly how many customers because it's split up on different weeks and stuff like that, but roughly like around 150 maybe.

And I'm not actually sure that we could have just gone and signed up with them.

We were using a software previously that they, the same company started a new software and everybody rolled over to that.

And I think we probably, you know, that like 150, maybe even 100 member, they would accept that.

So I'm just not sure of, I was trying to ask Aubrey if the local line had options for CSA.

I just didn't have the time to research it all.

I didn't, I talked to a few people and didn't figure something out.

So I think that that's, okay, that's what I have on CSA.

So I'll take some time right now since we're going to jump to actual production if anybody has any comments or questions on the CSA side of it.

Yeah, I'm not, I wish that I had a better answer for that.

I mean, like what Silers are doing, there might be a kind of a way of just like it's not like super strict but your customers that you have, you're kind of saying like they're kind of committed to buying at least like $25 a week or something like that.

Like essentially our system and their system is pretty much the same except our customers are paying $38 and if they don't choose to fill up their box to $38, they're still paying it.

And the reality is Harvey's system does not have the same commitment of a normal CSA.

If people are paying weekly, they can put their box on hold and it goes in archive essentially.

And if during the rest of the season, if they want like a box at a different time or double it up they can reschedule that box but if they don't reschedule it they never paid for it and they don't have to get it.

We don't promote that but we have people you know they're hey I'm going on vacation what do I do and you know We'll just tell them like reschedule it if you can.

If you don't have time to reschedule it, put it on hold.

So there's not the same commitment with that system, but it's still there somewhat.

Yeah, you can The you know 1 huge benefit of this is the the amount of stuff that it keeps track of for us so we can print off like our our produce list that we put in there, like this is what we grow, and then we could see like the average rating of you know tomatoes versus okra or whatever fennel or you know things that might be a little bit more niche.

But we don't use that probably as much as we should.

We kind of just know like what people want, but it's definitely a benefit of the program.

Yeah, yeah, I mean both, both Square and Harvey, we are able to look at obviously the past year what sold and then with Harvey we can look at what people are wanting.

So yeah, I mean we could do a whole class just on CSAs.

So I'm happy to answer questions on this.

I would say for us the most effective way of growing our CSA is through our farmers market and personally I don't necessarily feel like CSA is the best way to like start a farm It's a little bit higher commitment and There's more marketing that goes into it If you find a good good farmers market something that can you know?

You can get your feet wet and grow for a year or 2.

If you build a good customer base of that farmers market and they, you know, like your produce, they see, hey, this looks, you know, better than the stand over here, ideally.

Then the farmers market ends in October and they're like, oh no, where do we get?

Special Interests

Kenny Point

Raising Ginger and Turmeric for Home or Market

Just as an introduction, my name is Kenny Point.

I currently live in West Virginia, and I do market gardening, farming there.

If you can walk into a Walmart or a grocery store and find it on the produce section, I'm gonna grow something different.

You know, I'm not gonna grow green beans, I'm gonna grow purple beans.

I grow things like ginger and turmeric, which we're gonna be talking about today.

And just, there's just so much out there that God makes available to us and a lot of people don't even imagine the extent of what's there, what we can do, what we can use.

And that's something that I just enjoy sharing what I'm doing, what I've done, and help people to get a feeling and realize that there's so much out there that they don't even realize.

A lot of people think, oh, ginger is tropical.

It's snow on the ground right now, but I'm able to grow ginger and turmeric, you know, during the summer, during the growing season.

And it's been something I've been growing for a while.

I'll talk about that when I get into the presentation, but Let's start with a word of prayer.

You're a great God, and you're good to us.

We thank you, and we appreciate everything that you do, that you have allowed us to come here to be part of this conference, and to meet the people, to fellowship and network with others.

And be with us this afternoon during this presentation.

Please help us to understand, help me to share the information and the things that you have given me that I can provide and offer to others.

Please bless us in the name of your son, Jesus Christ.

And just make sure my slides are up there.

So as I mentioned, today we're going to look at growing ginger and turmeric and this is something is it's not the easiest crop but you can do you can grow it and some people worry about oh I don't have the climate the temperature you can so we're going to we're going to look at this today.

And here's the outline for the presentation.

We're going to look at the types of ginger and turmeric that you can grow and the sources where you can locate, where you can get this from.

We're going to cover how you would start the seed, what you can do to pot it up, or how you would pot it up when, and then how to transplant it to where you're gonna be growing it.

We're gonna cover just the general basic care and growing requirements, the harvesting process and timing.

Some things that are, I had some misconceptions myself related to things like overwintering and seed saving for ginger and turmeric.

Initially, you know, I was just taught, oh, you can't do it, it's not possible.

I found otherwise, so I'm going to talk about that.

We're going to look at there are some differences with turmeric compared to ginger.

So I'm going to discuss that and share with you some of the surprises that I've, you know, learned about ginger and turmeric in the time that I've been growing it.

And we'll have some time at the end for questions and answers.

So please save your questions until we're done.

My first real experience with growing Ginger was probably about, because when I was doing this presentation, I stopped and thought, well, when did I first start growing ginger?

And at first I thought, oh, has it been 20, it just seems like it's been so long.

But I actually looked back and I was able to see, oh, it was around 20, It's been about like 12 years ago that I first started growing ginger.

And it's been like a huge learning process for me.

Because part of the problem with ginger and turmeric, a lot of things you can go out there, you can get a book on growing garlic or growing kale and sweet potatoes, but there's not a whole lot of information out there on growing ginger.

And even then, at that time, you couldn't even go on YouTube and find anything about ginger and turmeric.

So it's just something that is a little more difficult.

It's easier now, but it's just not as easy as a lot of things.

If you wanted to grow, you can just go out and find good information and follow it.

For me, it took a lot of dirt time, a lot of getting out there and trying things, growing it, experimenting, and just learning from it.

I first grew ginger and turmeric when I lived in Pennsylvania.

And since then, I moved to West Virginia.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Three Keys to Successful Homesteading

48m

The Cold Hard Truth About Winter CSA

54m

Raising Ginger and Turmeric for Home or Market

1h 2m

A Law of Love

49m

Healing Rest

1h 1m

Beginning with Animals on the Homestead

57m

3 Keys to Juggling Your Market Garden Like a Pro

1h 7m

Cultivating Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

1h 10m

Daniel 8

59m

The Source of Healing Part 2

54m

The Connection Between Creativity and Mental Health

29m

Cultivating Country Cash: Crafting a Thriving Rural Livelihood

59m

Sound Doctrine