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mark_brown_gw

Changes and new ideas

mark_brown
18 years ago

Ok 7 days and not a post. everyone a little burned out!?!?

Time to turn thoughts to next year and what to do different and new. I grow tomatoes and cukes in hoophouse and sell to retailers who sell to their customers. basicly I get 2/3 and they get1/3 and it has worked well. sold everything we grew and could have sold more so building a new hoop house. have a lot of requests for smap peas so will try some but mainly increasing production and will sell at the farmers market/

Comments (4)

  • wjy520
    18 years ago

    I'm glad some one is out there. I was just wondering if all the other market gardners had left for parts unknown.

    We had a good year! I'm planning on putting up a hoop house made of 1 1/2 inch plastic pipe. I need more room after the middle of April. Has anyone tried one of these. I'm also using orange plastic snow fence for trellis. I'm not to sure how many years I can use it, as there were a number of breaks in it when I took it down. We do a good business with snow and snap peas.

  • ohiorganic
    18 years ago

    Bought a new farm this fall so we will be doing a lot of things differently because we finally own land and do not rent!

    we bought within 10 miles of the old place so our customer base will not change, except for expansion.

    the new farm has a store frons, 2 acres of nice flat land that has been in pasture for at least 30 years and than another 5 acres of south facing slope that is eroded where the fruit trees, grape arbor and perhaps brambles will be planted in the next 12 months.

    we already have 3 hoophouse but none are up yet (but should be by december) we plant to put onions seedlings into part of one hoophouse and have the rrest ready for early spring plantings.We plan on building a greenhouse (heated, not moveable) ASAP (but ASAP with a new farm with old buildigs is not all that quick).

    this season we grew around 100 different items and next year we will be without asparagus, raspberries, apples and pears as we have few perenials and the fruit trees here are in dismal shape so cannot depend on getting a crop from them and we are missing brambles altogether.

    We did a CSA and 2 farmers' markets this year and plan on doing those again plus we will have a farm store on a busy federal 2 lane highway that will be open probably 6 days a week. if all goes as expected we should double our gross income in 2006.

  • hmeadq
    18 years ago

    Next year we will move from 5 acre (total land) we own to 35 acres (tillable area) on a 60 year lease in a National Park.

    23 acres of the land has been let to grow up a bit, so that will take a few years of clearing and cover cropping to get up to where it will be good, but it's well drained high land with some good south slope and a lot of good almost flat places.

    12 acres is hay feild so that's where we'll start.

    Moving by or in Janurary. Hoop house up in March. And it will be a slow year, just tring to maintain our current CSA customers and getting ready for big growth in 2007.

    We will buy a water wheel this year to go with the hiller and plastic mulch layer we got last year. Wow, will that make things better. 200-300 berry bushes, 50 or so orchard trees, and the beginning of our aspergus patch will all go in.

    It's going to be BIG changes... but our goal of a 200 member CSA by 2015 requires big thinking...

  • stan_gardener
    18 years ago

    i just moved from minus 3' elevation to 3000' elev. no more flat land all wooded slopes. i also became a beekeeper in 2005.

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