Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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do okay. There is a lot of hand labor involved. It is one of those crops that is
like a stepchild. We have put multiple plantings in very small scale. Do we
always watch them as well as we should? Do we always keep them as weeded
as we should? Are we hitting the water just right? Are we that efficient with
harvesting compared to someone on a larger scale?”He is almost apologetic
that he cannot be as efficient as other farms. But he concedes, “Certainly
we can make it work locally because it is another item to add to the list of
things we offer.
“We are doing bunch carrots, which is different in this day and age, when
carrots are so efficiently grown by the regular seller carrots. We are doing a
specialty variety carrot. We bunch it. I bet we will end up doing four or five
acres this year. But that is maybe one-third of an acre being planted every
two weeks for three-fourths of the year. So we have carrots nine months
of the year. That is one we really need to work on. We need some time to
figure out if we are doing this as efficiently as we should be or if we are just
spinning our wheels. We are doing a little bit of parsnips, probably less than
an acre a year. We are doing less than an acre of rutabagas. We are probably
doing an acre of leeks, and that is one, every now and then, even something
you do on a small scale, it is surprising how efficiently and howwell received
it is from our buyers. It seems like we can do a good job on leeks. Whatever
we are doing on it. We haven't grown them that long. It's not like we are
experienced growing them. It is either the right area or we just happen to
do the things right, we can manage it fairly easily. So leeks are one, even on
a very small scale, there is a pretty high profit margin. And it is a nice one
to have in our rotation. Fennel is another one. We probably do two acres of
fennel a year and have it over a lot of the season. Even when the prices are
low on fennel, we can still make a little bit of money because we have such a
high pack out per acre. Some things I grow because I like eating them, and
some I have no idea why I grow because I have no desire to eat them. Fennel
is one of those crops.”
He thinks a bit and continues. “We have chard. That is one we just started
up doing, and it looks like another one of those crops on a small scale we
can make it work fairly well. It is something we do in the winter. I would
say we might be running an acre of chard this year, maybe more. We are
probably going to try some at other times of the year. Some of the things
we do are dictated by pest control. We do sweet corn; we probably do about
twelve to fourteen acres a year. Most of that is going wholesale, and it is
going wholesale for the month of July. We try to hit the Fourth of July. We
do eight hundred boxes a week wholesale for five weeks. The reason we do
that five-week period is because historically that is an in-between period
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