Permaculture Startup Research Grants

I have just been offered a shared land arrangement on the outskirts of Cincinnati on 1/2 an acre. I am eagerly looking forward to starting to prepare the annual vegetable beds and short cycle perennial beds, but I will need some money to get started. On several threads on this forum, users have already mentioned the possibility of getting grants through the USDA but I want to confirm if these grants also apply to farm setup in addition to the money required solely for research projects. I just checked the link to the grant program suggested on another thread by Leigh Tate and it appears that this program would not cover setup costs to get a small farm started.

For research projects, I am currently working on at least two plant breeding projects: one with C. pepo vining yellow crookneck squash and another with several Eastern Agricultural Complex plants. I am also looking to evaluate Lupinus perennis and Vicia americana as potential perennial legume crops that can be developed for agriculture.

Congratulations on your projects, and especially on your new opportunity!  I am grateful for--and cheered by--hearing about them!

I really want people like you to be able to do your projects without having to be granted lots of money by a mysterious entity. Are there ways you could source the materials you need without resorting to as much money as you initially thought you might need?

Personal situation: I have almost no money for gardening, but I want to start up a small market garden in the Spring. I can't afford to buy much soil, and the quality of buyable soil is below my current standards anyway. So one solution has been to prepare raised ROW gardens instead of raised beds: I will need 1/3 less of new soil/material with raised rows than beds. Also, the neighbors have two horses that graze only on their own farm grass/hay, so I have a clean source of manure--as long as I am willing to work. And it's not glamorous, but I have an unlimited source of leaves, as long as I am willing to work and to process them into fertilizer and soil.

This is a long way of saying, what changes can you make to your plan 1) to use less money and 2) to use money less: borrowing, scavenging, trading, recycling? Operating more outside of the cash window, you are more in control of your destiny, rather than waiting for someone, somewhere, somehow, to give you money. We'll never get this time back, so go for your projects with all that you have and can do, now!

Rachel Lindsay wrote:Congratulations on your projects, and especially on your new opportunity!  I am grateful for--and cheered by--hearing about them!

I really want people like you to be able to do your projects without having to be granted lots of money by a mysterious entity. Are there ways you could source the materials you need without resorting to as much money as you initially thought you might need?

Personal situation: I have almost no money for gardening, but I want to start up a small market garden in the Spring. I can't afford to buy much soil, and the quality of buyable soil is below my current standards anyway. So one solution has been to prepare raised ROW gardens instead of raised beds: I will need 1/3 less of new soil/material with raised rows than beds. Also, the neighbors have two horses that graze only on their own farm grass/hay, so I have a clean source of manure--as long as I am willing to work. And it's not glamorous, but I have an unlimited source of leaves, as long as I am willing to work and to process them into fertilizer and soil.

This is a long way of saying, what changes can you make to your plan 1) to use less money and 2) to use money less: borrowing, scavenging, trading, recycling? Operating more outside of the cash window, you are more in control of your destiny, rather than waiting for someone, somewhere, somehow, to give you money. We'll never get this time back, so go for your projects with all that you have and can do, now!

The owner of the property is in contact with his parents who raise cows on a farm north of the property. I am currently contacting his parents right now for information on whether or not the cows are fed an herbicide-free diet. I am also planning on connecting with local farms in the Cincinnati area that raise chickens to see in I can get large quantities of chicken manure.

The city of Cincinnati also has at least two green bin programs so I could also sign up to accept kitchen scraps as long as I'm prepared to compost large volumes at a time. My concern with on-site composting is that I've never composted more than one cubic yard at a time and I intend to start a market garden/farm that is at least 1/10 of an acre in size. I'm not comfortable with building a compost pile larger than a yard wide due to the risk of reducing airflow into the center of the pile regardless whether or not the pile is being turned. This would mean I would be building thirty compost bins on-site which means I still would have to buy at least some of the cover material required for such a large volume of organic material.

Ryan, there are most likely opportunities to get the "cover materials" (assuming you mean "brown" materials such as leaves or wood chips or paper/cardboard) in your area for free. Chip Drop is one service to investigate, but also local arborists/tree services, or the municipality: Department of Public Works, Cemetery Department... all might be sources for free wood chips, likely delivered.
Same goes for leaves, landscapers in urban areas often have to truck away the leaves, and many pay a tipping fee at a composting facility just so they can get back to cleaning up another yard... Figuring out what the situation is in your area, offering a free drop site, or a smaller fee, or some other deal? ie: drop leaves for free in exchange for hauling a few truckloads of manure across town for you? Or maybe they have a Bobcat or tractor that could turn some compost piles now and then? maybe trade some finished compost?
If your city has curbside pickup of yard waste, the bagged leaves this time of year are just there for the taking! You may get some strange looks, or questions, but easy to gather in a pickup or a trailer the days before the collection date. The city next door to me has it and I have picked up hundreds of bags in the past...

I'm more concerned about getting some kind of green house set up immediately than with soil ammending materials. The city of Cincinnati has at least two excellent composting programs where I could volunteer to collect marerial. I don't know how I could possibly find enough homogeneous junk material to build a greenhouse without having to buy at least some extra material and chances are it would take me more than three months to find it. Perhaps I should've mentioned this in my original message.

Keep in mind also that it is the beginning of Winter where I live right now so most of the neighbors in the area have already dumped all of their leaves away. I had only one and a half cubic yards of shredded leaves at the end of Fall since I thought this would be enough leaves for the small plot of land that I was growing at the time (657 square feet). Unfortunately, I was unexpectedly evicted from the yard where I had been growing vegetables less than a month ago so now I have to scramble around to look for a place to grow vegetables

I don't think it would be practical for me to start up a commercial market garden in the middle of Winter without any greenhouse in my climate since Winters here tend to kill almost all unprotected green vegetables except for a few mustard relatives and parsnips. Even then these greens won't grow very much in Winter without supplementary frost protection.

I was inspired by your hard work on this project to post a thread in the crowdfunding forum asking if any Permies members are seeking such funding for their work. Have you considered doing that? If you do start a crowdfunding effort, please post it!

Rachel Lindsay wrote:I was inspired by your hard work on this project to post a thread in the crowdfunding forum asking if any Permies members are seeking such funding for their work. Have you considered doing that? If you do start a crowdfunding effort, please post it!

I would definitely be interested in getting some kind of kickstarter funds if possible for setting up a market garden. The last time I tried to do this, I was inexperienced so I didn't know how best to advertise the fund raiser and I didn't get any donations. I would definitely need help in getting started.

Perhaps the forum owner, Paul Wheaton, has some information on the startup cost and long-term costs for setting up various types of geothermal greenhouses. I have seen clips of his sunken greenhouse design, but I still have some more surveying to do to confirm that I don't have any utility lines that would interfere with the design.

Also just posting two links that may have some resources for individuals starting out, although the bulk of the programs are for transitioning current farmers to more sustainable practices.  Still worth a look if anything rings a bell:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs-initiatives

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs-initiatives/eqip-high-tunnel-initiative

Because getting such a grant as an individual starting out may be difficult, it's possibly worth contacting a local representative to find out what you might be able to do *now* to qualify for the application process.

Edited to add this testimonial as an example of a "new farmer" who was awarded a grant for acquired vacant land:  https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wisconsin/news/production-thrives-under-seasonal-high-tunnel