Barrett Johanneson

I'm on the verge of my first sales season (farmer's market and CSA), hopefully possible by conjoining a CSA box pick-up while I am staffing a farmer's market booth. KISS (keep it simple, stupid) as a guiding principle in lieu of Mark Shepard's STUN (sheer total utter neglect). I have plenty of printed resources, research and education in CSA's to make a valid stab at a first year (10-20 subscribers), but I really need more financial info about the nuts and bolts of farmer's market revenue.

Yet no matter how many times I go back and look for data on any individual farmer's sales, I come up blank. Searching for "farmers market sales statistics" yields a plethora of useless charts on the proliferation of farmer's markets in the U.S. (Spoiler: Each year, there are more farmer's markets.)

However, one intrepid farmer posted sales figures, by vegetable, for two increasingly outdated seasons -- 2007 and 2008 -- although we have limited market data beyond what's in the link.

Baker City, OR (USDA zone 5a) (I'm in Wisconsin, zone 4a)
http://www.growgreatvegetables.com/whattogrow/bestsellers/
http://godtricity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/best_sellers.jpg

I'm drawing up a potential budget and farm plan, part of which really want to hear from experienced farmer's willing to give a peak at the books. What's your daily break-even? Which categories sustain your booth year-to-year -- roots? salad mix? heirloom tomatoes? And especially this: Farmers selling at markets, what did your sales numbers look like in your first year, and how far off / spot on were they to your projections? I would also encourage anecdotes about wild risks and experiments that took off.

What boomed and what's doomed?

Hi Mark -- I had actually heard of you about four years ago around the time I found this site, permaculture, and my interest for farming. I knew I wanted to settle in western Wisconsin, and so I researched what other permies were doing out there, and that's how I found out about your outfit there in Viola. I'm really interested in learning more about your permaculture experiences here in Wisconsin. Great to have you here on Permies tonight.

Fortunately, I just found my land and I'm starting out on a farm about the size of yours (with virtually no improvements), and the biggest question I have right now is: What do I need to know about getting the most out of land that has a mostly northern aspect (generally north-facing)? My long-term goal is to develop a diversified and somewhat nut-and-fruit tree based permaculture operation over my lifetime. Background about the land includes that it is sandy loam, zone 4, rolling hills (one high point 150ft. and other rises measuring around 75ft.), with a mostly north-south rectangular orientation. It is now and will be operated as a grass-fed beef and hay operation for the next few years. Any pitfalls, tips, or encouragements you'd like to share as I plan and hopefully earn a PDC this spring, I'd appreciate it.

I think you just hit Post Reply down in the lower right corner. I hope others weigh in, otherwise I may be asking you a several questions!

I had actually heard of you about four years ago around the time I found this site, permaculture, and my interest for farming. I knew I wanted to settle in western Wisconsin, and so I researched what other permies were doing out there, and that's how I found out about your outfit there in Viola. I'm really interested in learning more about your permaculture experiences here in Wisconsin. Great to have you here on Permies tonight.

Fortunately, I just found my land and I'm starting out on a farm about the size of yours (with virtually no improvements), and the biggest question I have right now is: What do I need to know about getting the most out of land that has a mostly northern aspect? My long-term goal is to develop a diversified and somewhat nut-and-fruit tree based permaculture operation over my lifetime. Background about the land includes that it is sandy loam, zone 4, rolling hills (one high point 150ft. and other rises measuring around 75ft.), with a mostly north-south rectangular orientation. It is now and will be operated as a grass-fed beef and hay operation for the next few years. Any pitfalls, tips, or encouragements you'd like to share as I plan and hopefully earn a PDC this spring, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks so much for posting this thread. I had high hopes on another site, but where are the traders? So add my name -- I would also be interested in trading seeds (or more) through the mail. I was inspired by others selections, and so here are my lists.

'especially have'
comfrey seedlings and rootlets
purslane / verdolaga (if I can learn to save the seed)
tamarack pinecones
runnering strawberry crowns
hawthorn seeds, cuttings, or seedlings
artemisia variety seeds
calendula variety seeds
lavender variety seeds
angelica seeds
lovage seeds
savory seeds
marjoram seeds
marsh milkweed
red malabar spinach
'linum perenne lewisii', perennial blue flax
mountain mint seeds\
scarlet runner beans

'especially wanted'
early hot jalapeno pepper
wild leek bulbs
pawpaw seeds
apios americana / groundnut tubers
quamash bulbs
sea kale seeds
'secale montana' perennial mountain rye
opuntia ficus-indica, spineless
dragonfruit cuttings or seeds
'lupinus mutabilis' / tarwi (Andean edible lupine)
oca bulbs
apple mint cuttings
pineapple sage seeds
orange-scented thyme seeds
lemon thyme seeds
named apple cuttings
named pear cuttings
scented geranium / pelargonium cuttings
schisandra chinensis / chinese magnolia vine -- anything
smilax regelii / Jamaican sarsaparilla -- anything
unusual solanums (aviculare, aculeatissimum, capsicoides, laciniatum)

to read the full lists of my 'haves' and 'wants', click here:
http://davesgarden.com/community/trading/list.php?member=summerstripes

The only states I knew had criminalized collecting rainwater were Utah and Colorado, but that Colorado had re-saned and allowed the practice, leaving Utah out in the cold. In any case, I did want to connect back to permaculture and report this finding in regard to mosquito control in rainwater from the Luther Burbank website. It seems that our perennial friend the Opuntia ficus-indica can produce an oily substance that kills mosquito larvae. According to the site, juice from the 'thalli' (pads or nopales) *"can be spread on water, like petroleum, to smother mosquito larvae (lasts up to a year, according to tests in central Africa, reported in Scientific American, 1911). I know I had seen conversations of this type before, folks talking about how to suppress mosquito larvae from their rain barrels, so I wanted to connect the dots before I lost them. (And if you'd like to trade your Opuntia spp. for seeds, cuttings, and the like, message me!) *Spineless Cactus | Luther Burbank Home & Gardens

I'm trying Fat Mama sunflowers near bee balm (lemon bergamot) this year, and it's a bust. Last year's Jimenez pole bean / sunflower interplanting met with mixed results -- the single-file sunflowers lodged, and the beans grew to maturity, but everything was laying on the ground.

I wasn't sure, but all his film contributions are listed here by order of year, as well as the rest of his albums.

http://www.matthewherbert.com/discography.php#add_films
http://www.matthewherbert.com/discography.php

A St. Paul church replants their front lawn with a permaculture garden to supplement food shelf stores. So many great highlights in this article, but here are three:

Rosario: Summit Avenue church in St. Paul hopes to send a message: 'Feed the poor'
By Rubén Rosario
...
Pending approval from the city's historic preservation committee, the church's garden at 797 Summit Ave. is designed to provide fresh produce for up to 15 families through a partnership with Neighborhood House's basic needs program.
...
"We thought it was a fabulous idea, and putting it right on Summit was a great way to highlight the need," said Mary Senkbeil, the committee chair. The church folks asked the food shelf folks, whose clientele is 40 percent immigrant or ethnically diverse, what to grow.
...
The Permaculture Research Institute for Cold Climate, a Minneapolis firm, was hired to come up with a design for the community garden that would look pleasing and also accomplish its humanitarian mission.

>>> I would definitely love to see more projects like this in my community, or pretty much anywhere. Check out the whole article if you get a chance; there are some lists of crops to help you envision what they are building along Summit Ave.

Many of his songs and albums are pretty great. He has an album about food that raises awareness about industrial agriculture, eating animals, and the sounds of a kitchen -- Plat du Jour. Around the House is another album I love; it's a play on words about both house (classic proto-techno) music and the 'found sounds' that Herbert samples from a modern domestic setting, aka a house. For anyone who loves Bjork's Vespertine, he was a producer of that and was basically a part of her band at that time, programming beats, rhythms and some percussion, I think. Then there's Bodily Functions, which is made from all human sounds like snapping fingers, heart beats, hands smoothing across skin. His organic approach to making music was something that really informed me about organic architecture as I started to segue into learning more about organic gardening. I suppose it was key in understanding 'organic' as a concept. If your music inspires your cooking and your gardening, or vice versa, yes, give Matthew Herbert a try.

I'm not sure about other poets because I've fallen behind on my fiction and poetry reading, but I read through recent poems and found this one.

The disappearance of honeybees
has perplexed their eaters and anaphylactics alike
as now only wind jostles créped blossoms, as
furry bodies maybe burrow into the wadded folds
of a colony lost to maps. Nature abhors
a vacuum, they said, and cicadas
persecute a silence.

Polaroid the honeycombs
in the countryside of memory, innocent and
crystalline. Collect your tools, or borrow some:
Make this accumulation personal. Remember
to bring tiny spoons stored in marsupial apron
pockets. Scrub your underarms and kneepits
with crisp baby's breath, clothe yourself in
butterleaf, a favorite, and
pancake your body with the yellow dust.
Strike out on fields for sweet
and bitter. Stretch into the cloud
of vaporous insects that remain, the hexagon
specks of their bodies buzzing, still, like
an echo of the last known antibacterial afternoon.