Dennis Hillier

I haven’t tried storing Jerusalem artichoke in sand or compost, my experience is they don’t keep very well and storage space would be difficult for a winter’s worth stored in the above scenario. I do feed them Jerusalem artichokes May through October along with my other animals, supply starts dwindling by the end of the season.

I’m all ears, please continue

The only place I have is the seller in my old farmhouse, but I typically don’t store things down there. It can get a little humid. I have an unheated workshop area that I keep most of my stuff in inside milk crates, and it stays typically in the low 40s there winter.

I did a little research on the suggestions from people in this post and there seems to be a pattern of not recommending certain turnips and other root crops as a steady diet due to high sugar or starch levels. I read an article from the 1940’s that said many meat rabbit farmers fed a regular diet of these French turnips with no issues. It sounds like it’s one of those just try it scenario’s, our rabbits are pretty well versed in eating root vegetables and greens so I am hoping a transition away from
pellets might not be to difficult.

I seem to recall the particular article referencing a turnip variety that was pretty large. I will check out the beet variety that you mentioned as that might be an option as well. Thanks!

We have a small homestead in Vermont and have raised meat rabbits for many years, recently cut back to about a dozen. I typically feed them Jerusalem artichoke leaves and tubers during the warmer months and we are trying to get away from dependence on bagged feed in the event of a major disruption to the supply chain. Unfortunately Jerusalem artichokes doesn’t store well.
I had read somewhere about a fella that grew a type of turnip, French variety possibly that stores excellent all winter and supplies his rabbits with adequate nutrition. Anybody have any experience growing a turnip that fits the bill and could possibly be grown this year to stock up for winter? We have extensive gardens but are on a small one acre property so it limits growing some crops. Thanks

I agree that making value added products is a must, we are planning on smoking peppers to make a spice mix for sure. We are also dedicating a portion to producing pure seed for sale and had a couple seed packets designed to give us a more professional appearance. We definitely weren’t planning on picking the produce and then trying to sell it, our thoughts were to advertise heavily in advance of certain varieties being 100% ripe and letting people pick their own vegetables straight off the plants. Our gut feeling is we probably won’t get the traffic to make a sustainable income but thought it would be worth a try as we had a couple people ask if we were going to sell any produce.
Another idea was a mobile farmstand possibly advertising to be parked in certain areas on certain days to sell produce directly to customers. I do have some connections with co-ops and selling wholesale is potentially worth it, we are in the process of getting certified naturally grown as well.

We do have some farm animals here, but we are limited in someways due to the fact that we have less than 1 acre of land, which includes our house to play with. I think possibly a mixture of selling some produce wholesale and some pick your own might possibly be a good combination?

That is a pretty cool link and thank you for sharing that inspiring information. I’m a member of a backyard nursery group and I have posed questions in multiple forums in the past about driving traffic to a rural location and to simplify some have made it sound super easy with social media, marketing and various other digital formats. We have done some email marketing, social media marketing, craigslist and, put flyers up in multiple locations. We have put up signs on major roadways and built relationships with local business owners and tell people about what we do at our small nursery not to the point of being annoying, but just letting people know about us. We have found our excitement when somebody comes all the way from Boston, Massachusetts to buy certain things from us that we are finally making some traction, but honestly, there has never been any consistency with our customers. I’m began selling tree seedlings and mostly catered to permaculture enthusiasts, homesteaders and those wanting to live more self sustainably and provide for themselves and wildlife. I started doing this in 2018 and, the amount of return customers I can count on one hand. We shifted our focus a little bit away from Just tree seedlings as that seem to be more of a one time purchase and got some good advice from others in this business, but even our heirloom tomatoes and peppers in their prime were outstanding looking and really good prices but getting people to drive out to where we are might just be an impossible stumbling block I don’t know.

We appreciate the feedback and we also have a pretty good relationship with our local feed store for potential advertising. I think we might give it a whirl since we have hundreds of the heirloom tomato and pepper plants that didn’t sell during the month of May