Tammy Mayer

Ooooh thank you for these helpful replies! John, your suggestions for value added are gold. Hans, this is such a great breakdown of the options. Phil, thanks for the input on heating the greenhouses - I can see how we might be able to tap into local waste. Christine, thanks for your suggestion for how I might prioritize crops and using the space.

At this stage, I think I have a great list of market research I need to do, and many questions about the finances that I need to sort out.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Oh wow! Love these questions and ideas. Thank you all so much! I know this discussion is going to help clarify this project even more!

I'm hoping that by answering some of your questions, you can offer more specific advice, raise new concerns, or otherwise point me in the right direction.

Several of you mentioned the financial aspect. The short story is that currently I really don't know if/how this can work financially. I will certainly develop this further to have a more firm plan, but here are a few details:
- We don't yet know how much he wants to sell the land or business for. I know the owner a little bit, and he's a fairly reasonable guy. He's fairly honest about what's working and not working. He took me on a tour of the heating system in the greenhouses recently and shared the elements that are broken and why he doesn't run the system. I also know that sometimes he hides details in plain site (long story), so I will have to be very careful and ask a lot of questions to learn more about the quality of the business he has built.  I also know he has tried to find buyers already and he doesn't have anyone. He tried to sell the land to the town, and to other various investors and nobody wants it. He feels down to the wire because he wants to retire in 4 years and he doesn't have a plan yet.
- And I have not yet seen his books to judge whether he is making a living or not. Great suggestion to ask to see that information. Based on everything I've learned about him and his business over the past 18 months, I think that he is more than making ends meet - for France(!) - but that he's not bringing in a very high income by any stretch of the imagination.
- There are some special grants available for various economic development projects in the area, up to 20% of the purchase price if I'm not mistaken. It's specific to this region because of some government activity going on here.
- As a cooperative, with the special public sector sticker/certification, I think we might be eligible for additional grants and special loans.
- There may also be special funds for agricultural activities that we might be able to tap into.
- Also as a cooperative, there would be other people investing with us, so the risk would be distributed.

As mentioned, that also means that the profits would be distributed, and that's totally ok with me. In fact, that's what I would prefer, because I truly believe this is the business model that will keep small/locally owned companies and small towns alive. (I love this quote: "As member-owned, member-run and member-serving businesses, cooperatives empower people to collectively realise their economic aspirations, while strengthening their social and human capital and developing their communities." from the International Cooperative Alliance. https://ica.coop/en/cooperatives/facts-and-figures)

Thom Bri, you asked some excellent questions. I'm grateful for your thoughts and feedback! Thank you! Here are my answers to your questions:

Is there a market for the things I want to produce?
- I would reverse this: I'm willing to do the market research needed to find out what the gaps are in the market and fill those. I think I have the network necessary to talk to the right people to figure this out. To start with, I'm friends with the owner of the local organic store, but I'd also need to talk to the owners of local restaurants who I don't yet know.

Can I sell to more distant markets if local markets are insufficient?
- This seems doable, but would require excellent networking and sales operations. Good to keep in mind.

Do I have business experience?
- Yes and no. My background is quite varied. I was the financial manager of a nonprofit with a $2 million housing renovation budget, and a $600k operations budget. I fixed our accounting system and cleaned up our reporting to drop our external audits down from 4 weeks to 4 days. I'm good at admin efficiency and creating systems that improve everyone's experience. I have experience as a communications manager for an international nonprofit, and have a strong sense of marketing and communications. Currently, I run a small solopreneur business doing communications training for climate advocates. Fortunately my father, grandfather and mother all run their own businesses, so I have their guidance to help as well.

Anne Miller, you asked about whether having a market garden appeals to me. Yes! That's certainly a strong possible future use of this land/ these greenhouses. Thank you for reminding me that selling to restaurants is an option. It hadn't occurred to me.

John F. Dean, you shared such great ideas. Thank you! I hadn't thought about the benefits of specializing (your examples of tomatoes, bourbon, salad or herbs were helpful). That's a great suggestion, and of course I'd have to do adequate market research to know which products would fill a market gap.  

Permaculture question: is year-round tomatoes ok in the permaculture space? I know that the temps get down to freezing here, so I think we'd need to heat the greenhouses to have year round tomatoes. Unless we heat them with manure/compost, I wouldn't want to go down that path for environmental reasons. (see my last comment/question below)

You also asked a really great question about location. We are 90-minutes to 2 hours away from Troyes, Dijon, Nancy and Reims, 3 of which have well over 100,000 in population. Are those distances too far? Or would that be a suitable distance? What distance would be considered 'too far'?

Hans Muster, I had vaguely thought of having chickens, but wasn't sure how to incorporate this. Your idea of stacking functions is awesome. I am definitely open to exploring this more. Thank you for sharing this idea!

Nancy Reading, thank you so much for your encouragement, ideas and solid advice! I won't comment on every detail, because you shared so many great tips, several hidden in questions that I don't have the answers to. You asked a few questions that I wanted to briefly respond to:  
- The land has a well on it, from an underground spring. I don't know if he uses that water, or if he uses the town water supply. I don't know if he collects rain water for his plants, but I love the idea!
- Love the rocket-mass idea for catering events and possibly for heating a part of the greenhouse. I am interested in that, but also have some hesitations about heating greenhouses for environmental reasons. (see below)

So, I have a burning question about heated greenhouses in the context of permaculture. In French environmentally-friendly circles, people are quite opposed to heated greenhouses. And the French law only allows organic-labeled food to be in heated greenhouses from 21 December to 30 April every year. What is the permaculture philosophy on heating greenhouses?

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and suggestions! I'm incredibly grateful to each of you!

Hello Permies!

In our town, the owner of the local garden shop is retiring soon, and we're thinking about acquiring his property (and business?). It's 1.3 acres of land mostly covered by greenhouses, plus a garage and sales room. Historically, this land has been used for agricultural purposes for over 300 years. We live in the French countryside in an area of France that is slowly losing population.

Would you be willing to share your ideas on this? We would be truly grateful to you for your thoughts!
For context: I'm new to permaculture, agriculture, and all things homesteading, though I've been a backyard and balcony gardener for 15 years.

Here's what is on the land today:
The existing garden business sells to B2C and B2C, with most of their revenue coming from contracts with local towns to supply them with flowers, trees and shrubs. He has largely moved away from being a nursery, and is primarily a reseller for shrubs, trees, flowers, indoor plants, some vegetable plants and some gardening equipment. 2/3 of the greenhouses are nearly empty, with some equipment filling the space. The remaining 1/3 is rented to a local nonprofit that hires unemployed people and disabled people, who are growing tomatoes, strawberries and endives above ground in a kind of chest-height irrigation system.

There are two types of greenhouse on the land:
- One with a concrete floor and a system for heating this floor with tubes of heated water that are in the concrete. The ceilings are very high and are on an automatic system for ventilating when it's hot and closing up when it's raining. The huge gas furnace is not running any more because of the cost of gas, and because certain elements of the system are broken (some above-ground water tubes connecting the furnace to the underground tubes, and some of the overhead air-heat distributors).

- The other type of greenhouse has a dirt floor that they've covered with huge thick plastic tarps. The ceilings are lower and there isn't any heating in this type of greenhouse. These dirt-floor greenhouses cover perhaps a third of the 1.3 acres.

Here are the market conditions:
- There is another (more modern and commercial) garden shop in our small town of 3000 people, and it's likely most people go there for their gardening tools and seedlings and such. The next closest garden shop is over 30 minutes away by car.
- Nobody in our town is doing any kind of gardening activities (for kids or adults). Such as: learning how to build one's own planter from salvaged materials, or learning how to create one's own compost system, or a simple activity for kids to make their own herb garden.
- There are a few organic (certified and not-certified) vegetable producers within a 30-minute radius. They are run as nonprofits with some volunteers and subsidized workers. The certified producers sell their vegetables to the organic store in town. The owner of our local organic store is a friend of mine, so I wouldn't want to be in competition with her.
- The town and the region is more poor than other regions. Our small down has a lot of poor and working-class people.
- Most people here do not care about organic or regenerative or permaculture. The majority of local farmers are not interested in this approach, and the local people try to support their farmer friends. The local farmers are primarily large monoculture farmers producing wheat, corn, canola, soy, barley.

The reasons why we are thinking of buying this property:
- There is a need to create local food sources due to climate change and other environmental concerns. Who knows when the next crisis will cause food shortages, so we like the idea of being prepared and helping our local community be more prepared.
- It is adjacent to our property, and 100 years ago the two parcels were one. We like the idea of reuniting the land.
- There's something else, less clear, pushing us toward this... More of a feeling. Hard to describe.

Our (possibly ignorant/idealistic) idea for what we think we might do with the land:
- Create a cooperative (legal status) and buy the land and business with a group of local people.  Note: in France this legal status would help us get a kind of public-sector sticker (certificate?) that prioritizes us for government contracts (public procurement). An alternative would be to start a nonprofit, also giving us access to this sticker/certificate.
- Follow B-Corp standards to eventually get certified, giving us access to contracts with other B-Corps.
- Keep the B2B flower contracts with the local towns - at least temporarily - to have an income immediately.  
- Go big on growing seedlings, especially for the spring, and create a buzz in the local media to help this take off.
- Identify the food crops that can be certified organic all while being grown in a concrete-floor unheated greenhouse (mushrooms and endives come to mind). Start with those crops.  
- In the 1/3 of the land where there is dirt under the tarps, remove the tarps and perhaps the top layer to remove the microplastics that are still there. Bring in manure from the local farms and add a cover crop initially to help amend the soil. Plant crops that the other local organic vegetable producers aren't growing.
- Create events (easy gardening activities, as well as workshops) for kids and for adults to bring more people to the space, creating connections with locals and building a sense of community.

Eventually maybe we would:
- Remove the concrete floor and the heating system (and the whole greenhouse structure??) to go back to growing in the dirt.
- Maybe replace the large greenhouses with a few smaller greenhouses that are heated with walls of compost-piles (inspired by this https://youtu.be/82wvDUi5UoQ)?

What would you do?
Would you buy the land and/or the business? Would you keep elements of the existing business or would you do something completely different? How would you handle the microplastics in the 1/3 of the greenhouses where the tarps have been on the ground? Would you keep the greenhouses?

All thoughts are warmly welcome! Thank you in advance!

Eric Hanson wrote:Further, I suspect that if you do kill the tree with salt, I would be afraid of what that salt would do to the surrounding soil.

I was wondering about this! For soil health, I'm quite reticent to pour salt onto the stumps. There are so many small trees and stumps to kill, we would be putting down a lot of salt if we were to go in this direction. At this stage, I've abandoned the idea.

Eric Hanson wrote:If you wanted to go one further step, you could introduce a type of stump killer that is based on potassium nitrate.

Thank you for this suggestion. I'm going to start with cutting the trees down to the soil and blocking the light. If they are still very persistent, I will try this method.

When we lived in Paris, we relied on bikes and public transportation to get around. Two years ago we moved from Paris to the French countryside (in the Champagne region) and decided to not buy a car.  I immediately bought a vintage second-hand bike and related equipment (a very good lock, a great rain poncho with transparent sides along the face, a front basket, a side bag, some bungee cords to attach boxes to the rear rack, and lights for the front and rear). The rain poncho is really well designed. It has little bands for my hands to keep the poncho over them while I hold the handles and an attachment that keeps the back flap close to me. I love that I can put a backpack under my poncho to keep me and my stuff dry. I already owned a helmet and reflector bands for my ankles because I used the bike share system in Paris while I lived there. All this equipment is still what I use today, 2 years into this adventure.

It's relatively flat in the town we moved to, and I don't have great distances to travel, so the bike made a lot of sense. We live very close to the center of our small town, and the two commercial zones with big box stores are only a 10-15 minute ride away. I would take the bike to the home improvement store and post office. We would bike to our weekly sports meetups. We typically walk to the grocery store, which is 4 minutes away by foot. My husband takes the train to work in a nearby town, so between the walking and train ride it's about 35 minutes door to door.

However, we discovered that our social life suffered and our medical access was greatly diminished by relying solely on bikes, trains and our feet. Friends lived in towns that are 30-40 minutes away by car, so by bike, a dinner together became impossible.

When I had medical appointments in a town 11km (7 miles) away, I took the bike. There was a safe bike path for the majority of the route. This was ok in the late summer, but in the fall and early winter, biking there was really a terrible choice. The ride was supposed to take 35 minutes. However, when the winds pick up in the autumn, I was riding facing the wind head on. Fighting the wind the entire way, it would take closer to 50 minutes. Plus, I would arrive completely soaked from perspiration and out of breath. For a medical appointment, this was quite inconvenient. Then, there was a medical treatment that was only available in a town 90 minutes away by train. For the preliminary appointments we took the train and walked to the hospital once we arrived in town. However, when it came time to administer the treatment at very specific early hours of the day, our foot/train mode of transport was no longer adequate. If the trains were late, we would miss the appointment, which would cause a very significant issue in the quality of the treatment. A car became necessary.

We spent 14 months car-less here, and now that we have our small electric car, we still use the bikes all the time. We're moving soon into a house we're renovating, and we have been moving things there in our small bike trailer every time we go over to the house. We still go to our sports meet-ups by bike, and bike to the big box stores when needed.

Thank you so much everyone! I am incredibly grateful to you all for your input, and I'm happy to try all of your solutions.  Since there are quite a lot of trees in this situation on the property, I'd love to not have to keep trimming them back so frequently. And some are not in locations where I can easily cover them with cardboard (growing immediately next to a rose bush).  So, I'm happy to have a variety of ideas to try. Not sure where I'll find copper nails, but I already have a lot of Epsom salt! Thank you again!

Hello Permies! This is my first post. Thank you to all of you for sharing in the discussions I've been reading these past few weeks!

We just acquired our new/old homestead and the property hasn't been maintained very well over the past 10-15 years. There are maple trees popping up all over the place, and quite a few are growing within a foot of the foundation of the house (built in the 1700's). The previous owners would cut them down to 6 inches above the ground, but then new branches/trunks would grow. They have been repeating this for a long time, so the roots are quite well established and some trunks are 2-3 inches thick.

We had decided not to pull the trees out, to not disturb the soil - and also protect the foundation of the house in case there are roots touching it.

The solution I've used so far is to cut them down (to be used elsewhere), and then remove the bark down to the base, but this doesn't seem to be a sure-fire solution. After a week or two of dormancy, little baby shoots are still coming up from the root base/trunk.

Solutions I haven't yet tried, and would like your thoughts on:
- Drilling holes in the trunk
- Drilling holes + filling them with salt (In permaculture, is salt ok to use to kill plants?  I would be afraid of killing/damaging the microbes in the soil around the tree if I use that.)
- Digging around the base of the tree and cutting the roots that are underground

Looking forward to your ideas! Thank you all in advance.