So, we're moving, if you haven't already heard. We're not going far, but the move is going to make a huge difference to our growing capabilities. I've been so busy with this transition this summer, I that I haven't had time to update you all, but now that there's snow on the ground, it's time to settle down and get you caught up on this exciting news.
How does one move 6000 square feet of growing space and supporting infrastructure? Not easily! We've already been "moving" for a few months and it's clear that it's going to take some time, but given the significance of what we're gaining with this move, we feel like the extra effort will be worthwhile in the longterm.
The Market Gardener's Dilemma
Market gardeners are kind of in a league of their own among farmers when it comes to land requirements. At first, one might think that any good patch of sunny soil will do. There is certainly plenty of sunny soil here on the Canadian prairies and the further you are from an urban centre the cheaper the land becomes. For that reason, I've been tempted to load up all my belongings and make a break for the country on numerous occasions, but I have also continued to hold strong to my belief that the most important factor in running a successful market garden is the market and the proximity to that market.
That brings us to the market gardener's dilemma. Is it better to have an abundance of land or an abundance of market? One can usually access a lot more growing space for a lower cost if they are willing to move further from an urban centre so that option seems promising. On the other hand, if one insists on starting a market garden in or near an urban centre, the land may be harder to come by but they are sure to enjoy a larger demand for their produce.
Which path would you choose? My choice is probably obvious to you if you know what I've been up to for the last decade. More on that to follow, but first I'll say that I'm not the first to realize the critical connection between the market gardener and the market. Dr. Booker Whatley is famous for publishing the 10 commandments for the small farmer back in the 1960's. They read as follows.
Even before starting my first market garden, I recognized the critical importance of number 5 on the list because I new some growers at my local market were driving multiple hours one-way to bring their produce to the city. Then they were standing at their market stall for 6 hours with the hope that customers would pay them for all the vegetables they had already harvested and packed. All this extra unnecessary work and travel cost either cuts into their profits or forces them to inflate their prices beyond reason to pay for this inefficient distribution. A brilliant market gardener 3 hours removed from civilization is always going to have a hard time making a living because of the high cost of connecting with their customer base. Their land may have been more affordable initially, but their cost of making a sale may be so high that their business model is no longer profitable.
What is profitable is efficiency. My labour is the highest cost of operating my market garden so I can only afford to spend time on jobs that add value for my customer. Tasks like preparing beds, planting lettuce, harvesting tomatoes, and washing carrots all add value for my customer because of the way I perform these tasks. Do my customers care that their food was grown without chemicals and heavy machinery? Yes. Do they care that it looks and tastes great? Yes. Would they care that I drove 3 hours to the city to give these hand-tended vegetables to them? No. They might appreciate the convenience of this service, but they wouldn't want to pay more for a carrot that had traveled further. In fact, the opposite might be true, meaning that I can see many of my customers being willing to pay more to support a local business and access food that didn't travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to them. Since the job of transporting my vegetables over large distances doesn't add value for my customer, this is a job I shouldn't be doing. It will come as no surprise to you then, that my number one priority was finding land to farm that was somewhere close to my city or ideally within the city limits.
I'm going to talk mainly about land selection today as that relates most to our big move, but don't let that understate the importance of the other 9 of Whatley's commandments. I wasn't aware of this list when I was starting my first market garden, but thankfully I came to some of the same conclusions on my own. Today, I see the importance of each item and I think every market gardener should pin this list to their vision board and never stray.
Starting a Market Garden in the City Without Buying Land
Ten years ago, I left my job as a high school teacher to get serious about growing my own food and hopefully figure out how to make a living doing it. The problem was that I didn't own land, and I didn't think it would be wise to blow my savings on buying the biggest piece of agricultural land I could find before I had enter tested my hand at running a market garden. I'm so glad I avoided this mistake now, because it's very likely that I would have bought the wrong land and dug too big of a hole for myself financially.
Thankfully there was an alternative way to access land that didn't require a large upfront investment. While my skinny urban lot many not have had any valuable gardening space, there were plenty of people in my city who did own suitable land for gardening, and it turns out that some of these people didn't want anything to do with their land. In fact, their extra land was costing them time and money to manage. Imagine their delight when they learned that I could manage their space for them by using it to grow food and that all this could happen without any added costs for them. Both parties win. I get access to land without having to own it, and the owners can continue owning their land and enjoy seeing it be used for good without having any maintenance costs.
The first plot I borrowed is still a great example of how a land sharing agreement can benfite both parties. The owner of the property shown above was having to pay a yard clean-up crew to come in and knock down his overgrown weeds multiple times a year. This former garden site had been neglected for years and was now infested with dense populations of Canada thistle, quackgrass, and a collection of other invasive weeds. I was willing to do some reclaimation work here in exchange for the privilege of using this land, so we struck a deal. The landowner would share this 1500 square foot growing space with me at no charge as long as I cared for the space and reimbursed him for any additional water costs. I got to work and converted the space into a much more appealing and productive vegetable garden shown below.
Once people understood the land sharing concept and saw what I could do with an empty space, I had more offers of land than I could accept. Eventually, I would convert 8 different properties into intensive vegetable gardens, and I earned an income by distributing the harvested produce to my farm members. By avoiding a huge amount of startup debt, I was able to make a profit farming in year 1 and my income rose steadily as my efficiency improved. I've since taken down my farm website, but you can still see what kind of produce I grew for our farm members on my Chain Reaction Urban Farm Instagram account.
In the early years, I was excited by the potential efficiencies I could gain by adding new infrastructure to my farm. I started by building a walk-in cooler to preserve the value of our harvests. Then I added a nursery greenhouse to make my seed starting work easier. Soon after, came a washing station which made my washing and packing quicker and a lot more enjoyable. Finally, I was even able to achieve my dream of building our own high tunnel when we got access to the lot next to our house.
All the pieces of a successful market garden had finally come together, and there were no further upgrades that would significantly boost my growing potential. Was I set for life? Not quite. Instead, I was forced to confront the inefficiencies that I now saw were built into my growing systems. Some were big, some were little, but they all were making my operation harder than it needed to be. A big inefficiency was my scattered collection of land. Yeah, it was still great that I didn't have to buy any of this land, but biking tools and harvesting totes to and from these plots every day was getting annoying. A smaller inefficiency was that my walk-in cooler was in the basement of our home. This is still the best spot for it from our family's perspective, but it meant that the thousands of pounds of food I harvested each season had to be carried down to the cooler and back up for distribution. I already farm almost exclusively with human power. I do not need more exercise! I also learned that there was also a considerable risk to growing food in the public eye. Occasionally, a passerby sees something in one of my gardens that looks good enough to eat and feels entitled or desperate enough to steal it. Some thieves seem to pick for a snack and some thieves seem to have had a truck to carry away everything they took. I really don't like to talk about food theft because I think it normalizes the problem and the reality is that our public gardens were very well respected by young and old, so I want to stress that respect and admiration have been the norm. The theft experiences just taint the whole thing and the unpredictability of theft events caused me a lot of stress, especially when the vegetables had been pre-sold to my farm through their memberships. So that's all to say that things weren't perfect even though I had a lot going right. I didn't want to keep operating a machine that I couldn't fix. Therefore, I began to think of ways to change things up.
Restarting a Market Garden on 3 Acres
I had developed a bit of a habit of perusing the local real estate listings in search of land, and one day this spring I came across a land opportunity that checked all the boxes. Most parcels of land we could afford were completely bare, but this 3 acre property already had an existing house, garage, and barn, so I would be able to focus on the farm startup tasks relatively soon instead of building a house first. In terms of growing potential, there was an established but under-maintained orchard with apples, sour cherries, and Saskatoon berries, a flat open space suitable for vegetable growing, lots of surrounding trees and shrubs to serve as windbreaks, and a full 8 foot high deer fence around the entire property. There were obviously a lot of reasons for a market gardener to think happy thoughts about this property, but I haven't even got to the best part yet.
The best part was that this property had all of these wonderful features only 7km from the city's edge. That meant I would still be able to reach the same urban market that has come to know and love our produce. It would be quick for me to make a trip into the city on delivery days and my farm members could easily venture out to the farm to pick up their produce or enjoy some you-pick opportunities. It was hard to imagine any appropriately sized parcels of land becoming available any closer to the city, and we discovered that by sharing this home with my mother, we could make it work financially, so we made the leap!
Now that we've secured a sufficient amount of land in an ideal location, we can move on to number 2 on Whatley's list, "Be a you-pick operation." Having grown, harvested, stored, packed and delivered over 40,000 lbs of food largely by myself at this point, I can really see the value in the you-pick model! This was just not possible with my multi-locational urban farm format. However, with our new, private and easily accessible 3 acre property, I think the you-pick model could really thrive. Therefore, I will strive to build a farm that successfully incorporates a significant portion of pick-your-own vegetables for the purpose of labour reduction and food education.
Since we are now technically growing outside of the city, I had to rebrand my farm, so we've dropped the Chain Reaction Urban Farm name for good and can be found as Blossom Grove Family Farm going forward. Here's a link to our new farm website.
I'm sure some of you are wondering what we are doing first on this new land and I am pleased to share that work here has already begun this fall, even though I really should be focussed more on the task of moving. I just love working outdoors too much! Anyways, so far we have enjoyed a huge apple harvest, hired a drum mulcher to take out hundreds of row feet of old sour cherry shrubs, and started prepping the future vegetable garden area. It's been great fun, but the details of this early progress will just have to wait for another post.
