From Hobby to Profit

Hi Ya'll, happy Fall! I haven't posted in a long time, mainly because I keep myself so darn busy with too much to do! Apparently though, that is the way I like it, or I wouldn't keep doing this to myself! I am almost finished with my MBA and have been thinking about ways to turn my passions for gardening organically and living off the land from a hobby to a profit.

We had a great season this year, lots of daily rain in the beginning of the year helped get the vegetable crops going strong. I used black plastic on the ground and that really made a big difference in the diseases that would normally show up with the amount of rain we had. I also used drip line to water. We grew tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, kale, bok choi, Chinese cabbage, regular cabbage, potatoes, eggplant, green beans, onions, carrots, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, lettuce, Swiss chard, yellow squash, zucchini, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, pumpkins, cushaw, watermelon, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes and a large variety of herbs. I put 1/2 cup of Epsom's salt in each transplant hole for the tomatoes and peppers. I think it really made a big difference in the health of the plants. I had so many big tomatoes that several of the plants fell over. I was using tobacco sticks for support but the weight of the plants pushed the tobacco sticks over too. Next year, I will have to try a different method to support them. Let me know if you have an idea that works for a large amount of tomatoes. I grow about 100 tomato plants a year, so cages for all of those is just not cost effective.

I grew a couple acres of sweet corn and popcorn, but I didn't get to eat one ear of corn! It was an ultimate fail. I think I should have thinned it out better and side dressed when it was a foot or two tall. I had no help from nature either, other than rain. The deer, raccoon, squirrels and who knows what else ate it all before it was even ready to pick. They even the popcorn. My vegetable growing areas are fenced except for the areas I grew the corn, melons and squash, The animals seem to not care to much about the melons or squash but they love corn! They mostly feasted on the corn but also some bush beans and all the leaves off my newest apple tree that we just planted this year. I guess I need to get some electric fencing for next year. A friend said he was using fishing line to keep the deer out, but I am not sure how well that worked for him.

Of course, I have been busy the last couple of months canning and preserving some of that for our winter stash. We also sold some to some local restaurants and the public. I did not get to sell at the farmer's market this year as I had hoped too. My two boys are both playing soccer and we spent most weekends going to soccer games and other events. Next summer, my oldest will have his license, so hopefully I won't have to spend so much time shuffling them back and forth to practice and games, and I will have time to do the farmers market then.

I have come to realize that vegetables are great to grow, fun to share and sell, but do not generate much profit after all is said and done. Unless you have a very large operation and customer base, you barely make enough to cover your costs and pay for what you consume. We have been borrowing a friends tractor to do all the tilling and grading here, and it is getting old. In order to be an organic grower, you have to have cover crops and till those in a couple times a year while you rotate plots. We also have a long gravel drive that has to be graded several times a year. We need a tractor with a scoop to turn the compost piles and clean out the chicken coop area. We also need one to get downed trees out for firewood and to make lumber for our home addition we are planning. So borrowing a tractor once or twice a year is just not practical for us anymore. Therefore, we are going to pick up our new (to us) tractor tomorrow. We are really excited to finally be getting this equipment! We have wanted our own for a long time and it is finally going to happen tomorrow! YeeeHawww!

Since veggies do not generate much of a profit, I am looking into raising some livestock. I am going back and forth between sheep, goats or alpacas. I don't have time to commit to milking anything, so they will have to be raised for meat or fiber. As much as I love goat cheese, I would rather buy it from the store than go to all that trouble. Ain't nobody in my house, got time for that! I have also been debating getting a pig. Organic bacon really doesn't exist around here in our grocery stores and I am sure if it did, it would be 3 times higher than regular bacon. I have heard some disgusting tales about how pigs are kept on factory farms, so knowing what my pig ate, and how healthy it was before I make it into bacon & pork chops, seems like a good idea to me! I have never killed anything, except bugs! I am trying to wrap my head around raising an animal to kill for food. I am not sure how I will handle it emotionally. I love animals, they are creatures who have feelings, capable of love, attachment and fear. I am afraid I will get very attached to them. It is easy not to think about where our meat comes from when all you see is the package at the store. I think providing a good quality life to animals is important. They should be healthy and happy, free to roam a little and enjoy nature, and treated with kindness and compassion. I have a feeling that my husband will be the one taking them to market or the local chop shop, its just not something I see myself doing. He will have to bring home the bacon in a package or the money.

In addition, I want to grow a crop of hemp for animal bedding. The University farm has been doing some studies and found that hemp fiber bedding for animals is a superior product to any other bedding that is currently being used. It has much greater absorption properties, its chemical free, has minimal dust, helps trap bad odors better than other products, the list goes on about how great it is! You can read more about it here: http://www.americanhempllc.com/#!horse-bedding/c1iam

It is just an awesome agricultural product to grow. There are so many wonderful uses from building material to oil to semiconductors for batteries. It is a wonderful renewable resource that saves forests, stops erosion control, mitigates pollutants, and its sustainable! I hope they finally legalize hemp growing in Kentucky around throughout the US! It is so ridiculous that they still treat it like its a drug. You would have to smoke a joint of hemp the size of a telephone poll to get high! I mean, come on now, who cares anyway. Alcohol kills more people and ruins more lives & families than marijuana ever has anyway. People need to do their research and find out all the benefits of both hemp and marijuana before they form an opinion. I am convinced that those who are still against it just don't know or understand the facts because if they did, they would change their mind!

I am going to apply for a permit to grow hemp next year. I have also started a new LLC company called the  Kentucky Hemp Company, and would like to grow hemp to use in my products, so check it out and like my page if you are interested in knowing more about the benefits of hemp and my products!

I have made several handmade soaps, lotions and other textile and rope products that I plan to list on ETSY soon and start selling. I want to use all hemp products that come from Kentucky, but so far, there is not much available here. I use hemp paper in my packaging and tags too. I have applied to have the Appalachian proud and Kentucky proud logo for all my products even though the hemp oil and fiber I am using now is not from Kentucky. You can still use the logo as long as it is handmade in Kentucky. I can also sell these products at the local farmers market, fairs and shops. So, I am pretty excited to see how that takes off once I get it going and have enough products produced. I am still working on getting some better pictures of my products before I list them on ETSY. I am also carefully debating what I am going to charge for them to make sure I am making a profit for my time and energy, plus leaving an opening for wholesale pricing. When I used to sell soap and body care products under my Starlight Creations, LLC, I made the mistake of pricing around what others were charging, rather than what it truly cost me to make the products. I lost money on some items by doing that and I also limited what I could sell for at wholesale price, so I am not doing that this time around!

The new tractor will help us create a fenced in area to keep some livestock with a post hole digger attachment. It will also help us to compost the manure properly by turning it often. IT will come in great as a manure spreader for use in our organic production of veggies. We will be able to use it to plant and harvest the hemp, tilling the veggie beds, getting firewood and lumber, etc. I am really excited about this new adventure in farming and homesteading! Adding a tractor and some animals will complete the list of what we need to have a proper organic operation!

Here is a picture of the new tractor, a hemp product preview, and some of the veggie garden & harvest.

Spending a chilly birthday at the Last Resort

Tomorrow is my birthday and last night it dipped down to 20 degrees with wind chills in the teens. In all my years, it has never been this cold on my birthday. Usually, this time of year I have already started planting some cold tolerant plants. I am glad I decided to wait this year and keep it all in the greenhouse because none of it would have survived the night. We are just about out of firewood too. We didn't anticipate having to restock the woodstove this much in March. We did get a little break from it last week, when the temperatures got up to almost 70 degrees and we had several days in the 50-60's. Now we are back to a full load of wood daily. I am using this time to catch up on the farmers market rules, order some greasy bean heirloom seeds (if you've never heard of those, then you don't know beans!) and do a little sewing on the sewing machine I gave myself for my birthday. I haven't tried to sew anything in years because I haven't been able to find the old sewing machine I had. It is packed away, somewhere in the container full of things that I didn't consider necessities when we downsized from 3000 sq.ft. to this 1000 sq.ft. cabin. My husband jokingly calls this place "The Last Resort" but when thinking of a farm name, it just didn't sound right to buy products from the "Last Resort," so I went with a name that signifies this area and native plants. We have Mountain Laurel growing all along this ridge, especially back along the cliff line at the rear of our property. It gets such pretty flowers in the late spring/early summer and the leaves stay green through the winter. It is a wild rhododendron and gets about 15 feet tall here. Little Laurel is also the name of the holler at the base of the cliff line here, identified on the USGS map. It is a tributary to the Licking River. So Laurel Ridge Farm seems like an appropriate name for this place. Getting back to the subject of sewing, I don't really miss that old sewing machine that I can't find in the hundreds of boxes stacked in the container. The machine was heavy and smelled like a burning belt and oil. It also had very few features and often made me really frustrated. The foot pedal was either really slow or pedal to the metal. I am hoping this new machine with 130 built in sewing stitches, 170 stitch functions, build in LED light, LCD display, start & stop button, extension table for quilting and large pieces, free arm option and it threads itself! That is important because my eyes are not as good as they used to be, thanks to all these birthdays that keep creeping up so quickly. Time really does speed up as you get older. I always thought older people were silly for saying that, so I guess I am the silly one now! Here are some recent pictures including one of the finished greenhouse/workshop/outdoor kitchen/bar. It really is a multipurpose structure! We absolutely love it. There is nothing else designed like it that I have ever seen. I put some black plastic down on part of the garden, hoping to warm the ground up and keep the weeds down. My dad gave me a rolling A/V cart he got at a school board auction and it works great for rolling the plants in and out of the greenhouse. Inside the greenhouse, I have some supplemental lighting for cloudy days and I have wrapped the windows with white frost cover to keep the sun from burning and drying out the plants on warm days. The chicken cages I had to build to keep the cats off the seedlings. The cats live in the greenhouse over the winter. It is heated by the outdoor woodstove boiler along with the house, hot water heater and our hot tub. It keeps the greenhouse at least 55 degrees. I start the seedlings on a thermostat controlled heat mat at 70 degrees. We have started terracing some of the garden because we are on a hill and not only does that cause soil loss but you get tired of standing kneeling on a hill trying to garden. It wears out the knees, ankles and hips quick! Tomorrow, I will borrow a friends tractor and start on making some newly tilled areas for my popcorn, squash and melons.

 
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KY PROUD

I have progressed in my knowledge and farming skills over the past few years although anyone who farms as a hobby or a business can tell you, there is always more to learn and no two years will be alike. The winter wasn't too bad until the very end. All of a sudden, we had two significant snow events that turned into record breakers, followed by flooding, then some 70 degree weather, and now, possible snow again tomorrow. Bulbs are breaking ground and coming up to bloom, while insects are gearing up for the season. Weeds are already awake and the grass is getting greener. I started seeds in the greenhouse in January. I have lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and other cold loving crops ready to go in the ground but I am afraid to stick them out there. It seems about every two weeks, the temperature drops and we get a frost or snow event. It's just not worth losing them so I am keeping them in the greenhouse until I feel more confident. I will probably stick them out sometime in April with a low tunnel frost protection.

This year I have signed up to sell at the local farmer's market. I always have more than I can eat or preserve, so I usually give away the extra and also feed some to the chickens. I decided to grow more than last year. Each year I make the garden areas bigger and the soil better. Hopefully that means I will have even more extra food to sell this year. I have two boys that need to get a sense of what work is and how hard it is to make some money. This seems like the perfect opportunity for that. I told them they could keep most of the money we make if they would help me. So far, they do not seem too excited but I am hoping that will change once they get some dollars in their pockets. I try to explain to them the importance of buying local and growing organic. I am not sure if they get it but I guess if I say it often enough, it will eventually sink in. It will be a challenge since they are dedicated to soccer and it will be going on most of the summer. We will do the best we can though. Soccer comes first for them and I am okay with that. I only have a small amount of time before they are grown and making a life on their own, so I have to put them first for now.

Since I used to sell my soaps & candles at craft fairs, I understand what it will be like to sell at the farmer's market. I am excited to be able to label my products Kentucky Proud and Appalachian Proud. Tonight I went to the local farmers market meeting and filled out the paper work to use the special labels. I also bought a big Appalachian Proud banner to hang up in my booth and some stickers for my products. I am so excited to share what I love to do with the community and make some money for it too. To me, farming is not a job but a healthy lifestyle choice. I can't stand to jog or exercise in a group class. I like to work outside all day and not even realize I am sore and tired until it is dark. I also love the reward of having fresh organic food to feed my family.

I ordered seeds from Johnny's seeds again but I also ordered seeds from Sustainable Seed Co. this year. I am excited to start growing popcorn this year too. I have expanded the variety of fruits of veggies that I grow to include some bok choy, Chinese cabbage, swiss chard, red celery and some herbs and heirlooms I have never tried. I am also going to try selling cut flowers. I am not sure how great the market for that is here, but it will help make my booth look nice, even if they don't sell!

I will post some pictures of the greenhouse plants this weekend, I have to finish watching these KY Wildcats beat the West Virginia Mountaineers. I love my Old Kentucky Home! KY PROUD! GO CATS!

Making Compost Tea

I started making compost tea a few weeks ago. It turns out to be really easy and seems to be worth the effort. The plants seem to have responded really well after watering them with the tea. They look more healthy and green, the stalks seem more sturdy and the leaves more perky. From what I have read about it, the beneficial microbes help form a waxy protective substance on the leaves that will deter most pests and protect the plant from disease.

So far, I have been brewing in a 5 gallon bucket with an air pump hooked to a bucket aerator. I mix about 2 cups of earthworms castings, 1/4 cup of organic unsulfured molasses, 1 ounce of liquid karma, 1 tablespoon each of humic acid and superthrive.  Then I let it aerate (make tea) for about 24 hours. Then carefully pour or spray it on the plants. The molasses is a crucial part because the natural sugars feed the aerobic bacteria and make them multiply greatly in numbers. The other items are not as crucial. You can use regular compost in a netted bag instead of the castings to save money. The other things I add are just some ideas I came up with researching how to make the tea on the internet. Of course, there are alot of products out there, some specific to certain plants such as BU's Biodianamic Compost for Tomatoes that you might want to try. I bought some of it but haven't tried it yet because its winter and I have no tomatoes yet. You can also add some natural fertilizer such as liquid kelp, bloodmeal, bonemeal, etc. to help boost your plants. My plan is to try and add the tea to all my plants once a week.This spring, I will construct a 25 gallon compost tea maker for the garden using a 32 gallon garbage can, PVC piping and a much larger air pump and tea bag. That should help to cover the entire garden once a week with the tea.

 If you are going to try and make you own compost tea, make sure you start with unchlorinated water and aerate the tea 24 hours and use it within 6 hours because you only want the beneficial aerobic bacteria getting to the plants and their roots. Chlorinated water will kill the beneficial microbes. I have an attachment to my hose that removes chlorine but you can also let the water sit 24 hours for it to dissipate or aerate just the water a few hours and that should do the trick. The aerobic bacteria helps the plants to take up more nutrients, carbon dioxide and protects it from diseases and pests. On the other hand, anaerobic bacteria is bad for the soil, plants and possibly those who eat them. It can spread disease, ruin the soil and kill the plants so don't let the water sit more than 6 hours.

I also recently purchased the Worm Factory and ordered 1000 red wiggler composting worms from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm. I am hoping this system works to create my own worm castings since buying it by the bag gets expensive. I have the bin set up under the plant tables in the greenhouse since it is really cold outside. The directions say you can also keep it in a garage or indoors but I am not a big fan of worms and gnats in the house. Although I have only been using it a couple of weeks, I have seen a few gnats in the bin but they do not seem to be interested in leaving the bin and flying around the greenhouse. I will update this post later this spring or beginning of summer to report how this is going.

Some good links to products I use and information:

Videos:
 Compost Tea for growing BIG vegetables

Plans:
Plans for 25 gallon brewer

Products:

Worm Compost Tea Aerator

Humic Acid

Earthworm Castings

Bu's Best Tomato Compost Tea

Liquid Karma

Aerator Pump

Carbon Water Filter to remove chlorine, etc. from hose water

Worm Factory

Getting ready for spring - time to plant some seeds!

I have been growing herbs, lettuce, carrots, kale, spinach, broccoli and cabbage all winter in the greenhouse. I started some new lettuce trays for spring a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I started some trays of flowers, basil, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and peas. I use a heating mat with a thermostat to keep the seed trays at 70-75 degrees so that the seeds sprout well. I always plant more than I need so I can give some to family and friends that do not have the time nor greenhouse for such early planning. Here is some of my latest pictures:

Carrots

Seeds just started

Lettuce & Spinach

Kale, red leaf lettluce, cabbage

herbs - parsley, thyme, chives & rosemary

Fall/Winter projects - Outside kitchen & workshop

It has been a rough winter in Kentucky with record cold, ice and snow. We spent almost 3 days without power in the last ice storm. Yesterday, March 2nd was the 2 year anniversary of the West Liberty tornado. Instead of a tornado this year, we are having another ice/sleet/snow storm. Right now the snow is coming down hard with huge beautiful flakes and we have at least 4 inches on the ground with several more hours of snowfall to go. Despite the weather this year, we have stayed busy with our continual improvements of this place.

We have been working on finishing the outdoor kitchen/workshop that is the other side of the greenhouse. Over the fall we poured the concrete floor and framed it in. Over the winter, on the few warm days we have had, we put the metal roof on, installed 2 of the windows, installed a sliding door, installed a woodstove for heat and emergency cooking, built a workbench and closet, stained some boards different colors and attached them to the inside wall, and hung an old wagon wheel as a chandelier. We are not finished with it yet, we still have one more window to put in when it is warm enough to do it and some electric to run. We are also going to incorporate solar energy to power some lights and as a backup source of power or to run a few low demand items. There will be an outside bar installed under the awning at the outside two windows which will open all the way up and serve as a nice bar area for summer gatherings. For the most part, the difficult parts are finished and we love it! It is a multipurpose area where we can work on crafts and projects, clean and can veggies in the summer, store our chicken eggs in the outside frig and have an outdoor gathering place to hang out with friends and family in the warmer months of the year.

Many of the materials we used are getting their second life instead of becoming items in a la

ndfill somewhere and we saved ourselves some money by using them. The old wood stove was in the house when we bought it. It is not very efficient and the blower is kinda loud but it works great for this small area and makes it a functional area to work on things when it is cold out. We installed some old salvaged rusted metal roof sheeting to protect the walls behind the stove from the heat. I found the old wagon wheel at the peddlers mall for $30. We had some old rusty but sturdy chain and used that to hang it. Then I wrapped some energy efficient warm white LED lights on it to make it a chandelier. It's cool and one of a kind! I plan to add some more decorations to the wheel in the future such as some antlers and maybe some greenery. The windows are salvage that I obtained from a contractor doing a local remodel and are the same I used for the greenhouse. The counter-tops are old chemistry lab counters that I salvaged before they were on their way to the landfill. We bought the door at the peddlers mall for $10! It is solid wood and had no pre-drilled holes. I have always wanted a sliding barn door and since the area is not really big, a sliding door for this area works great and allows us more space on the inside. We can open all the windows and the door and have an outdoor kitchen workshop when the weather is nice and still be able to fully lock the area up when we need to. My favorite piece is the cast iron sink centered in the wall. We bought it from someone on craigslist at an unbelievable price. The people obviously did not know its worth. It took us a couple of years to acquire all these items. It takes patience to find good deals or salvage items but I believe it is part of the fun and planning that goes into it all. It will also make good conversations when we have visitors over to sip a cold one at the bar this summer.

Very rainy season = lots of fungal disease!

This summer crop started out very good and ended not so good. We had so much rain on a daily basis for weeks and weeks this summer. The rain made it impossible to battle the fugal viruses that are so common here. I could not treat the plants with copper fungicide because it would quickly be washed off by more rain the next day. Unfortunately, we lost almost all of our tomato plants to septoria leaf spot. This was the largest harvest of tomatoes we had in the pictures above. By early July, all my tomato plants were turning brown and dying. The squash did fantastic until the squash bugs moved in. I tried treating the squash plants with Kaolin Clay but it did not seem to bother the squash bugs. By the end of July, all the squash plants were dead. I still have peppers growing, a few tomatoes and an abundance of herbs and marigolds. I had planted the marigolds with the tomatoes to see if that would help repel the bugs. The tomatoes died but the marigolds are huge, in full bloom and beautiful. I was told that I could eat them but I don't know if I want to. They are pretty but if they taste like they smell, then I don't want them in my mouth. 

The corn was a disaster. I tried to start the corn in the greenhouse to get an early start. Apparently, transplanting corn does not work. The corn tasseled too early when I set it out and the cobs never got over 2 inches long. I eventually just mowed over all the corn.

I harvested several really juicy and sweet cantaloupe and watermelon. We also harvested a lot of blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. My small pie pumpkins and acorn squash did pretty well but squash bugs destroyed the larger pumpkins and butternut squash. 

I did harvest enough to can a few pickles, some relish and some tomatoes a couple of times but nothing like the canning operation I had going the previous years. I just did not have time to do it. It takes a whole afternoon and evening to can 6 jars of tomato sauce!

In retrospect, I believe I made the garden larger than I could handle considering my work load this summer but since most of it died anyway, I really did not increase my harvest at all. In fact, it was small compared to the year before. Since my boss retired in late June, I spent a lot of time doing both my job and his while waiting for it to be re-filled. It took until September 1st but we finally have someone to do his job and I feel like I have my life back.

Now I am focusing on projects to reduce our energy usage, recycle more and finish the outdoor kitchen. I will post more on these projects in the next couple of weeks.