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.