Many articles have been written for Growing for Market about large farms, acres in production with employees and machinery. This is the flip side – solo market gardening. I will be starting my ninth growing season this year (the first four in northern California and the rest here in southern Oregon) and as in the past I will be the manager, grower, picker, weeder, washer, seller and compost maker.

Both large and small farms have their advantages and headaches and both require the same passion for farming, workaholic tendencies, and the desire to be independent. But for myself, I also thrive on being alone, doing things my way and on my schedule. My husband prefers to work off our property and generates the larger portion of our income. That said, I don’t feel that what I do is diminished at all because I’m only contributing a portion towards our income. My business is as important to me as if I were the sole breadwinner. I don’t have the monetary pressures of having to generate a certain amount of revenue, but I have set up benchmarks for myself to keep me efficient and intrigued. At the end of the season I have as much pride and pain as anyone.

Although my husband wants nothing to do with the growing end of the market garden, he has done all the infrastructure work (hoophouse, water lines, trellisses, etc.), which has freed me up so I can concentrate on growing. My main growing area is more than a quarter acre and it is about 50’ from the house, which makes for a short job commute. It also means I’m carrying the produce a shorter distance after picking as it gets stored in the house basement. Since I don’t use a tractor I don’t have to worry about dust that plowing or disking would cause being so close to the house. I have set up the area with nineteen 4’x50’ permanent raised beds and six 2’x50’ beds with permanent trellises. Although the raised beds are a lot of work initially, I’m finding them a time saver now, five years later. I mulch the paths in between the beds with wood chips that a tree service drops off for free. The mulch keeps the weeds down and also allows me to get out into the garden even in our wet winters and springs. The beds themselves stay almost weed free because of their high fertility, zero compaction and drip irrigation. I don’t walk on the beds or use any machinery, I just keep adding compost and manure on top. In addition to the raised bed area, I have a 20×96’ unheated hoop house, an area for permanent crops like asparagus, blueberries and rhubarb, 40 fruit trees and a vineyard with wine and table grapes. So, altogether I have over an acre of crops to take care of.

So how does one person keep everything growing without going crazy? Well I’m still working on that one. I find it is harder to deal with mentally than physically. Working 12-hour days doesn’t bother me, it is the mental frustration of taking one step forward for every 2 backwards, that gnawing feeling that I’m not getting ahead. At the height of the season it is very easy to get overwhelmed which creates real mental chaos for me. So, I have started making a list, at the beginning of every week, of five or so things that I need to get done during that time period. Some are involved projects, some are simple. Even though I know it is a mind game, I still get a huge psychological lift when I scratch off an item after completion. I focus on what I’ve accomplished instead of what I didn’t get done. I also don’t allow myself an excuse for not doing something as I walk back and forth in the garden. I have spread out 5-gallon buckets throughout the area so I can deposit weeds, rocks, or trash. It is just another mental game that makes me feel I am getting more work squeezed in to the day – which I am.

Know your limits
When doing a market garden alone, a caveat that needs to be learned early on is if you don’t have time to do it, it’s not going to get done. You are the workforce, the only workforce. So you have to be realistic about what you can do and then do it more efficiently. Every year my sales have grown because I’m fine tuning what crops to grow and how much of them. I stopped trying to grow everything in the seed catalogs because not only was it a picking and selling nightmare but because it wasn’t profitable according to my records. As in any size farm, record keeping is essential; without it you have no history. It takes a little time, but the time it saves and the uncertainty it prevents more than compensate. During the market season, I make the record keeping as simple as possible. The day I pick, I record all that was harvested for that date and then when I come home from market I note what produce and how much of it didn’t sell. At the end of the season, I make a chart that at a glance tells me a lot of things. It tells me when a crop came into production, when I started bringing some of that crop home (did I plant too much or was it just a 2-week glut), how many weeks it produced. By adding in a few more numbers I can find out the per square foot gross profit of each crop. Then I can start to evaluate, compare and delete. Other criteria are also important such as ease of picking, does it need refrigeration, does it require special handling and probably most important, do I enjoy growing and harvesting it. I deleted strawberries last year, a very profitable crop, but one that I detested picking. It made me a much happier camper (that mental thing again) and I made up the difference in sales by concentrating on getting tomatoes and cukes into market earlier. That more than made up for the lost revenue in strawberry sales.
Since I am a small-scale grower, to keep up the profitability of any crop, I take extra measures to ensure that 95% of the crops I grow are good enough to take to market. Why spend the time growing and picking something that has to be thrown in the compost pile because of rot or major blemish. I use 30% shadecloth on sweet peppers and tomatoes to prevent sunscald and 50% shadecloth on lettuce to keep it from getting bitter in August’s heat. Trellising prevents rot and disease and also makes it easier to harvest. Picking is my least favorite chore so making an effort in the spring to get a crop to grow up the trellis more than pays for itself when I’m hunched over in 100-degree heat reaching for that not so elusive fruit.

To increase my bottom line without doing more time, I’m increasing my perennial crops like asparagus and rhubarb. As the orchard produces more, I will downsize the amount of annual crops that I grow accordingly. Being able to stand upright while picking has great appeal to me.

Help at market
During my first few seasons, I never thought that selling alone would be a problem. But by my second year in Oregon, I realized I needed help during the first few hours of market. It is unnerving (but gratifying) to have 20 people standing in front of your booth waiting for the opening bell. I keep my pricing simple to make addition quick and I price as much as I can by the each to avoid weighing things out whenever possible. I’m also very lucky that I sell next to the same vendors every week. On one side of me is a husband and wife team who sell crafts. Their business usually is busiest later in the market day, so during the first 2 hours of the produce buying frenzy, the wife steps over to my booth and helps me sell if I’m busy. It is a perfect solution for me and I trade them produce for their time.

No matter what size your operation is, the same rules apply when selling – clean produce, clean vendor, clean vehicle. Nice display and readable signs are also an asset. An advantage of being a one-person operation is that I can answer any question through any phase of growing that a customer might have, which makes for great customer loyalty.

Mechanical help
For our 15th wedding anniversary I got a 6×10’ hydraulic dumping trailer and it has more than paid for itself in the years that I’ve used it. The trailer has not only saved me time when getting manure and horse bedding, it has saved my back. At 50 years old I really appreciate that concept.The trailer, which can haul 7,000 pounds, cost about $3,400.(Contact Western Dump Trailers at 775-246-9333; www.westerndumptrailers.com.)

Another life saver is the hammock that is right in the garden under the oaks. A 15-minute nap is one of the best money makers I can think of.

My chickens are treasured employees. Where else can you get such workaholics that live on chicken feed and don’t require worker’s comp? I keep my flock of 10 laying hens in the orchard, which they keep weed free. I bring in loads of horse bedding, dumping it in different parts of the orchard and the chickens spread it as they scratch through it looking for goodies. The trees get mulched and by the end of the season the hay is pulverized, it decomposes during the winter and by spring I have a composted weed free orchard. Plus I get eggs. Another benefit of chickens that doesn’t fit into the monetary ledger, but rather into the ‘happy factor’ is that chickens are soothing. Even on the busiest summer day, I always take time to watch and listen to the chickens for a few minutes. It slows me down, calms me down and rebalances my focus and reminds me why I do what I do. Last year I also started using a chicken tractor in the raised beds, which worked quite well especially since I don’t till. The chickens help eliminate any bug problems that might build up with no cultivation.

Pigs also help me in the garden, as they are fertilizing rototillers. In a 75×50’ area, beyond the raised beds, I grow corn, winter squash and pumpkins in one half and raise pigs in the other. The next year it gets reversed. In the fall, when I break down the garden, I dump a lot of my spent crops (especially the seed invasive ones like tomatoes and melons) in the plot where the corn and squash grew. I then add a load of both manure and hay. The next spring the new pigs are put in this area and they spend the next four months rooting, tilling and chewing in complete contentment. By butcher time, the area is weed free, fertilized and pig-o-tilled. I plant a cover crop and the rotation starts over again.

A lot of what I’ve written about has common ground in both large and small farming operations. My point is, you don’t need large acreage, machinery and employees to convert a passion for growing into a business of selling. If you are going to do it alone, start small and grow into it. I made the mistake one year of trying to do too much and I burned myself out by the end of the season. My love of growing, that year, turned into a dreaded chore and I turned into a grumpy old lady, which wasn’t fair to me or my spouse. Since then, I’ve sharpened my focus and I’ve realized bigger isn’t better for me. But just plain getting better is.¶