This spring we’ll be starting out at farmers’ market with a seasonal, value-added, completely farm-grown product: Birdhouses made from gourds. These birdhouses are beautiful, simple, useful, and enjoyable to make. They completely fit into my own and my customers’ environmental interest and aesthetic tastes. I have the pleasure of offering them to my customers, without having put any time into making them. All the work, and all the profit, belongs to one of our employees. Having no talent or patience for hand crafts, and very minimal experience growing gourds,I would never have thought of doing this kind of thing on my own.

The beauty of this enterprise is that I am helping to incubate a business, which depends on my farm for the growing and marketing of the gourds, but otherwise requires very little input from me. Already overloaded, I have learned that it’s better to do a few things well than to try to do too many things halfway. So although I get excited about new ideas for farm products, I reluctantly decline to launch into them. Instead, I actively encourage long-term employees to do so. It’s one of those rare win-win situations.

New and unique products, like the birdhouses made from gourds, attract customers and decorate my stall in the spring when produce is scarce. Though the farm makes no financial gains from this enterprise, it’s a benefit we can offer employees – the opportunity to develop their own small businesses. There are plenty of products which can be made during the off season, and dovetail nicely with the cycles of the farm’s workload. For farm laborers, there is very little opportunity for change or advancement, other than becoming a farm manager or owner. Not every one has the desire or capital to do this. Hatching a new business can be an exciting and almost risk-free venture. It may not be profitable at the start, or even break even, but there is still much to be gained by taking on these ventures . As people who have already experienced the satisfaction of entrepreneurship, we farmers know that exploring the potential of a new product, one that you believe in and have developed yourself, can be incredibly fulfilling.

We have a pretty loose arrangement with the gourd business, but everyone feels comfortable with it, because it’s based on trust and friendship. I wouldn’t get involved in this kind of arrangement with anyone that I didn’t know well and feel completely comfortable with. We contribute potting soil, pots, and greenhouse space for starting the gourd plants, which we do about the 1st of April. I don’t have anything to do with choosing varieties or buying the seeds. We all help with the transplanting to the field, but not with constructing the 8-foot-tall trellises. We fertilize and water the beds alongside the other crops, and pull some weeds now and then. Generally, we don’t help to harvest the gourds in the fall, but do offer space for drying and storage. The gourds are completely cured and ready to be processed by March, and though I’ve made a few birdhouses for family presents, I had nothing to do with devising the process or getting the materials needed for cleaning, drilling, finishing and hanging them. I don’t make signs or set prices; I just enjoy them.

The woods around my house are great for cavity nesting birds, with at least eight gourd birdhouses of varying sizes for an assortment of birds. They look like huge golden brown pears hanging from the trees. My customers love them as much as I do, and we even had a nature writer buy several in order to photograph them for a newspaper article. Sometimes it takes a while for birds to start nesting in them, but once they do, the houses are used for years.

The possibilities for farm-related business enterprises are almost endless. The only limiting factors are the interest of the person creating the product, and the resources available on the farm. We’re talking about a sauerkraut sideline next.

Robin Ostfeld grows vegetables and flowers (and does it well) at Blue Heron Farm in Lodi, New York.