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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 […]

During the 2000 growing season, Organic Agrosystems Research at Summit Farm investigated the economic feasibility of growing lesser value crops using row cover technology for direct market sales (e.g. farmer’s market, PYO, farmstands, CSA). Armed with a need to expand our early sales, an idea to solve the problem and a small grant from the

Two articles in the January issue of Growing for Market prompted us to write a description of our attempt to address the challenges that face many farmers. The articles, one on how young people begin a life in farming and the other on how established farmers effect the transition to a new generation of farm

Terminator Technology. Genetically Modified Organisms. Bt toxin in your cereal, salad, corn and potato chips. Patent genes. Genetic trespass. All this headline news is enough to make a person wonder. Where do all these great ideas come from anyway? Who thinks all this is a good idea? Aren’t there any ethical, environmentally minded mad scientists

Have you noticed the raft of new “catalogs for the organic grower” arriving courtesy of your subscription lists? Expect more. By 2004, organic crops sold in Europe will have to be grown with organically produced seed. Realizing organics are no longer a fringe market, the mainstream European seed companies have all sprouted “organic divisions” to

Making raspberry jam was my first task as an intern at Blue Heron Farm in the rainy mountains of northwest Washington State. I collected half-pint and pint mason jars, rings, and new lids, poked frozen clumps of last season’s berries as they thawed, and measured out thick golden honey and pectin. Before long a sweetly

Last month, we told you how to choose onion varieties and start seeds in the greenhouse or a seed bed. This month, we’ll tell you what’s recommended for planting, harvesting and storing onions. As we mentioned last month, onion plants usually perform better than onion sets. Sets are more likely to bolt from temperature fluctuations,

Our reputations are ruined! All those years spent as liberal, “Yellow Dog” Democrats – right down the drain. As we mentioned last month, we went to the Inaugural Ball in Washington, over the protests of some of our friends! “We’ll just blend in and no one will notice that we’re Democrats,” we thought. Ha. They

I am a strawberry enthusiast. In fact strawberries are my favorite crop. The fruit is stunningly beautiful.It’s more than delicious. At their peak the plants are dark green and confident. We don’t have to plant them every year. I sell every berry my plants can produce.Yet strawberry culture and marketing has left many a home