Succeeding as a Small-Scale Organic Vegetable Grower To obtain the best yield from the soil, without excessive expenses, through the judicious selection of crops, and through appropriate work: such is the goal of the market gardener - J. G. Moreau and J. J. Daverne, Manuel pratique de la culture maraîchère de Paris, 1854 Because our micro-farm has garnered so much media attention in recent years, farmers of all stripes and many agronomists have been coming to meet us and visit our gardens. These people, most of them only familiar with modern large-scale conventional farming, are curious about our work because we challenge the belief that the small family farm cannot stay afloat in today''s economy. Despite our decade of experience in proving the viability of a micro-farm, most of these visitors remain unconvinced. They find it difficult to wrap their heads around the fact that we have no plans to make major investments and that we intend to stay small and continue working with hand tools.

A bank loan officer who visited us adamantly declared as she left that we were not real business people, and that our farm was not a real farm! Our farming choices may be easier to understand when one stops to consider the obstacles that beginning farmers must face when they are just getting started. For us, the decision to grow vegetables on a small plot of land, while minimizing start-up investments, simply had to do with our financial reality at the time. When we were in our early twenties, our financial resources were limited and we felt strongly about the importance of minimizing our debt load. Ten years later, our strategy of starting a farm without a large capital expense, while still producing high yields of vegetables for direct sales, has proved to be lucrative. Our market garden demonstrates that high profits can be earned without high costs. For beginning farmers, there are a number of advantages to "starting small" - but there is also much to be said for staying small in the years that follow. that being said, whatever the size of the planned operation, it is important to understand the implications of different production strategies in order to make wise choices about how to best succeed as an organic vegetable grower. this chapter touches on a few factors which, in my opinion, are at the heart of our market gardening success.

A Biologically Intensive Approach The term "biointensive"* broadly refers to a horticultural method in which growers maximize crop yields from a minimum area of land, while seeking to preserve - or even improve - the quality of the soil. Drawing on the experience of 19th-century French vegetable growers and Rudolph Steiner''s biodynamic principles, the biointensive method was refined in northern California beginning in the 1960s. There is now a whole literature on biologically intensive vegetable growing methods, and although the techniques most often discussed in these works (see bibliography for recommended reading) are geared towards home gardening, a number of the practices can be useful in the context of commercial production. We took one such approach in developing our cropping system. To begin with, we have not arranged our garden in the rows typically used in mechanized farming where crops are spaced according to the dimensions of the tractors and weeding machinery. Instead, we grow our crops in permanent raised beds. While establishing the beds, we invested in a large quantity of organic matter with the idea of quickly creating a rich and living soil. We effectively built our soil this way.

Since then, we''ve continued to add compost regularly while limiting any turning of the soil to just the surface, thereby keeping the structure as intact as possible. For deep soil cultivation, we use a broadfork (grelinette in French) which allows us to aerate the soil without turning it. The purpose of this cultivation is to create loose, fertile soil, which encourages the crop roots to spread downward rather than sideways. this in turn makes it possible to plant the crops quite close together without them running into each other at the root level. The goal is to space the crops such that their leaves touch each other when the plants reach three quarters of their full size. At maturity, the foliage will cover all of the growing area, effectively creating a living mulch. This strategy of closely spacing the crops (in addition to allowing high yields per square foot) has two main advantages. The first is that it greatly cuts down on the amount of weeding required, and the second is that it renders many day-to-day gardening tasks more efficient.

These benefits will be explained in detail throughout this book. In our gardens, it is the quality of the soil structure, combined with the microbe- and nutrientrich compost that we use, which allows intensive spacing to work well. It took us a few years of trial and error to determine the proper spacing for each crop - so that they are planted as densely as possible without limiting their size at maturity - but it was a worthwhile effort. We also sought to further maximize our growing space by planting as many succession crops as possible. This means that we must determine the length of time each crop spends in the garden and plan our seedings so that harvested crops are replaced by new ones as soon as they are out of the garden. Using our crop plan, we succeed in producing multiple successive harvests each season in the same space. Most of the thinking behind biologically intensive methods is not so very different from the principles of organic agriculture. In both cases, the objective is to build rich, loose, fertile soil.

But biointensive practices stress the importance of building soil in order to achieve this. Planting closely spaced crops in permanent beds is what allowed us to establish ourselves in farming without mechanizing our operation. These are not new ideas, and we do not pretend to have invented them. If we can take credit for anything, it''s that we developed a good regime for making our market garden highly productive in a cold Canadian climate while favoring an approach that sustains soil quality. Minimizing Start-Up Costs Starting a farm requires investing in tools and equipment, but by starting small and growing crops intensively, it is possible to do so without a large capital outlay. Here is a list of the investments I feel are necessary to run an efficient vegetable operation on less than two acres (1 hectare). The approximate dollar amounts listed are in Canadian funds and are for new equipment which should last many years. The start-up costs total $39,000.

This may sounds like a lot of money to start a micro-farm, but one should consider the following. Firstly, a bank loan of $39,000 spread out over 5 years at 8% interest per year means that the annual investment is about $9,500 - which is little enough compared to the potential revenue of a market garden. Of course, these will not be one''s only business expenses. This figure does not include certain necessities such as a delivery vehicle, land rental/purchase fees, mortgages, or other variable costs (inputs, administration fees, supplies, etc.). But even so, initial costs are still relatively small, especially when compared to the cost of equipment used in mechanized vegetable growing. Secondly, some of these items can be purchased secondhand or gradually with time. We were fortunate enough to find used hoophouses for a fraction of their original price.

Also, we didn''t buy our rotary harrow and flame weeder until several years into our operation. When we began, we committed to producing 30 CSA shares in our first season and 50 in our second. At that time, we did all our harvesting on the morning of delivery day, which saved us the problem of having to refrigerate our vegetables. Later, when we upped our production to 100 shares and had to take a whole day to harvest them, a cold room became necessary. Having said that, even though certain tools on this list may not be absolutely necessary in your first season, they do make the work much more efficient and pay for themselves quickly. This is why we have never shied away from trying out new equipment. When we first began, we seeded by hand all the crops that do not transplant well (e.g.

, carrots, radish, mesclun mix). Those were long jobs. But when we started using the seeders described later in this book, we were able to seed beds two or three times longer in one fifth of the time. When you stop to consider the extra workload required the first few seasons, it makes sense to make the optimization of operations a priority. In my opinion, it is best not to hold off too long on getting the right equipment for the job. In most countries, there are different kinds of government assistance programs in the form of loans and grants for new farmers that can help out with the financing for agricultural equipment. We were lucky to have received financial aid when we started Les Jardins de la Grelinette. With this kind of added support, the chances of succeeding at market gardening will greatly improve.

But grants or no grants, one fact remains: keeping costs low when starting a business reduces financial risk and ensures profitability over the short term. This is a winning business model in and of itself. Minimizing Production Costs Revenue minus expenses equals profit. This simple equation must always be kept in mind. Obviously no one goes into farming to get rich, but one should always aim for profitability when starting a farm. Having a profitable operation spares you from daily financial stresses, prevents you from needing to find off-farm employment during the winter, and allows you to set aside money for retirement. (Yes, this is possible with a micro-farm.) Profit is.