So – What’s This
About Value-Added?
Value-added production
is the transforming of any raw material - in our case, fruits, vegetables,
and herbs - into products with a higher net worth. These are products
for which the value is increased by labor and creativity. Cut flower
bouquets, braided garlic, herbal vinegars - or, in our case, gourmet
foods - are all examples of value-added products. In Loudoun County,
Virginia, where I live, there are quite a few value-added operations:
a Pick-Your-Own orchard, an organic farm which serves all-natural
meals, a cattle and sheep farm which sells meat direct-to-customer,
and farms which offer honey, dried arrangements, wreaths, cut, washed
and bagged greens, baked goods, candles, lip balm, and herbal soaps.
And more are on the way.
Value-added production
adds profit levels not available to traditional growers. Our value-added
products gross more than 15x what we could make simply selling produce.
Granted, our expenses are high; we have to purchase all the things
we can’t or don’t have time to grow - things like nutmeg, cinnamon,
and lime. Vinegar, pepper, salt, and mustard flour. Bottles, labels,
and shipping supplies. And of course, there’s the expense of marketing.
But we’ve managed to turn this into a full-time living. And we
pay ourselves a white-collar income. All of this came with an initial
investment of only a couple thousand dollars. Additional investment
has come from sales generated by the business.
How have we done
it? With passion, dedication, and sincerity. We believe our products
are second to none. As Marsha Sinetar points out in her best-selling
book, “Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow”, do what you
love and love what you do.
We really love doing
this! But, because we love it, we also realize we can’t do it all.
Which is why we’ve chosen to specialize in chiles. We do grow other
plants: Strawberries and Figs. Raspberries and Elderberries. Tomatoes.
Horseradish. Yarrow. Gooseberries (lots of gooseberries!). Nettle
and Comfrey (good for colds and compost). Lemon Balm. Osage Orange.
Echinacea. Lance-Leaf Coreopsis. We grow as much of our own food
as we can. (Like many of you, we’re trying to live as much off
the grid as possible.) But our main production crop is peppers.
(“Chase two rabbits,” the old quote says, “and both will escape.”)
Most years, we plant
70 varieties of peppers, and pick, depending upon the weather, at
least 1,000,000. Some years – those which are hot and dry – we
pick as many as 2,000,000. Though we have a bit more than 2 acres
under cultivation, the peppers take up only a third of that. Biointensive
growing methods yield 4-10x the yield of “conventional” agriculture
- John Jeavons first said that. And he’s right.
We’ve done this all
without much equipment. Some plant tables, which we built with
PVC pipe and cedar. No greenhouse (though one is on the way).
And we have a large rototiller, which we use only to pull up the
sod the first year we work a bed. Because repeated use of a tiller
creates a hardpan where the tines hit, we prefer to dig by hand
after we complete the heavy lifting. In fact, after the soil is
tilled, we have to dig the bed anyway. There are quite a few rocks
here at the base of the Blue Ridge!
We heat with wood,
which offers us the opportunity to start seeds indoors. We’ve found
a 75,000 BTU stove is better than any heating cable! Seeds are
started according to the Stella Natura calendar, a Biodynamic planting
guide. Our pepper seeds germinate in less than seven days. Most
plants are also transplanted according to the calendar. We plant
not only in sync with the cycles of the moon, but with the cycles
of the planets as well. This year, we’d like to add other pieces
of the Biodynamic practice to our small farm.
It’s important to
us that this is all organic. For example, we’re building soil, rather
than letting it blow away.
“It takes approximately
3,000 years for nature to produce 6” of topsoil. Every 28 years,
one inch of topsoil is lost as a result of current farming practices.
Organic biointensive farming can produce 6” of topsoil in as little
as 50 years - 60 times faster than the rate of nature.”
We also cook without
much equipment. It simply isn’t expensive to start a value-added
farm business! In 2001, we produced more than 16,000 bottles by
hand, with nothing more than two five-gallon pots, an electric range,
two measuring cups, a wooden spoon, a funnel, a three-quart food
processor, and an immersion mixer. (The mixer fits right down into
our pots, and we use it to chop and puree peppers, tomatoes, and
other chunky foods.) In 2002, we added a scale, lots and lots of
shelving (!), a two-compartment stainless steel sink, a 500-gallon
propane tank, and a 40-gallon, stainless steel, steam-jacketed,
propane-fired kettle (whew), which we modified (with a ball valve
and fillers) for hand-filling. At some point (but only as the business
both needs it and can afford it), we’ll add an automated bottler
and another kettles or two.
Our specialty has
gotten us some attention. Customers come from several hundred miles
away to ask questions, look at the plants, sample products, and
take home a bag of peppers at our many open houses and farm festivals.
We’ve also received some nice press from American Small Farm, Future Harvest, the Washingtonian,
the Washington Post, USA Today, the NY Times, Southern Living (May
2004), and Radical Sabbatical, a television program on the Fine
Living Network.
Our Sustainable Farm
|
