(From the Optional chapter in the Landrace Gardening course)
(Transcription, Joseph Lofthouse) "When I originally started growing genetically diverse seeds, I was a market farmer. I took my produce to the farmer’s market, and the size of my butternut squash might be anywhere from small to giant, and they might be round, or have a long neck, or they might have a little short fat neck. It took some effort on my part to train my customers that any butternut squash that I gave to them would taste amazing, and that it would have the exact same uses in the kitchen as any other butternut squash that anyone could grow.
Every year before I save a seed from any squash, I taste it. The outcome has been that every single generation the flavor has gotten better. I developed a reputation in my market stand for having the best tasting produce. When the university conducted a survey of my customers, I thought that they would say, ‘we buy his produce because it’s organic’ or ‘We buy his produce because it’s local’.
But, no. The number one reason was because of the taste, the flavor. That’s what people are buying my produce for."
Marketing and the business side2022-08-31T07:00:00Z (from the Thinkific course)
I got a notion that integrating land race gardening with market farming is actually pretty important. I am a hired hand or otherwise accomplice for many of the market farmers in my county. Growing seed ordered from catalogues their plants have all the weakness we all know about, but the farming business is very conservative, and testing a local land race seed is very tricky.
One of the larger gardens for the Cortez market I’ve been moving some landrace crops through, most notible some runner beans that are a threeway mixture of Joseph’s runners, an old farmer from Florida and a cultivar I rogued out from a spontaneous hybread of two ornimental lines about 6 years ago. CSA’s are the easiest thing to do because people signed up tend to be adenturious, and beside you already have their money!
At market I am easing into it, so I am experimenting with lofthouse lettuce, but so far it is only a small portion of the total lettuce we bring to market; though I think it could take over in time, we’re going to keep growing the comercial stuff, simply because we know pretty well how it performs, though I am hoping to trial loft house lettuce for a larger portion of the crop.
I think beets are another place I could make a move, because the commercial seeds are so poorly adapted to out climate, but frankly I don’t have them stable enough yet.
The real limit is that market gardeners generally need perdictabulity, because a huge crop that doesn’t happen when the market is hot is just chicken feed, instead of being needed cash money.
For now I have a side garden about 10% the side of a partnered market garden where I grow for seed, and since getting good seeds involves rouging out many ‘not quite’ breeding quality plants, a modest sized breeding population ends up have a by product of a couple grand in marketable crops. As long as a partner market farm is large enough that much can be moved as a “weekly special” as things come up.
Visually diverse squash2022-03-01T08:00:00Z
I have a couple thoughts about squashes that look different from each other.
First, my grocery store gets in bins of a mix of squash of various kinds, many of which I wouldn’t name: huge stripey butternut or crookneck looking ones, very turban-shaped buttercup ones, pumpkin shapes, acorn shapes, football shapes. I’m not sure how many of those are sold for decoration compared to eating, but in my community it seems to at least be worth someone’s time to bring it in.
Second, I wonder how many people are familiar with what shapes squash “should” be, these days? Probably lots of people who buy from farmer’s markets.
Third, this makes me think of CSA-style selling, where folks trust the farmer to present something tasty (and sometimes how to cook it). When I sell, I mostly sell this way, and I’m certain the folks who buy from me will also marvel at the diversity when they’re informed about it.
I’m not a market farmer, so I’m not sure how much info folks take in by reading at a farmer’s market compared to talking to the farmer, or reading the farmer’s instagram, or what have you. I certainly feel like more education around this would always be beneficial.
My relationship to this is: I mostly sell weird meat (fatty, dark red pork, goose) that is worlds away from what most people want in a grocery store (lean, known quantity). If I were selling to people who wanted grocery store meat they would not be pleased; instead I sell to the (much smaller) group of people who wants to try something outside the norm, and who are willing to trust me that what I’m offering will be good, and my weakness is suddenly a strength because I’m the only source.
2022-05-25T07:00:00Z
Hi Erin, I like your focus on providing what’s not available anywhere else. That’s similar to what we have been doing with our meats but we do also have standard things like the commercial type chickens because our license program requires that.
At our farmer’s market there are several large fruit and vegetable vendors that grow all the standard varieties, and I think we are already known by some of our customers to have things like giant kohlrabi or colored carrots and chard, etc. that are not available form the regular vendors. So I think we will have less of a problem when we bring interesting new shapes and colors because we are a niche vendor.
However, I am most concerned about year one and two when we might have wild crosses that we can’t identify visually. What if a new customer buys one of these and we turn them off forever? We had some pepo crosses a few years ago from seeds that we had saved and they were not very palatable at all. We took some of the best looking ones to market but I’m sure we sold some that were not very tasty. I think we would have to try to find a pattern already early on with our own taste testing. And feed the questionable ones to the pigs.
Joseph Lofthouse
10 MONTHS AGO
Landrace pepo squash can be a mess!!! Because they were domesticated once in southern Mexico (big peduncles, bland flesh), and once around Appalachia (tiny peduncles, better flavor). When the two sub-species cross, it gets weird and funky.
Landraces containing Acorn, Delicata, and Crookneck play well together.
M Weber
10 MONTHS AGO
I think our cross was probably pumpkin, spaghetti squash, and could also have had zucchini in it. Won’t allow that to happen again. I was thinking of trying to breed a grex of various zucchini squash and select for cucumber beetle resistance especially. But that might not be a good idea if the various zucchini varieties might be from both Mexico and Appalachia?
Maybe you could recruit some of your customers to help out. Call some of your product experimental and ask them to report any bad experience for a refund or replacement and to please return seeds from anything extra good. Don’t let new customers buy from the experimental display without fully understanding the arrangement.
I love that idea, too. It’s brilliant. I think a lot of customers would be totally on board with being invited to be part of a creative team to create plants that they will find more tasty. Especially since their role will be the easiest and most fun kind: tasting and choosing your favorites that you want to eat again later.
Heck, I basically volunteered myself for that role last year. This one farmer at the farmers’ market had an absolutely delicious cantaloupe that I bought. I saved seeds and brought some back to her, because I wanted to buy more of those from her later. She didn’t ask me to – I asked her if she’d be interested in the seeds I had saved, and she said yes. Woo hoo! So I handed them over to her.
But actually, that’s a generalizable principle when it comes to doing creative work for an audience. The best book launch I ever had was when I asked my readers a whole bunch of questions about what they wanted out of the book, and then followed what the majority asked for in everything. I think that made my audience feel personally invested and excited in the book, so they were dying to buy it when it came out. I imagine customers of a farmers’ produce would feel much the same way. I know I would!
Feeling like something is partially yours because the creator was willing to share some of the creative decisions with you tends to make you way more invested in it. We get very attached to things that are ours, especially when they’re ours because of decisions we were allowed to make and have honored.
