Jacob Mills of McDonald Farm Stand: EP20

Today’s Episode comes to you from Danville Vermont where we visit with Jacob Mills of McDonald Farm Stand. We start off the show with a tour of a newly built 30x40 wash/pack space. Then continue through several high tunnels and talk about spinach, tomatoes, tulips and more. We talk about field production as well and wrap the episode with a brief tour of his sugarhouse before they started to boil for the evening. 

Chapters

• 22:01 Headhouse on Greenhouse
• 27:02 CHICKWEED
• 37:24 Oldest Greenhouse
• 44:46 When did you get started?
• 50:38 What got you into farming?
• 1:02:57 Distance between fields
• 1:05:18 Sugarhouse
• 1:08:40 Farmstand
• 1:15:17 What does sustainability mean to you?
• 1:18:20 Advice for new growers

Transcript

Jacob Mills (00:00:09):
My name's Jacob Mills. I run McDonald's Farmstand. We're in Danville, Vermont, right on Route 2. We have a seasonal farm stand there, open normally from July to October, diversified produce, and we've been doing it for 10, 15 years now.
Andy Chamberlin (00:00:30):
Today's episode comes to you from Danville, Vermont, where we visit with Jacob Mills of McDonald Farmstand. We start off the show with a tour of a newly built 30 by 40 wash pack space. Then, continue through several high tunnels and talk about spinach, tomatoes, tulips, and more. We talk about field production as well as wrap up the episode with a brief tour of his sugar house and farmstand before they started boiling for the evening.
(00:00:56):
I am your host, Andy Chamberlin, and I take you behind the scenes with growers who share their strategy for achieving the triple bottom line of sustainability. These interviews unravel how they're building their business to balance success across people, profits, and our planet. If this show has impacted you, I'd love to hear it via email or publicly as a review in the podcast app. The Farmer's Share is supported by The Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association in the Ag Engineering Program of The University of Vermont Extension. If you enjoy the show and want to help support its programming, you can make a one-time or reoccurring donation on our website by visiting thefarmersshare.com/support.
Jacob Mills (00:01:40):
We built this hard, I don't know, couple in 2019, I think.
Andy Chamberlin (00:01:46):
Okay. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:01:48):
No, 2020. It went up and kind of slowly sort of added on, put a little... some sinks, just a place to wash greens that's somewhat sanitary.
Andy Chamberlin (00:02:02):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:02:03):
Kind of everything comes in here before it goes out to market and throughout the summer. We could go around in here a little bit if you want.
Andy Chamberlin (00:02:10):
Sure. How big is this building?
Jacob Mills (00:02:12):
It's 30 by 40.
Andy Chamberlin (00:02:13):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:02:15):
I bought it off a guy up in Norton and he bought it and never put it up and wanted to sell it, so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:02:23):
Oh, okay.
Jacob Mills (00:02:24):
Yeah, we got a pretty good deal on it, and it's not exactly what I wanted, but the price was right.
Andy Chamberlin (00:02:31):
Yeah, yeah, if you can find a kit, right?
Jacob Mills (00:02:33):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:02:33):
Basically what it is.
Jacob Mills (00:02:34):
Yeah, and it's pretty bulletproof, pretty low maintenance. We had kind of threw out... When building this, I got funding from NRCS to put a spring in up above the farm here-
Andy Chamberlin (00:02:51):
Uh-huh.
Jacob Mills (00:02:52):
... so all the water, it's kind of a mess in here, but all the water comes in here. There's an inch-and-a-half line coming down from the spring, and then all the water's plumbed out to the greenhouses from here.
Andy Chamberlin (00:03:05):
Well, that's nice to have a central system for that.
Jacob Mills (00:03:08):
Yeah. Yeah, and this this is a spring down, just a shallow well down here that we dug, so this pump will pull. It's less than 30 feet, so it'll pull water up to here, and this is kind of just what heats the building, a wall-hung boiler. There's radiant heat in here and it does domestic hot water, too.
Andy Chamberlin (00:03:33):
That must have been nice-
Jacob Mills (00:03:35):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:03:35):
... adding radiant in here.
Jacob Mills (00:03:37):
Yeah, I did it. I didn't know if I was going to use it. I did it when we poured the floor and just to have it in there, and these wall-hung boilers were pretty cheap to put in, all things considered, and they don't take up much room. I did most of it myself. I hired a plumber to come and hook up all the propane, but I did most of all the plumbing myself, so that kind of saved a little bit of money.
Andy Chamberlin (00:03:37):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:04:02):
Yeah, utility washer, dryer, put a bathroom in for people. I don't know, cabinet for seeds and stuff. There's a loft upstairs that we put all our boxes-
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:12):
Uh-huh.
Jacob Mills (00:04:14):
... just like packaging bags, syrup containers.
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:19):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:04:20):
I ended up... We put a little kitchen area in. It's kind of nice to have. We use the sink a lot just for washing our hands and stuff. The stove probably wasn't really worth it, but it's there.
Speaker 3 (00:04:31):
You can cook lunch.
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:36):
There you go.
Jacob Mills (00:04:40):
Yeah, we cook lunch in there sometimes.
Speaker 3 (00:04:40):
I make pickles [inaudible 00:04:40] ourselves.
Jacob Mills (00:04:42):
This table, I picked up used off a guy. Just kind of pretty much we sanitize it and bag all our greens and we bag carrots on it. We pretty much use it for about everything. We didn't really have much. I want something stainless. It's-
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:59):
Yeah, it's an awesome table. It's huge-
Jacob Mills (00:05:01):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:05:02):
... and having the edge on it to keep-
Jacob Mills (00:05:06):
Yeah, the-
Andy Chamberlin (00:05:06):
... contents contained seems real slick.
Jacob Mills (00:05:09):
... yeah. We can put about a hundred pounds of greens on it, really, give or take a bag. This is the walk-in. I built this. Had it spray foamed. One of my friends spray foams. We store-
Andy Chamberlin (00:05:24):
Nice.
Jacob Mills (00:05:24):
... stuff in here. I went back and forth about putting a CoolBot in versus not. It was expensive, but id didn't go with a CoolBot.
Andy Chamberlin (00:05:37):
Yep.
Jacob Mills (00:05:38):
I didn't want to cut a big hole in the wall. I don't think it would quite have the capacity to really keep this cool. In the summer, this thing stays at 35 degrees, 36 degrees. No fluctuation. This thing was full of carrots this winter.
Andy Chamberlin (00:05:55):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:05:55):
Yeah, and that's sweet. We have a few left and they're not looking great, but we're picking through them, so-
Speaker 3 (00:05:56):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:06:04):
Yeah, Roy Refrigeration did all the condensing unit and all of that. I kind of built the door and the hinges and all of it really. It's a little homemade, but-
Andy Chamberlin (00:06:15):
No, you did a good job of it.
Jacob Mills (00:06:16):
It works.
Andy Chamberlin (00:06:16):
That's a huge door.
Jacob Mills (00:06:18):
Yeah. I wanted to be able to get pallets in and out of it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:06:20):
Yeah. How big is the cooler?
Jacob Mills (00:06:23):
I think it's 12 by 15 right around there.
Speaker 4 (00:06:26):
[inaudible 00:06:26].
Jacob Mills (00:06:26):
12 by 13. It's actually held up better than I thought it might. It's all stayed fairly straight and nice-
Andy Chamberlin (00:06:33):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:06:35):
... so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:06:36):
Do you remember how expensive the refrigeration stuff was? Ballpark?
Jacob Mills (00:06:41):
Ballpark, the condensing unit and evaporator was about 8,000. It was a couple thousand to spray foam it. I don't know, to do the FRP board and whatever else, no, probably another thousand bucks, $1500.
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:02):
Doing it yourself for a cooler that size, if you were to buy one like that, that's not that bad in-
Jacob Mills (00:07:02):
No.
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:09):
... the scheme of things.
Jacob Mills (00:07:09):
Yeah, I think it was around 10 grand is what I had into it and I... You can't move it. It's there. That's the only quirk about it, but it's fine. It works pretty good.
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:20):
Yeah,
Jacob Mills (00:07:21):
It's made a big difference.
Speaker 4 (00:07:23):
[inaudible 00:07:23].
Jacob Mills (00:07:25):
I don't know. This, I got off Mark and Ed Jericho's cellar [inaudible 00:07:29]-
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:29):
Oh, yeah?
Jacob Mills (00:07:30):
... yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:30):
I've seen that then. That's a familiar unit.
Jacob Mills (00:07:32):
Used, but it was, I don't know, the price was right on it. We had a shit load of carrots this fall and it-
Speaker 3 (00:07:39):
Potatoes.
Jacob Mills (00:07:40):
... made a big difference. Yeah, carrots and potatoes.
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:42):
Yeah. This machine has seen a lot of roots. I know that.
Jacob Mills (00:07:45):
Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know, this spray table, it's not-
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:50):
Yeah-
Jacob Mills (00:07:50):
... it's fine.
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:51):
... [inaudible 00:07:51] basic.
Jacob Mills (00:07:51):
We spray off and wash off a lot of stuff on them. Having a drain in here, it's pretty huge. It just drains out over into the swamp more or less.
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:02):
Uh-huh. I like the big doors. You can just open it up and let in the air.
Jacob Mills (00:08:07):
Yeah, and a lot of time in the summer, I'll leave them open at night and close them during the day when it's hot and it stays nice and cool in here.
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:13):
Nice.
Jacob Mills (00:08:14):
I just got these things, I don't know, a farmer had them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:17):
Yeah, what are those?
Jacob Mills (00:08:18):
I'm going to use them to wash greens or I'd like to. I want to get away from plastic tanks. I just don't really like them. Actually, they were from the old Bag Balm factory in Lindenville.
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:31):
That's awesome. That's quite the cool history.
Jacob Mills (00:08:34):
Yeah, and they're just like... I'm probably going to have to cut the legs down a little bit and lower them, but they're-
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:34):
Oh.
Jacob Mills (00:08:38):
... just nice stainless tubs-
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:39):
Yeah, they are.
Jacob Mills (00:08:40):
... and I didn't give too much for them, so it-
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:42):
Nice find.
Jacob Mills (00:08:43):
... yeah. They're still a little grungy, but they're-
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:47):
[inaudible 00:08:47]-
Jacob Mills (00:08:48):
... I don't know. I-
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:49):
... the nice thing is they're big enough to be useful and have elbow room and stuff, but they're not going to take all day to fill up-
Jacob Mills (00:08:57):
Yeah. No-
Andy Chamberlin (00:08:57):
... either.
Jacob Mills (00:08:59):
... I don't think they're quite a hundred gallons.
Andy Chamberlin (00:09:01):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:09:02):
They have a nice valve on the bottom, which I was pretty happy about, right? I gave a couple hundred bucks for them, so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:09:09):
Good find.
Jacob Mills (00:09:09):
... yeah. No, I'm hoping to get away from the Rubbermaid cow tubs.
Andy Chamberlin (00:09:14):
Yeah, yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:09:15):
I just find them really hard to clean. They're always kind of like... We bleach them and soap them and it's just made, I don't know, they don't ever clean up quite as well as I'd like them to. Unlike this here, it's all hygienically designed, stainless fittings and whatnot. Even the valve inside was... that's pretty... The inside of the tank was pretty just clean and nice-
Andy Chamberlin (00:09:41):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:09:42):
... so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:09:43):
Yeah. You can't beat that.
Jacob Mills (00:09:44):
I don't know. Hopefully they all work out all right. They're a little high, but [inaudible 00:09:48].
Andy Chamberlin (00:09:48):
Yeah, like you said, it's easy to modify the legs.
Jacob Mills (00:09:51):
Yeah, so I'm hoping to get those up and rolling for the summer. I just got them another day, so I kind of just been trying to get them clean. I'm probably going to rent. They're just greasy. I clean this one really well, but you can still see they're just like kind of greasy in spots.
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:10):
Well, you said it was Bag Balm, so yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:10:12):
Yeah, that's what it was. Even like Vaseline's like... Yeah, that's what it feels like is Vaseline more or less. It's stainless. It'll clean up eventually.
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:12):
Yeah, right. You'll find the right stuff.
Jacob Mills (00:10:23):
Yeah. We could kind of... This storage container, I don't know, we got this a couple years ago last summer, and that's where we keep all the weed mat and a lot of the totes. It's kind of a collect all more or less. It's not great, but it works,
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:41):
Well, every farm can't have enough-
Jacob Mills (00:10:41):
It's better than-
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:41):
... sheds.
Jacob Mills (00:10:43):
... keeping it outside is my thought. We just keep all the hand tools in here and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:49):
Were these things from the-
Jacob Mills (00:10:49):
... that-
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:49):
... the tanks?
Jacob Mills (00:10:50):
... those were on the top of the tanks with the beaters, and they hd bars on the inside and they actually had... They're water jackets, so they have heating elements in them-
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:05):
Oh.
Jacob Mills (00:11:05):
... or they had heating elements in them so they could keep the Bag Balm warm in the tubs while they're mixing it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:10):
That's cool.
Jacob Mills (00:11:11):
Yeah, because Bag Balm is originally was sheep fat and the other ingredients, so it's lanolin I think is what it's called.
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:11):
Yes. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:11:20):
Yeah, lanolin is what... They had to warm it up so it wasn't as a consistency, but yeah. You can see in here there's kind of just like a... I built some shelves and it's kind of a mess right now, but got tools and welder and torches and, I don't know, some harvest containers. It's a place to try to keep, I don't know, I try to keep all the drip tape fittings in here and the plastic mulches and built some-
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:48):
[inaudible 00:11:48] accessible.
Jacob Mills (00:11:48):
... storage racks for plumbing and electrical and, yeah, just try to keep things somewhat-
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:54):
No, it-
Jacob Mills (00:11:55):
... organized. It works.
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:56):
... it's motivating, honestly. This is a very useful space.
Jacob Mills (00:12:00):
Yeah, all of this shit was in there and it was driving me nuts. It was just too much.
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:00):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:12:06):
I kind of wanted to have that be more just like food grade where we'd just wash and pack. I didn't want a bunch of other-
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:13):
Keep the food in the food and the-
Jacob Mills (00:12:14):
... yeah, exactly.
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:15):
... fuels and-
Jacob Mills (00:12:17):
Yeah, all the oil and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:18):
... tools and everything, yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:12:19):
... yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:20):
No, that's-
Jacob Mills (00:12:21):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:22):
... makes me want to ship a container to clean stuff out of the barn.
Jacob Mills (00:12:27):
It was just like the cheapest thing. It was going to be cheaper than building something. I could move it if I wanted. It was just like... I think I spent... It was 4,000 bucks and I had a couple hundred bucks in the materials. I kind of had the stuff for the shelves and it's just a place to keep things kind of high and dry-
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:44):
Yeah, and then-
Jacob Mills (00:12:45):
... so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:45):
... and you're done.
Jacob Mills (00:12:46):
... yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:48):
Four grand and it's ready to use. You're done.
Jacob Mills (00:12:49):
Exactly. They dropped it off and I could start filling it more or less.
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:52):
You could build some shelves, spend a hundred bucks on a couple LED light strips and then you got-
Jacob Mills (00:12:52):
I know, I need to get-
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:52):
... a really nice workshop here.
Jacob Mills (00:12:59):
... some lights. We can go out here. This field was... It used to be pretty wet. We put some drainage in it and did some work to it. It used to kind of look like... It was just kind of a low-lying pasture more or less. I would say it's filled with strawberries more or less right now. It's just two plantings, two years worth, so half of it is two years. Well, this will be the second year and it'll be the first year picking for those berries.
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:36):
Half an acre?
Jacob Mills (00:13:37):
It's almost an acre-
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:38):
Almost an-
Jacob Mills (00:13:40):
... of berries. A little shy of an acre, but it's pretty close.
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:42):
... yep.
Jacob Mills (00:13:42):
I think it's about 12,000 plants give or take.
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:47):
Matted row?
Jacob Mills (00:13:50):
Plasticulture.
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:51):
It is plasticulture. Okay. Just covered with straw right now?
Jacob Mills (00:13:52):
Yeah, with weed mat in between.
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:54):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:13:55):
I have grown strawberries for four years and I go back and forth if I want to keep growing them or not.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:03):
Yeah, every strawberry grower kind of is like that-
Jacob Mills (00:14:07):
But-
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:07):
... back and forth.
Jacob Mills (00:14:08):
... the first year I didn't have good luck with them. The second year, I did plastic, weed mat, and strawed them like this.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:15):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:14:15):
I had really good luck. The third year, I didn't straw them and it wasn't good. All the berries were sitting on the plastic and wherever they touched the plastic they wanted to rot.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:25):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:14:27):
The straw helps protect them in the winter, but also gives them a really nice medium to sit on when they start fruiting.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:35):
Right, right.
Jacob Mills (00:14:35):
Is almost more so than protecting them in the winter is what I've found.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:41):
Just the cool softness of the straw.
Jacob Mills (00:14:43):
Yeah. It's really nice when you're picking, too, in the rows. The weed mat's not bad, but it's nice when you're picking. It's just clean. It's easy. It doesn't do much for weed control at all. I don't grow them organically, but we don't really spray them at all. I try to rotate the fields and I do some mustard fumigation-
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:05):
Oh.
Jacob Mills (00:15:05):
... before we plant.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:06):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:15:07):
I've been trying to or experimenting with it. Yeah, this is the first year on this field, so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:15):
They plugs or bare root?
Jacob Mills (00:15:17):
Bare root from Norse Farm. Yep, just a variety of different from early to late season.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:23):
In regular plastic or bioplastic?
Jacob Mills (00:15:25):
Regular.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:25):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:15:26):
Yeah. I've thought about going to 8-mil bio, but I'm trying to get two or three years out of them and the bio just doesn't hold up.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:34):
Sure. Yeah. No, it's designed not to.
Jacob Mills (00:15:37):
Yeah-
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:37):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:15:38):
... so no, the weed control is pretty good. If you do a good job laying the plastic and putting the weed mat down, there is very little weeding that goes along with it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:46):
Yeah, I like that.
Jacob Mills (00:15:48):
The hardest thing with growing these is clipping runners, keeping up with the runners on them throughout the summer. I normally don't plant them till like the 4th of July-
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:00):
Yeah, that's pretty cool-
Jacob Mills (00:16:01):
... so we'll wait out.
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:03):
... just to kind of help delay and all of that.
Jacob Mills (00:16:04):
Yeah, and if you plant them a lot earlier than that, they get too big because you only want three crowns from what I've been told going into that first summer. Then, the second year or the third year they're in the ground, there are like five, six, seven, eight crowns, and then I normally just, yeah, tear them, dig them up.
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:27):
How are you holding the landscape fabric down or weed mat down? Staples?
Jacob Mills (00:16:31):
Ground staples. Yeah. Had these, there's a couple different kinds. These, just the single ones.
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:37):
Oh, interesting. I haven't seen those.
Jacob Mills (00:16:38):
They don't work great. I wouldn't recommend them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:42):
I haven't seen them, don't want to.
Jacob Mills (00:16:43):
No, they're fine. If they're rusty, they're okay, but when they're new, they don't hold down quite well enough-
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:48):
Yeah, fair enough.
Jacob Mills (00:16:50):
... but just the 8-inch, I don't know, the 8-inch ground staples.
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:54):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:16:58):
Yeah, so hopefully these will turn out all right this year.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:03):
Yeah. Well-
Jacob Mills (00:17:03):
I'm-
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:04):
... they're [inaudible 00:17:05]-
Jacob Mills (00:17:05):
... hoping to do a lot-
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:05):
... the spring, but [inaudible 00:17:06]-
Jacob Mills (00:17:06):
... pick your own on this.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:07):
... yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:17:08):
We direct and wholesale a little bit, but I have found that picking your own is where it's at with strawberries.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:18):
You've been doing pick your own this-
Jacob Mills (00:17:19):
A little bit-
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:20):
... [inaudible 00:17:20].
Jacob Mills (00:17:20):
... yeah. The past couple of years we've done it and had an all right turn out.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:23):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:17:23):
It'll be a lot years in the past, they've been in the field up the road from here and it's been hard because it's like someone has to be up there, so if they're down here, it'll be pretty nice. They can go to the farmstand way. Everything will be kind of here. It'll be a lot easier to manage down here than up the road, so yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:46):
Sweet.
Jacob Mills (00:17:46):
Time will tell.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:47):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:17:47):
Yeah. It's always an experiment.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:50):
A nice draining field here with a little bit of a slope.
Jacob Mills (00:17:53):
Yeah. It used to be, it looked kind of like that. There was a bunch of little shrubs starting to grow up in it. It wasn't great and part of that, the spring is about 500 feet kind of up that way, so it all gravities down to here and part of putting that spring in, we put a ditch along the top side and made this field so it's tillable-
Andy Chamberlin (00:18:16):
Yeah-
Jacob Mills (00:18:16):
... or workable.
Andy Chamberlin (00:18:17):
... revived it again. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:18:19):
Yeah. Yeah. The other nice thing about this refrigeration unit is is it doesn't put any heat in the building. It was a little more expensive to have the exterior unit, but it was well worth it. This is a chunk of asparagus. It doesn't look like much in between these two greenhouses. It's kind of a weedy mess. It has been.
Andy Chamberlin (00:18:44):
Asparagus always seems to be.
Jacob Mills (00:18:45):
We're working on it. I don't know if we'll ever get them controlled, but yeah. This greenhouse was the third one I built. We do some tulips for cut flowers.
Andy Chamberlin (00:18:56):
Oh.
Jacob Mills (00:18:57):
We try to get them for Easter. I don't know if we're going to get it this year or not, but regardless they will move.
Andy Chamberlin (00:19:03):
Easter moves around the spring, moves around.
Jacob Mills (00:19:05):
Yeah. It's never an issue selling them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:19:09):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:19:09):
The other nice thing about tulips is they hold really well in the walk-in.
Andy Chamberlin (00:19:13):
Oh.
Jacob Mills (00:19:13):
They will hold-
Andy Chamberlin (00:19:14):
I hadn't thought that.
Jacob Mills (00:19:14):
... like a couple weeks almost in the walk-in if you pick them before they're open. Yeah, some rows of spinach. That's the first planting of lettuce we have done. Planted that a few days ago. We'll pretty much do planting once a week from here on out.
Andy Chamberlin (00:19:14):
Really?
Jacob Mills (00:19:32):
Yeah. This is all Salanova in the spring. I pretty much just grow Salanova in these greenhouses.
Andy Chamberlin (00:19:39):
How are you planting that? Transplants? Direct seed?
Jacob Mills (00:19:44):
Transplants, yeah. We grow them in... We start them in 10x20 trays and in the greenhouses we just transplant them. It doesn't take that long to do a row. It takes about 12 trays to do a row, so 10 trays. Yeah, and so this next week we'll plant. We'll do another planting in here and you'll see in the other greenhouses I direct seed spinach, carrots, beet greens in the greenhouses.
Andy Chamberlin (00:20:21):
You're making these beds with the BCS?
Jacob Mills (00:20:24):
Yeah. I never used to and I got one a couple years ago and it saves a lot of time. I don't know if it's my favorite thing in the world, but-
Andy Chamberlin (00:20:33):
How were you doing it before?
Jacob Mills (00:20:34):
A broad fork.
Andy Chamberlin (00:20:35):
Oh. Yeah, I can see where that would save some time.
Jacob Mills (00:20:42):
Yeah. I got this used off a guy last year I think, and it's made a big difference. I actually don't till very deep either at all. I don't think it's great for the soil to till real deep. Maybe for tomatoes I will, but for greens I just spread amendments or compost or whatever we put on it and go three or four inches down and it just makes a really nice seed bed. It makes it really easy to direct seed. I use it outside a lot for direct seeded greens, too.
Andy Chamberlin (00:21:14):
Oh-
Jacob Mills (00:21:14):
I pretty much-
Andy Chamberlin (00:21:15):
... that's great.
Jacob Mills (00:21:15):
... grow everything on... all our greens on 30-inch beds and use a quick-cut harvester to harvest them. For now, that's kind of what works well.
Andy Chamberlin (00:21:28):
Then, once the spinach comes out in a few more weeks, will this turn to tomatoes?
Jacob Mills (00:21:33):
Yeah. This one will probably end up being cucumbers.
Andy Chamberlin (00:21:36):
Yeah. I was just seeing all the strings. That made me think of it.
Jacob Mills (00:21:39):
Yeah. This was tomatoes last year-
Andy Chamberlin (00:21:42):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:21:43):
... cucumbers, too. All the cucumbers in the greenhouse grow up. We have the tomatoes started, but they're not... We normally try to plan them beginning of April. This year probably would be fine pouring the heat into these, but-
Andy Chamberlin (00:21:57):
Yeah, right.
Jacob Mills (00:21:58):
... you don't know. It's kind of a gamble really.
Andy Chamberlin (00:22:01):
Now, I will say you're a unique one in having we'll call it a bit of a head house attached to the greenhouse or a little garage shed space. How has that been? [inaudible 00:22:15]-
Jacob Mills (00:22:15):
It's pretty nice. Normally it's just full of stuff, but I've been trying to get it cleaned out and have it so it's decent. That was part of the reason for getting that storage containers. Everything ended up being in here. Sometimes it's hard to control the moisture. I don't like leaving equipment in here and stuff, but we leave compost and the fertilizers seem to be fine if we keep them covered. It's just nice to have a little extra storage. It made it so there was more growing space in the greenhouse. It seems like a lot of them, you just end up using the first 10, 12 to 10 feet for working space. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:22:52):
Mm-hmm. What was your intent when you built that? Just for this sort of catchall space?
Jacob Mills (00:22:59):
Well, I was originally going to use this as kind of a prop house and then it never really panned out that way. We just grew in the ground and it's just kind of been just to have a little space. When I built this, there wasn't the... I didn't have the wash/pack building. There was no space really under cover down here, so we just needed a little shed, really, to put stuff in and even in the summer just to get out of cover if it's really raining and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:23:29):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:23:30):
... so it was kind of this is like a space to potentially use, but it's worked well. We had the shelves and I stored stuff in here.
Andy Chamberlin (00:23:42):
You can't have too much covered space.
Jacob Mills (00:23:44):
No, no. I'd eventually... I don't know what I'm going to do with it. Eventually I'd like to have it kind of cleaned out and it works pretty well in the summer. We have it open. When we're harvesting stuff, it's pretty nice. We can back the Gator right into here and load stuff into it and it works pretty well for that.
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:01):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:24:02):
It's not sealed up quite as well as it should be. I'd like to insulate it a little bit or just air seal it at some point. All in good time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:12):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:24:13):
This greenhouse I had, they're all Wedgewoods, but that one is a standard height, so it's a little lower. I've had Ed build these ones a foot higher for me. Sometimes it's a little difficult, but I like how it gives you a little more room walking down the side of them. I think having a bigger mass of air helps with your just like temperature control sometimes.
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:43):
What part of being taller makes it more difficult?
Jacob Mills (00:24:46):
Putting strings out.
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:48):
Oh yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:24:49):
Just like working in them a little bit when they're low, they're pretty easy to reach and just handle-
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:55):
Right-
Jacob Mills (00:24:55):
... in a sense.
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:55):
... of course, you're 6'2". I'm on a ladder as it is.
Jacob Mills (00:25:01):
Yeah. This is the second greenhouse we built. This is number two in a sense. Has spinach in it. It's kind of... it's on its way out. We're still picking it, but a lot of the spinach we handpick. It's... Yeah, I don't know. I've never had great luck cutting it, to be honest. Outside of... I've got it so we can cut it every once in a while, but...
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:26):
Like with the quick-cut?
Jacob Mills (00:25:27):
... with the green cutter, yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:31):
It's... See, that extra foot of height just makes it feel a lot bigger.
Jacob Mills (00:25:35):
Yeah. No, I don't know. I kind of... He was fine with doing it. It just makes the ground posts a foot taller.
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:42):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:25:43):
It's a little more difficult building it, too. Not a lot, but it's definitely a little higher.
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:48):
Like you said, just putting in all those bolts are now they're not at shoulder level. They're at head level.
Jacob Mills (00:25:56):
Yeah. This is the fifth one. I built this last year and it's, I don't know, it's a work in progress. I planted this spinach last fall. It didn't germinate great. I don't know if it was seed or a water issue. Kind of all the above. It's pretty wet down that end of the greenhouse. It doesn't drain real well.
Andy Chamberlin (00:26:26):
Yeah, it looks wet in here, or were you're just irrigating?
Jacob Mills (00:26:28):
Yeah, I had the water on since this morning, but there's some spinach coming. Like I said, it's kind of inconsistent. There's kind of a nasty weed in here and I don't really know what it is. It's this down here. Probably going to cover it all up at some point just like this, but I think it's a crest of some sort. It's like a watercrest.
Andy Chamberlin (00:26:54):
Oh, this under your feet?
Jacob Mills (00:26:54):
Yeah, like that. You see, it's nasty. It has a thick root system-
Andy Chamberlin (00:27:01):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:27:03):
... but besides that, the weeds aren't terrible in here for the most part. This house is really deficient on nitrogen. I put a lot of compost in here and it wasn't, well, it was kind of homemade compost and it still had a lot of organic matter in it, so it hadn't broken down, so I'm hoping over the next couple of years it will-
Andy Chamberlin (00:27:29):
Even out a little bit?
Jacob Mills (00:27:30):
... yeah. We've taken soil samples and it's just deficient on nitrogen. It has a lot of... All the other nutrients and minerals are there, which is pretty easy to supplement really. Yeah, this one will probably... will end up pretty much in these greenhouses. We grow tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer. That's about it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:27:55):
And overwintered spinach.
Jacob Mills (00:27:56):
Yeah, and we'll do greens early on. I've grown peppers in them in the past, but I haven't had good luck with it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:05):
No?
Jacob Mills (00:28:05):
No, so I'm going to grow them outside this year. I'm going to grow them on black plastic and try to get them started early. I might even put a row cover over them. We'll see how if it keeps acting like this, we're not going to have to, but-
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:18):
Yeah, right.
Jacob Mills (00:28:19):
... yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:21):
I like that door.
Jacob Mills (00:28:21):
Yeah, I got it... My uncle was getting rid of it and I took it from him.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:30):
It's classy-
Jacob Mills (00:28:31):
Yeah, it's-
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:31):
... for a greenhouse door.
Jacob Mills (00:28:32):
... it's nice.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:33):
It [inaudible 00:28:33].
Jacob Mills (00:28:33):
It doesn't rot. He had two of them. This one has one, too.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:37):
Commercial grade, aluminum glass door.
Jacob Mills (00:28:39):
They came out of a bank, actually, I think. That's why it has this. You can tell how... If someone's stealing from the bank, you can tell-
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:39):
Oh yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:28:46):
... how tall they are.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:47):
Get a height measurement. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:28:50):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:51):
You're going to put a big door there? Is that the plan?
Jacob Mills (00:28:54):
I'd like to, I think.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:55):
[inaudible 00:28:55].
Jacob Mills (00:28:56):
I'm unsure, but yeah, I'd really like to put roll-up doors on the end to all these, but it's just-
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:02):
Like a garage door or plastic roll-up?
Jacob Mills (00:29:04):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:04):
Or-
Jacob Mills (00:29:05):
No, like a garage or a metal roll-up door. Just something. Something that seals up well. This one down here, we put sliders on and I can't get them to seal up very well. I have a fair amount of work that all of these... It seems like there's a lot of maintenance on greenhouses.
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:05):
Well, yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:29:24):
Just keeping the blower fans going, keeping... We had a bad hailstorm here last summer and ever since that, none of the greenhouse have stayed inflated very well. It didn't rip the plastic, but I think it-
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:24):
I'm sure it did.
Jacob Mills (00:29:39):
... made enough little holes in it where they just... See this one kind of peppered. No, but see how it won't stay nicely.
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:47):
Oh yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:29:48):
See how they're not like... They should be like-
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:50):
They should be tall-
Jacob Mills (00:29:50):
... full, full like tight, and none of them... Since we've had that hail storm, I can't get any of them to stay tight, so that one-
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:57):
Weird.
Jacob Mills (00:29:57):
... doesn't have a fan in it, but this greenhouse, we're getting ready for tomatoes. This will be... We're going to plan tomatoes in this. Like I said, in the beginning of April, we got the drip tapes pulled out. We just weed mat in between the tomatoes. I don't plant them in plastic or anything. We put them directly in the ground and then just weed mat right tight to them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:30:20):
Right to them, yeah, in a single row.
Jacob Mills (00:30:21):
It works pretty well, yeah. Yeah, it works. We do-
Andy Chamberlin (00:30:23):
That's how we do it, too.
Jacob Mills (00:30:24):
... yeah, we do a single row every foot. We plant them every foot and I don't... We don't graft either.
Andy Chamberlin (00:30:32):
No.
Jacob Mills (00:30:32):
We haven't had to, really. I pretty much preload all the beds. These are some carrots that never made it last fall. I don't know if they're going to. We've been giving them a little water, but I don't think they're going to really ever amount to anything.
Andy Chamberlin (00:30:47):
They just didn't size up?
Jacob Mills (00:30:48):
No, they're still small.
Andy Chamberlin (00:30:51):
Kind of ugly.
Jacob Mills (00:30:52):
I planted them late summer and you're supposed to harvest them around Christmastime is the goal, but that didn't happen. The propane furnaces, they will keep these houses warm unless it gets really cold out if they're sealed up pretty well.
Andy Chamberlin (00:31:08):
Are you using those to heat the tunnels? Or are you mainly using them for early season protection?
Jacob Mills (00:31:17):
No, when we plant tomatoes in here, it stays at 60.
Andy Chamberlin (00:31:20):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:31:21):
It stays about 60 all the time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:31:22):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:31:23):
If you don't keep it above 60, it's hardly worth even putting any heat into them. In the winter, or not in the winter, in the fall, we'll use them if we have a lot of greens in here and it's going to get real cold, I'll just set it at like 35 just to kind of protect them a little bit if necessary, but not much. I normally just use them for tomatoes in the spring is the main [inaudible 00:31:46].
Andy Chamberlin (00:31:46):
When are you trying to get those planted in?
Jacob Mills (00:31:49):
Beginning of April. I probably, I don't know, I'd go back and forth about pushing it early. I don't have any heat in the ground, and I think where we are, if I don't have any heat in the ground, I can't them in much before that just because your soil temperature's not there, and your soil temp isn't there, it's pointless of heating the air really.
Andy Chamberlin (00:32:09):
Yeah, and we got cold, wet feet that are not going to want to go and you can't heat the ground very well within-
Jacob Mills (00:32:15):
No.
Andy Chamberlin (00:32:16):
... hot air.
Jacob Mills (00:32:17):
Eventually, I'd like to bury lines and heat the soil in one of these. I'm looking at building another greenhouse this summer. I think I want to go with a Harnois, and I'll like to put ground heat in that and a good-sized furnace and potentially plant tomatoes in the beginning of March. Have them in early March like now-
Andy Chamberlin (00:32:47):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:32:50):
... would be the goal and get tomatoes to market early because I could sell them that. I think I have the markets for them, so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:32:57):
I haven't heard of people regretting a decision on a Harnois.
Jacob Mills (00:33:01):
No. Don't get me wrong. These are really nice. I like them. They're easy to put together, but the Harnois are just a little... I'd kind of like to try one. I want to see how they are. The one I'm looking at's 35 by 160.
Andy Chamberlin (00:33:16):
That's a big one.
Jacob Mills (00:33:17):
Yeah. My biggest reason of going with it is there's not wooden baseboards. They give you all the baseboards are metal and a material that doesn't decay over time. Where the plastic connects is the same thing. I want a roof vent in it. and they give you kits for the end wall. There's no wood in it. It's all metal and that's the biggest reason is they just have all those options really. I've seen a couple that I like the looks of. They're also, I've been talking to the guy, they're shaped a little different, too. It's more of an oval than a gable or a hip, but we'll see. Who knows? I don't know. The price point of them is a lot.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:09):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:34:09):
A lot more. I don't know.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:12):
Are all these NRCS-funded?
Jacob Mills (00:34:14):
Yeah. Yep.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:15):
Do they a have a cap on how much they cover?
Jacob Mills (00:34:17):
Yeah, it's a square footage cost.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:20):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:34:21):
They'll give you... It's all square footage.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:23):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:34:23):
I'm still a beginning farmer, so if you're a beginning farmer, they have different standards I guess you could say that they have different pay prices on-
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:33):
Oh, okay.
Jacob Mills (00:34:33):
... a little bit. It's not a lot different, but I think a beginning farmer's 10 years more or less.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:39):
Right, right, by definition.
Jacob Mills (00:34:41):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:41):
Have you gotten a tunnel every year essentially?
Jacob Mills (00:34:46):
Every year, but last year, yep. The guy who I used to deal with there was awesome. He was really good to deal with and he retired. Then, the new woman is... yeah, she's good. I've had a good relationship with her and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:03):
That's good.
Jacob Mills (00:35:04):
... it's just different, you know? It's-
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:05):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:35:05):
... change, which is fine. It happens.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:09):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:35:10):
She's actually working with me a lot. She got me funding to put automatic roll-up sides on them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:16):
Oh really?
Jacob Mills (00:35:17):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:17):
Nice.
Jacob Mills (00:35:19):
She said there's funding to put roof vents on them, too, for energy standards because you don't have to run exhaust fans or it just helps your ventilation. It's just like energy standards. You have automatic roll-up sides, it helps with energy in a sense. It's more efficient.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:36):
Right, because it's a low-powered motor you're using to regulate your temperature rather than a high-powered exhaust fan.
Jacob Mills (00:35:42):
Exactly.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:42):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Jacob Mills (00:35:44):
Yeah, so I'm pretty excited for that. I'm going to put automatic roll-up sides on all these this summer and that will make my life a lot easier.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:51):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:35:52):
When the weather sucks, it's miserable to run around and I only have five of them and it still it's a pain run around and open and close them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:59):
Even if you have one, it's not-
Jacob Mills (00:36:00):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:36:01):
... a joy when the thunder's coming.
Jacob Mills (00:36:03):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. They all have... The sensors I've been looking into have wind and weather sensors, so if it gets over a certain... if it's too windy, the sides shut down.
Andy Chamberlin (00:36:14):
Even just running over and hitting close.
Jacob Mills (00:36:16):
Yep. Yeah. No, I'm pretty excited for that. I'm sick of these bars, just rolling them up and down. I was talking to the guy up at the Harnois and I don't remember the company, but he said that there's a company that deals with ventilation, automatic roll-up sides, and vents and roof vents. They will rent you the controller for $30 a month. They send you all the equipment to put the roll-up sides on, the controller. They send it all to you for a greenhouse for 30 bucks a month. I don't know, it's something... He said that it's a great program for the from Harnois, the sales rep that I've been talking to.
Andy Chamberlin (00:37:00):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:37:01):
It sounds like... I guess if you had 10 of them, it'd be 300 bucks a month, but he also said if anything breaks, you send it back to him. When you're done, you send it back to them and, I don't know, I'm interested in it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:37:13):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:37:14):
We'll see. I'm going to look into it, but if there's funding, I'm probably not going to do it. I'll just own the stuff and if it breaks, you deal with it, I guess. This is the oldest greenhouse. This one was build in '17, '16-
Andy Chamberlin (00:37:32):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:37:34):
... somewhere in there. I have spinach in these four beds I planted just the other day. This is where we used to wash and pack everything kind of on this end, and I sort of worked on digging up the stone-
Andy Chamberlin (00:37:47):
Aah.
Jacob Mills (00:37:48):
... and sort of trying to revamp it a little bit.
Andy Chamberlin (00:37:50):
Get some growing space back?
Jacob Mills (00:37:51):
Yeah, but yeah, we used to wash and pack everything in here. Had a little three tubs and I don't know, it was miserable. It was hot. A lot of these are very, very hot in here. I don't know, I've been looking into some other ways that irrigating, too, rather than drip tape, especially for greens. I don't know, sometimes I have mixed feelings about it, how well it actually works.
Andy Chamberlin (00:38:18):
For greens, yeah, especially.
Jacob Mills (00:38:19):
It's nice, it's efficient, but it's just sometimes I feel as though it's a little inconsistent, even with three rows per bed, but this greenhouse has been a little bit of a struggle with weeds. Yeah, and these doors are awesome in the summer, but I can't get them to seal up well.
Andy Chamberlin (00:38:37):
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:38:41):
On the sides there's always a gap. Even I'm sure I could spend some time and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:38:47):
About like that.
Jacob Mills (00:38:49):
... it's just kind of, I don't know.
Andy Chamberlin (00:38:51):
It's fine.
Jacob Mills (00:38:52):
Yeah, they're big. They're on the inside. You can open them in the wintertime because they don't seal up super tight, which is nice.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:00):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:39:01):
I'm not trying to heat this one real early in the spring and stuff either, so it's pretty decent. This is kind of... and this one... Well, garden area, really. We grow a fair amount of the greens here. It's close, it's easy. I'm probably going to cover crop most of this this year. It's getting... It just has some weed pressure and there's some weird diseases going on. I don't know. Not like nothing that's bothering greens, but I planted some cut flowers over there and some sunflowers and it really made a... They had like this weird mildew on it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:40):
Oh, weird.
Jacob Mills (00:39:41):
I don't know. We've been growing stuff down here for a long, long time and it always just gets manured and/or composted and they never really have cover cropped it, so it needs a rest.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:53):
Yeah. Is the shade from those trees a challenge in these beds?
Jacob Mills (00:40:00):
No, not really. In the summertime it's not bad.
Andy Chamberlin (00:40:03):
That's good.
Jacob Mills (00:40:05):
The worst thing is over there, there's some tamarack trees and in the fall the needles come off them and I can't plant greens over there in the fall because the needles just cover them all. Yeah, they do. They fill it. You'll go to wash them and it's just like frigging tamarack needles everywhere.
Andy Chamberlin (00:40:21):
Huh.
Jacob Mills (00:40:22):
Yeah, originally this garden stopped at the edge of that greenhouse right there. This was kind of junkyard more or less that my uncle had down here. There was some trees growing up in it. Most of where these greenhouses are looked like that.
Andy Chamberlin (00:40:40):
Woods.
Jacob Mills (00:40:40):
Yeah, and it was just kind of like cut a long time ago and it's starting to grow up. I had it stumped and it just slowly kind of cover cropped it and tried to build soil more or less.
Andy Chamberlin (00:40:56):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:40:57):
Yeah, this soil is awesome. It's really it's probably saturated as all hell right now, but it's really fertile. You see it's kind of a heavy, I don't know, it holds water really well. It's [inaudible 00:41:15].
Andy Chamberlin (00:41:17):
What did you roll over this with last? It's got an interesting pattern to it.
Jacob Mills (00:41:23):
Well, there's a roller on the back of the rototiller I have-
Andy Chamberlin (00:41:26):
Oh, okay.
Jacob Mills (00:41:28):
... kind of makes it... It's like a packer. I don't know if a packer... I don't even know what... It's a roller. I'll show it to you. It's kind of interesting. It just sort of rolls and it does make a cool pattern.
Andy Chamberlin (00:41:41):
Where's the next tunnel going to go?
Jacob Mills (00:41:42):
I don't know. That's one of my biggest issues. I don't really know. I would really like to start clearing these trees at some point over here. I don't want them to grow up and shade all of this.
Andy Chamberlin (00:41:56):
That's true. Yeah, yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:41:58):
It's kind of what I'm concerned about. Every year-
Andy Chamberlin (00:41:58):
Give yourself a bigger cover.
Jacob Mills (00:41:59):
... they get bigger and bigger.
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:01):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:42:04):
Yeah, I don't know. I'd like to do something for a little bridge on this brook and, to be honest, I'd love to put it over there, but it's just, I don't know, it's just going to be a feat trying to get power and water and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:17):
Across the brook now.
Jacob Mills (00:42:18):
... yeah, and everything over there and, I don't know. Getting it all stumped in the soil, fertility up is a lot, a multi-year-
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:28):
Yeah, it doesn't happen-
Jacob Mills (00:42:29):
... many-
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:29):
... fast.
Jacob Mills (00:42:29):
... many effort. Yeah, I don't know. I've kind of slowly grown over the years.
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:41):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:42:43):
My uncle, he owns a store down the road and he buys a lot of stuff from us. I have an uncle that has a restaurant down in New London, New Hampshire, and he will take whatever we have-
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:58):
Oh.
Jacob Mills (00:42:59):
... so that's pretty nice, especially if it's not like great looking stuff. It can be kind of seconds or ugly or I don't know.
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:07):
He'll take it.
Jacob Mills (00:43:07):
Yeah. He takes it and it's like I said, they have a pretty busy restaurant, so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:11):
Are those your primary markets?
Jacob Mills (00:43:13):
... and the farmstand. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:15):
Farmstand, store, and a restaurant.
Jacob Mills (00:43:16):
Yeah. We sell some to local restaurants, too. I don't want to get into big wholesale. I don't think there's any money in it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:29):
Right. I mean, you essentially got to cut your prices in half.
Jacob Mills (00:43:33):
Yeah. I don't know. I've really... I wholesale some. My uncle has treated us or treats us really well.
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:44):
Fairly.
Jacob Mills (00:43:44):
Yeah, and it's a good working relationship, you know?
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:45):
Mm-hmm.
Jacob Mills (00:43:51):
Yeah, I've tried the wholesale some and I've thought about dealing with some distributors, but I just don't... I don't know. I don't-
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:59):
If you can do it direct retail-
Jacob Mills (00:44:01):
I'd rather just-
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:02):
... by all means.
Jacob Mills (00:44:02):
... build the market right around here than try to have... I don't know.
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:08):
Do you have much... Are there many other vegetable farms in this area?
Jacob Mills (00:44:13):
Not much. There's-
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:14):
It doesn't seem-
Jacob Mills (00:44:14):
... Joe's Brook Farm.
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:15):
... yeah. It doesn't seem like a ton.
Jacob Mills (00:44:16):
No, that's pretty much it. To be honest, there is not a farmstand from St. Jay to Montpelier on this road. There's not, even if you keep going past, there's not much in St. Jay either-
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:29):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:44:30):
... and this is a busy, busy road.
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:32):
Yeah it is.
Jacob Mills (00:44:33):
In the summer, I don't know, I'd eventually like to build a new farmstand and kind of develop that a little more. I think it could do a lot more than it's doing now-
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:43):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:44:44):
... but we'll see. All in good time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:47):
When did you get started? How long have you been doing this?
Jacob Mills (00:44:51):
Full-time since 2018, '19, '18 and '19 full time. It was kind of a part-time thing. I mainly when I was doing it part-time grew pumpkins and corn, some squash, kind of the simpler, easier things more or less. Then, it's kind of slowly diversified into more produce-
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:19):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:45:20):
... Which is good. I like growing tomatoes. We grow a fair amount of garlic, tomatoes, or garlic onions, I don't know, maker of potatoes.
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:34):
That's quite a bit.
Jacob Mills (00:45:35):
Yeah, I think we do about-
Speaker 5 (00:45:37):
Yeah, might as well do [inaudible 00:45:38]-
Jacob Mills (00:45:37):
... 15, 20 acres.
Speaker 5 (00:45:39):
... [inaudible 00:45:39].
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:39):
Really?
Jacob Mills (00:45:40):
Yeah, with everything.
Speaker 5 (00:45:42):
Well, I don't have to drive to [inaudible 00:45:43]-
Jacob Mills (00:45:43):
Then, some cover cropping.
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:45):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:45:46):
This was another. There was a couple-acre field up here-
Speaker 5 (00:45:49):
That's normally [inaudible 00:45:52]-
Jacob Mills (00:45:52):
... that was-
Speaker 5 (00:45:53):
... [inaudible 00:45:53].
Jacob Mills (00:45:54):
... yeah, that was wooded more or less. It kind of looked like that, too, that we cleared off. Just kind of pasture. There's a horse farm down the road I get all this horse shit from-
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:04):
Aah.
Jacob Mills (00:46:07):
... which is good, but it takes a long time for it to break down-
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:10):
Uh-huh.
Jacob Mills (00:46:10):
... but you can see there's a mountain of it. This is about one year's worth.
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:17):
Wow. A year that you utilize? Or a year's worth-
Jacob Mills (00:46:18):
No, this is-
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:18):
... from them?
Jacob Mills (00:46:23):
... this is a year's worth of shit from them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:26):
That's a lot of hay.
Jacob Mills (00:46:28):
Yeah, a ton.
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:33):
Yeah. That's many, many loads.
Jacob Mills (00:46:34):
I don't know. I'm kind of hoping to get it composted and broke down pretty well because if I put too much on the field, there's nothing. It sucks all the nitrogen out of it. There's too much organic matter. There's too much carbon in it and it steals all the nitrogen. Yeah, my cousin, he grows cow corn in this field up here, but this field is kind of all vegetables, kind of junkyard of stuff up here. Yeah, we normally grow brassicas up here, broccoli, cauliflower, quite a few Brussels.
Andy Chamberlin (00:47:12):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:47:13):
Yeah. I like growing Brussel sprouts. People really like them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:47:18):
Fairly easy to grow for you?
Jacob Mills (00:47:22):
Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:47:24):
I've never grown them. They say the worst is picking them in the fall. I mean, it's cold now.
Jacob Mills (00:47:29):
Yeah. This got cover cropped in the fall. This got cover cropped at the bottom half of this.
Andy Chamberlin (00:47:38):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:47:38):
Well, no, for most of last year.
Andy Chamberlin (00:47:40):
Oh, oh, oh, I see.
Jacob Mills (00:47:43):
This, I'd picked more rocks out of this field. It's kind of... They just seem to keep growing.
Andy Chamberlin (00:47:50):
Yeah, they do. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:47:51):
It doesn't stop. Every year I pick rocks and pick rocks and pick rocks and it's getting a little better. You can see this ditch is... it's pretty much full of rocks from this field. I kind of smoothed it up a fair amount. too. It was a lot more wavy just going over it. It sort of levels it out eventually. Yeah, this was some cabbage and broccoli and I don't know, it stinks.
Andy Chamberlin (00:47:51):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:47:51):
Smell it?
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:18):
It does. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:48:21):
I'm bioplastic.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:22):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:48:24):
I'm not certified organic.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:25):
Yep.
Jacob Mills (00:48:26):
I've thought about it, a lot of things. Pretty much everything we do is organic.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:31):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:48:32):
The only thing I don't grow organically is corn, I guess, because I don't have a lot of desire to.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:37):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:48:39):
Not so much for the spraying and the... More so for the fertilizer end of it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:43):
Right.
Jacob Mills (00:48:44):
I built a flame weeder last year,
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:46):
Oh yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:48:47):
I go to find the tractor, her sorn in it, and actually, it worked pretty well-
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:52):
Interesting.
Jacob Mills (00:48:53):
... this year.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:56):
Was it scary going through the corn with the torches?
Jacob Mills (00:49:00):
The first time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:49:00):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:49:01):
Yeah, you look back and think you fried it all. It's all limp. The next day, you go back and the center keeps growing right out of it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:49:10):
That's awesome.
Jacob Mills (00:49:11):
Yeah, It took me a little while to figure it out, what to do. It doesn't take long to kill the weeds. You can move right along with the flamer. If anything, I get kind of more nervous about the propane tank hooked to the back of the tractor blowing up, but-
Andy Chamberlin (00:49:28):
Yeah. Yeah, that's not exactly a-
Jacob Mills (00:49:32):
... no, it's not bad-
Andy Chamberlin (00:49:34):
... [inaudible 00:49:34].
Jacob Mills (00:49:34):
... it's not as bad as I thought, this was storage carrots this fall. We hd a pretty goo crop out of there. I don't know exactly how much we got, but you can see the rocks.
Andy Chamberlin (00:49:46):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:49:47):
I'd-
Andy Chamberlin (00:49:48):
[inaudible 00:49:48] pop up [inaudible 00:49:49].
Jacob Mills (00:49:48):
... go through and lift them. I don't have a harvester or anything. We just go through and lift them. Actually went through with the lawnmower and mowed the tops off, and then lifted them and we just dug them and put them in the barrels, which worked pretty well really. That's this field.
Andy Chamberlin (00:50:05):
It's kind of-
Jacob Mills (00:50:07):
Like I said, this was kind of a pasture sort of, kind of looked like not quite as bad as the high side, but that's kind of what it more or less what it looked like. Yeah, it's been a lot trying to, not a lot, but it's been interesting growing this little farm and utilizing land that potentially couldn't be used for bigger dairy farms in a sense, or a lot of like... You can grow a lot of food on a small chunk of land.
Andy Chamberlin (00:50:37):
Yeah. What made you want to grow vegetables?
Jacob Mills (00:50:42):
I don't know. I'd always kind of had a little, I don't know, like knack for it. My Dad just... he always grew, had a pretty good-sized garden-
Andy Chamberlin (00:50:56):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:50:58):
... and he kind of was growing vegetables on a real small scale with the farmstand. I kind of just sort of tried doing a little more and, I don't know, more and more and more. The markets kind of followed it and...
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:20):
You grew it, you could sell it, so-
Jacob Mills (00:51:21):
... pretty much.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:23):
... [inaudible 00:51:23] a little more.
Jacob Mills (00:51:23):
Then, last year hit and I was wondering what the hell I was doing.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:30):
Did you have a lot of loss last year?
Jacob Mills (00:51:32):
Oh yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:33):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:51:34):
I didn't have any strawberries, corn, pumpkins.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:37):
Nothing?
Jacob Mills (00:51:38):
No.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:39):
Ooh.
Jacob Mills (00:51:40):
No, and we didn't have any greens for two months in the summer-
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:46):
Holy moly.
Jacob Mills (00:51:47):
... because they all got destroyed from the flooding and rain and hail. Yeah, it wasn't great. We had the stuff in the greenhouses last summer and some of the fall stuff. We had a decent start. Our carrot crop was pretty good. The Brussel sprouts did all right. Some of the stuff that we planted real late in the year, more of that survived. We had a hail storm here is what really did a number. I think we would have-
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:47):
I see.
Jacob Mills (00:52:19):
... been all right if it was just rain, but we had a hail storm. This is another little section. I normally just grow zucchini here or something. Here in the past, we've just done three plantings of zucchini here and it does pretty well.
(00:52:34):
We get a shitload of it, enough where we're so sick of picking it. It's good. Zucchini, I try to get it as early as we can before everyone else has it in their gardens and late. If you can have it late in the summer, it sells really well, but kind of the middle of the summer, everyone has a garden, has more freaking zucchini-
Andy Chamberlin (00:52:55):
Right, than they-
Jacob Mills (00:52:56):
... [inaudible 00:52:56]-
Andy Chamberlin (00:52:56):
... know what to do with it.
Jacob Mills (00:52:56):
... try to sell it in August and, yeah, you can't. If you can have it in September, works pretty well, even the beginning of October. It all depends when it freezes, but yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:09):
Is this all family land? What's that situation?
Jacob Mills (00:53:13):
Yeah, it was, well, my grandmother's farm. It's been in the family for six or seven generations, and when she passed, it's now in a trust-
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:26):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:53:27):
... and the grandchildren are the beneficiaries and, yeah, it's just through... There's a vesting process and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:39):
It sounds like several of you are doing stuff on the land.
Jacob Mills (00:53:42):
Yeah, pretty much. My cousin does the dairy and I've sort of diversified and started growing vegetables and doing the sugar and stuff-
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:49):
Okay-
Jacob Mills (00:53:49):
... so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:51):
... so you're doing the sugaring, too, or is that somebody else in the family?
Jacob Mills (00:53:53):
Yeah. No, I am. Yeah, we have 7 or 800 tabs.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:57):
Oh, okay.
Jacob Mills (00:53:58):
Nothing huge, but we make 3 or 400 gallons of syrup in the spring-
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:02):
Yeah, that's quite a bit.
Jacob Mills (00:54:03):
... or try to.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:04):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:54:05):
We'll see how it goes.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:06):
Is it a good year, yeah?
Jacob Mills (00:54:07):
It's just starting. It's running pretty good today.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:10):
I bet.
Jacob Mills (00:54:10):
Yeah, we're going to boil-
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:13):
Yeah, last night was-
Jacob Mills (00:54:13):
... this afternoon.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:14):
... nice and cold and it's 40s today-
Jacob Mills (00:54:16):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:16):
... so-
Jacob Mills (00:54:17):
Yeah. No, it's pretty decent. We're going to probably sooner than later fire it up and hopefully boil for a little while and probably be at it again tomorrow.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:29):
Yeah, because of the season.
Jacob Mills (00:54:31):
Yeah, but it pretty much... it all runs down to the sugar house. We could go up there if you want.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:35):
Yeah, that'd be neat, actually.
Jacob Mills (00:54:39):
All the sap runs to the sugar house and there's a couple of tree lines that are kind of their own thing, but a lot of that equipment I have isn't here. I have a shed up the road from here-
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:56):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (00:54:57):
... that I try to keep most of it in in the winter-
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:58):
Uh-huh.
Jacob Mills (00:54:59):
... but for tractors, that's pretty much what I have. I do most of it with these two tractors.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:03):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:55:05):
I don't know, sometimes for some of the bigger fields, I'll rent a tractor and a set of harrows.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:10):
Yeah. From another farm?
Jacob Mills (00:55:12):
Yeah, which doesn't work too bad.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:15):
This your rock scooping bucket?
Jacob Mills (00:55:16):
Yeah, I normally have it on when I'm rototilling.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:16):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:55:20):
I always... You hit something, you back up and-
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:23):
Back up, scoop it out-
Jacob Mills (00:55:23):
... dig it out.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:24):
... and move on.
Jacob Mills (00:55:26):
This is the rototiller. It has the roller on the back that makes that pattern.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:30):
Oh, that is not what I pictured it to be. Yeah. No, it's like a coil spring.
Jacob Mills (00:55:37):
Yeah. Well, actually it's kind of nice. It packs it down, it makes it so it's... It makes a nice kind of bed or it makes it a lot easier to work with. You can also control the depth with it really well if you don't want to till really deep.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:52):
Oh yeah. Holds it up. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:55:53):
Yeah, so that's kind of nice. A lot of the stuff I bought used or I bought this used from a guy. I didn't even know what he had it for. It'd been sitting at his house for years. I gave him, I don't know, I think two or three grand for it. Same with this. A hemp grower had this lifter and I gave him a thousand bucks for it. It was pretty much new. They just wanted it gone, so a lot of this stuff, I kind of try to just keep an eye on the internet or places and some things are worth buying new for sure, but-
Andy Chamberlin (00:56:29):
Wow. Yeah, this is a fair... I mean, there's not a lot-
Jacob Mills (00:56:32):
No, there's not.
Andy Chamberlin (00:56:32):
... there's not a lot to a lifter.
Jacob Mills (00:56:34):
No, not really. Yeah, I try to keep most all this stuff in... I have a shed up the road, but it doesn't... I don't know. We use a water rail transplanter to... Mainly, I plant garlic with it, plant onions with it. A lot of the other stuff, I don't use it a ton. I don't really like the thing. It's really hard to... By the time you set it all up, sometimes it's just you just go out there and plant the stuff. If you have a couple of people-
Andy Chamberlin (00:57:03):
You could have been done.
Jacob Mills (00:57:04):
... yeah, exactly.
Andy Chamberlin (00:57:05):
What have you got for a crew?
Jacob Mills (00:57:09):
Locals. There's me and Jackie, my girlfriend, and my folks are around some.
Andy Chamberlin (00:57:15):
Yeah. How many do you typically have in a season?
Jacob Mills (00:57:19):
Normally a couple high schoolers and two or three full-time people is kind of what it's tended to be. High schoolers are really great. Most of them are really smart kids. The trouble with it is is they go back to school in the fall when there's still a lot to do.
Andy Chamberlin (00:57:41):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:57:44):
Yeah, I've looked in the H-2A a little bit, but I don't have a place to house them, so that's my quirk with it. I think I would have them here yesterday if I had a good place to house them and stuff, but I don't-
Andy Chamberlin (00:57:58):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (00:57:59):
... is my biggest thing with it, so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:01):
Housing's such a challenge for-
Jacob Mills (00:58:02):
... yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:03):
... everybody right now.
Jacob Mills (00:58:05):
No, it's so expensive in a sense. It hard to justify it for me, especially because we're not... I don't know. Like I said, I'm not trying to wholesale a lot, so we're not... We're busy in the summer. It's a lot. Sometimes it's overwhelming, but I just don't... I don't know, for now I'm going to get by with local help.
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:26):
Yep.
Jacob Mills (00:58:27):
It is what it is really, so there's family and there's enough people around most of the time, so-
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:34):
That's good.
Jacob Mills (00:58:35):
... a lot of the time, I sometimes wish I could have someone... I do all the tractor work for the most part, and sometimes I wish I could find someone to do some of that, but it's hard, too. I don't-
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:47):
Just to lighten your load a bit?
Jacob Mills (00:58:49):
... yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:49):
Yeah, but-
Jacob Mills (00:58:51):
It works. I tend to have time for it. I've tried to mechanize some stuff to make it a little easier is the biggest thing.
Andy Chamberlin (00:59:01):
Where do you think your bottlenecks are now?
Jacob Mills (00:59:06):
I don't know. I could definitely use a bigger tractor and have just a bigger set of disc harrows would save me a ton of time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:59:15):
Ground prep?
Jacob Mills (00:59:16):
Yeah, like ground prep. I don't know. As far as seeding stuff, I definitely... We grow a lot of greens and I got to figure out direct seeding and harvesting greens and make that a little more efficient in time. It's not a huge deal, but in time it could-
Andy Chamberlin (00:59:38):
Well, it seems like you do quite a bit of greens.
Jacob Mills (00:59:40):
... yeah. Yeah. we do a fair amount. It's enough where I'd like to make it a little more efficient, but we'll see. I direct seed a fair amount of lettuce mixes and stuff outside in the summer and it works pretty well. That flame weeder has saved me a ton of time that I built because I prepped the beds and let them sit there for a week, and then I flame them off and plant them. Depending on the greens, most of them come up pretty quick, but sometimes you can flame right before they come up, too.
Andy Chamberlin (01:00:14):
What are you using for a seeder?
Jacob Mills (01:00:16):
I just use an EarthWay-
Andy Chamberlin (01:00:16):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:00:18):
... yeah, for pretty much everything, which like I said, that's kind of my biggest quirk really is... I've had pretty good luck with it, too. They're simple and they're really easy to use. I've heard a lot of people not like the EarthWay, but-
Andy Chamberlin (01:00:35):
Yeah, if it's working.
Jacob Mills (01:00:37):
... it works. I don't know. I've looked into the Jang seeders. I don't know. I've talked to a few people that like them and some people don't like them. I think for directing greens outside, I'd like something to go behind a tractor. That flame weeder has also saved me a ton of time with carrots, too, because I'll make the beds a couple weeks ahead of time and really let everything come up and I'll burn them off once or twice and then plant and burn off before they come up. I hardly weed at all with them, and with that flame weeder, I can flame weed an acre easily. It's not a big deal.
Andy Chamberlin (01:01:17):
What's the working width?
Jacob Mills (01:01:19):
Well, it's pretty adjustable. You could do a 50-inch bed with it pretty easy, but it's also I could make it... I could add onto it. The one I built, it's called a row crop flamer. It's made more for doing corn. I use it on the potatoes. I don't know. That thing has saved me a ton of time.
Andy Chamberlin (01:01:39):
Was it a kit or did you come up with it?
Jacob Mills (01:01:41):
It was a kit kind of. It was a kit from Flame Engineering-
Andy Chamberlin (01:01:45):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (01:01:46):
... and I built the toolbar, the frame of it all, and built the hitch that goes on the three-point hitch and the stands so it sits nice. I bought the tank so it all came together. I had some time into it, but I think it was a fair amount cheaper than buying the whole unit-
Andy Chamberlin (01:02:11):
Yeah-
Jacob Mills (01:02:11):
... from-
Andy Chamberlin (01:02:12):
... I'm sure. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:02:12):
... I don't know if it was worth it or not, but-
Andy Chamberlin (01:02:15):
By the time you add up all your time.
Jacob Mills (01:02:17):
... no, I... If you didn't have all the stuff to weld and cut and deal with the material and a nice spot to do it, you might as well just buy the thing, but yeah. No, that's a pretty nice piece of equipment, really. Yeah, I don't know. There's a lot of things that I go back and forth with as far as corn and pumpkins and spraying them versus not spraying them. I don't know.
Andy Chamberlin (01:02:48):
How far apart are your fields?
Jacob Mills (01:02:52):
There's this down here, and then there's another field a couple miles up the road-
Andy Chamberlin (01:02:57):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (01:02:57):
Oh [inaudible 01:02:58]-
Jacob Mills (01:02:57):
... and we have another field-
Speaker 6 (01:03:00):
... field.
Jacob Mills (01:03:00):
... yeah. There's a field probably right outside of town, and then there's one probably three miles up.
Andy Chamberlin (01:03:07):
Okay, so you're traveling a bit.
Jacob Mills (01:03:09):
Yeah. Yeah, I travel quite a bit, which part of me, it drives me nuts, but the other part, it's really nice to have some fields that aren't next to each other to rotate crops into.
Andy Chamberlin (01:03:22):
That's a valid point. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:03:23):
Like potatoes, I move them a long ways away every couple of years, and I don't have much for potato bugs at all.
Andy Chamberlin (01:03:34):
You're lucky there.
Jacob Mills (01:03:35):
Yeah, I used to have them, well, I grew them in the same spot for a couple too many years and it was miserable. It was a disaster.
Andy Chamberlin (01:03:43):
What are you looking forward to this coming season?
Jacob Mills (01:03:47):
We are sort of at a little bit more of a standstill with building everything and just trying to make things more efficient and not adding on so much and just focusing on what we have. Just trying to do better with what we have more or less instead of trying to do more is my goal for this year is just to kind of make things more efficient and try to make it a little more profitable and-
Andy Chamberlin (01:04:19):
Focus on what you're doing.
Jacob Mills (01:04:20):
... yeah. I don't think I'm going to go quite the diversity of crops this year. I'm going to stick kind of more to the staples. I'm going to do a fair amount more outside, too-
Andy Chamberlin (01:04:35):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:04:36):
... as far as it goes. Peppers, I'm going go grow a fair amount of like sauce tomatoes outside. I never have enough of them, so I'm going to plant a shit load of them outside, and when we have them, I just put boxes of them at the farmstand and they always sell. People love them-
Andy Chamberlin (01:04:53):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:04:54):
... so-
Andy Chamberlin (01:04:54):
They easy enough? You said you have grown them outside or no?
Jacob Mills (01:04:57):
No. We always grow them in the greenhouses and I just don't have enough room to like-
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:00):
How are you going to do that? Are you going to weave them or cage them? Or-
Jacob Mills (01:05:05):
Yeah, black plastic and put stakes in and just weave like twine around them is my goal anyways. We'll see how it goes. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:18):
The next area we checked out was the sugar house where maple syrup is made. If you aren't familiar with the process, here in Vermont, we tap maple trees, meaning we put a spigot connected to tubing to collect some of that sweet sap out of the tree. It then gets boiled down to concentrate it into the sweet maple-y goodness we call maple syrup.
Jacob Mills (01:05:37):
Yeah, this is it. We don't RO or anything-
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:40):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:05:41):
... wood. See, there's a pretty good charge of wood.
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:44):
800 taps-
Jacob Mills (01:05:45):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:46):
... and wood-fired arch.
Jacob Mills (01:05:49):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:50):
Nice.
Jacob Mills (01:05:51):
Yeah, it has a steamway on it, a pre-heater. Yeah, it's all pretty... It's kind of some newer equipment, but it's fairly old school.
Andy Chamberlin (01:06:02):
All pipeline?
Jacob Mills (01:06:04):
Yep, all pipeline. You can see it all runs down to here, actually. Yeah, I don't know. We make, like I said, a couple, trying to make about 300 gallons-
Andy Chamberlin (01:06:13):
Yeah, that's quite a bit.
Jacob Mills (01:06:14):
... of syrup. This is where all the sap comes in here-
Andy Chamberlin (01:06:20):
Oh yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:06:21):
... and just runs under the road and it's all pipelined more or less.
Andy Chamberlin (01:06:25):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:06:27):
Then, it comes into this tank. We pump it over to the bigger tank and start boiling. You can make about, I don't know, three gallons of syrup an hour or so, give or take, two to three gallons. Yeah, so the sap, it goes into that tank and then just gravities into the arch-
Andy Chamberlin (01:06:50):
Sweet.
Jacob Mills (01:06:50):
... so yeah. I don't know, it's a fun thing to do this time of year. I enjoy it.
Andy Chamberlin (01:06:55):
Yep.
Jacob Mills (01:06:56):
Going up in the woods and even boiling in here, it's a pretty unique time of year. The smell of it all-
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:04):
Yeah, yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:07:04):
... and everything.
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:04):
I just caught a whiff. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:07:05):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:09):
It's a Vermont experience for sure. My hands hate working in the cold, so have no interest in it, but I love the process.
Jacob Mills (01:07:16):
Yeah. No, boiling when it's actually boiling, it's a good time.
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:16):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:07:21):
I imagine there'll be quite a few people in and out of here this afternoon. Who knows? This is the two boils this year-
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:28):
Okay.
Jacob Mills (01:07:29):
... but you can see this is from last year, from start to finish.
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:33):
Yep.
Speaker 7 (01:07:33):
You can see when it got cold spell-
Jacob Mills (01:07:37):
Yeah, like-
Speaker 7 (01:07:38):
... and really [inaudible 01:07:40].
Jacob Mills (01:07:39):
... that cold and then it got warm and you can kind of see all the colors-
Speaker 7 (01:07:42):
[inaudible 01:07:42]-
Jacob Mills (01:07:41):
... of it.
Speaker 7 (01:07:42):
... have any [inaudible 01:07:42].
Jacob Mills (01:07:44):
This arch has a preheater on it, so it makes a ton of hot water from the cold sap going in, and it helps us clean everything and just helps keep everything sanitary.
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:58):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:07:58):
I don't know. That's about it.
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:58):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:08:00):
The whole sugaring process is... It's a lot, and then early February, we go up in the woods and tap the trees and check all the lines. Then, this time of year, we... I don't know. It's like fixing leaks and getting the woods, the pipeline all tightened up.
Andy Chamberlin (01:08:17):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:08:19):
It takes a fair amount of time. This year, the coyotes or bear have just made a mess of it up in the woods.
Andy Chamberlin (01:08:27):
Oh geez.
Jacob Mills (01:08:27):
It just it is what it is. It's worse this year than it's ever been. They just bite and just puncture holes in all the lines and stuff.
Andy Chamberlin (01:08:37):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:08:38):
Gives me something to do, I guess.
Andy Chamberlin (01:08:40):
Right behind the sugar house on the side of the road is the farmstand. Be sure to visit the website to see a visual representation of what we're looking at.
Jacob Mills (01:08:49):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:08:49):
That's a nice setup.
Jacob Mills (01:08:50):
Yeah, it's not bad. This is the farmstand. It's not much. I'd like to build a new...
Andy Chamberlin (01:08:58):
Well, it's nice that your sugar house is right next to your parking lot here as you're-
Jacob Mills (01:08:58):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:01):
... open for visitors.
Jacob Mills (01:09:02):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:04):
Picturesque little sap house. The listening audience is all over the U.S., so-
Jacob Mills (01:09:17):
Really?
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:17):
... a lot of people, they're unfamiliar with the maple industry, so...
Jacob Mills (01:09:22):
Yeah, it's a pretty good part of this business, actually.
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:26):
Really? Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:09:28):
Yeah. I enjoy it. It's something that I'd like to expand on in the future for sure. Once again, I don't want to wholesale a bunch, but we can definitely retail more than we're making, so-
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:39):
Hey, that's a good problem to have.
Jacob Mills (01:09:40):
... yeah. Yeah. It's kind of fun. It's pretty empty right now, but-
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:43):
Of course, it's March.
Jacob Mills (01:09:45):
... yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:47):
That's a nice sign. I like that.
Jacob Mills (01:09:48):
Yeah, thanks. A local artist painted it. I built the frame, the mahogany to go around it.
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:57):
Fancy.
Jacob Mills (01:09:59):
Yeah, it's worked out pretty well, to be honest. I built that bracket on that rock out there that it sits on in the summer.
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:10):
Aah, yep.
Jacob Mills (01:10:11):
Yeah. She made a logo for us and she painted that sign and I'm going to have her do a couple signs to go down the road and up the road a little ways. I might even build the same kind of border out of them, but yeah, this is mostly on the honor system. I built this little cash box.
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:31):
Oh, that's pretty slick.
Jacob Mills (01:10:34):
Just kind of... I don't know, it's nothing fancy, but it's fricking... People can put their money in there and we can lock it so it doesn't-
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:44):
Yeah. Well, it's also out of sight, out of mind-
Jacob Mills (01:10:48):
Yeah, exactly.
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:49):
... for the most part, you know?
Jacob Mills (01:10:51):
We're having wicked problems-
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:52):
[inaudible 01:10:52].
Jacob Mills (01:10:52):
... with people ripping us off.
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:53):
I bet.
Jacob Mills (01:10:55):
This is tough. It's like at the size where it's hardly worth manning it, but it's also if you don't man it, it almost pays for itself to man it because if you don't get ripped off all the time, it's worth it. If you pay someone 15, 20 bucks an hour to sit here, it takes one or two people to come in and it's paid. I don't know. It's tough.
Andy Chamberlin (01:11:16):
Almost a wash, but yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:11:17):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:11:18):
Has the camera helped?
Jacob Mills (01:11:19):
A little bit, but it doesn't... People don't seem to care.
Andy Chamberlin (01:11:23):
Have you been able to catch anybody?
Jacob Mills (01:11:24):
Not really, no.
Andy Chamberlin (01:11:25):
Bummer.
Jacob Mills (01:11:26):
I know. Some people like... It's some of the people that come here that have stole from us, you really realize who they are eventually. If someone is here, I don't know, we're in and out a lot. If it's busy, I man it or someone mans it. Normally in the afternoons we'll come up and someone will man it [inaudible 01:11:49].
Andy Chamberlin (01:11:49):
We'll hang around.
Jacob Mills (01:11:50):
Yeah, we do. You help people and normally from 2:00 to 5:36, someone is here manning the place. Yeah, the goal is eventually to build a new farmstand and have a little bit, maybe carry a few other local products. I don't know.
Andy Chamberlin (01:12:08):
Yep.
Jacob Mills (01:12:09):
That's the idea. Not a lot, but maybe a few local meats. I don't know. Maybe some local dairy products potentially.
Andy Chamberlin (01:12:19):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:12:20):
Nothing crazy, but enough to draw a little more.
Andy Chamberlin (01:12:25):
Is your family still doing dairy?
Jacob Mills (01:12:28):
Yeah. Yeah. My cousin does dairy. Yep.
Andy Chamberlin (01:12:31):
Do they do any retail-available stuff or just shipping it?
Jacob Mills (01:12:36):
No, he just ships. They ship to Cabot for the most part at this point in time. I know he's looked into doing a creamery of some sort or bottling milk or-
Andy Chamberlin (01:12:45):
Yeah-
Jacob Mills (01:12:46):
... [inaudible 01:12:46]-
Andy Chamberlin (01:12:46):
... that's not exactly-
Jacob Mills (01:12:47):
... [inaudible 01:12:47].
Andy Chamberlin (01:12:47):
... easy either, so-
Jacob Mills (01:12:48):
No, I think there's a lot to it, but also relying on one person to buy all your product is... it's fine, but you're kind of at the mercy of them more or less.
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:02):
Yep.
Jacob Mills (01:13:03):
That's kind of why I don't want to get into wholesale is it's just like they kind of set the prices more than you really-
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:09):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:13:10):
... or you're just competing with these big guys, and at this point in time I can't compete with these big farms that have a certain crop very mechanized that they can grow really cheap. There's just-
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:23):
Right.
Jacob Mills (01:13:24):
... besides that, it's pretty good. You get a little time off in the winter.
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:29):
Yep.
Jacob Mills (01:13:29):
Not a ton. This winter, I actually got a job this winter.
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:34):
Really?
Jacob Mills (01:13:34):
Yeah. I normally just do stuff and try to maintain and do all the stuff you don't do in the summer around here, but this year it just wasn't possible.
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:43):
Yeah-
Jacob Mills (01:13:44):
No.
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:45):
... because you lost so much through that-
Jacob Mills (01:13:45):
Yeah, like-
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:46):
... weather, yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:13:46):
... financially I went and did carpentry with a guy and worked most of the winter, which kind of sucked, but I learned a fair amount and it was pretty decent-
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:56):
Yeah-
Jacob Mills (01:13:56):
... so-
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:58):
... just think of it that way, too.
Jacob Mills (01:13:59):
... yeah. No, it was fine. It got us by. It was just cold. It was freaking freezing in-
Andy Chamberlin (01:14:06):
Winter's not a fun time for construction.
Jacob Mills (01:14:08):
... no, and this winter wasn't that cold either.
Andy Chamberlin (01:14:10):
No. Yeah, so what's the future of McDonald's Farmstand? Are you planning to scale up? Do much more or kind of keep it as is? Add greenhouse here and there, expand, pick your own, you mentioned?
Jacob Mills (01:14:22):
Yeah, I'd like to grow the retail business of it more or less. I'd like to expand the farmstand. I think potentially doing some more pick your own. I don't want to get too big too fast in a sense. Kind of keep it manageable. Help's always an issue it seems, so maybe eventually go to H-2A if it does get big enough.
Andy Chamberlin (01:14:47):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:14:48):
I don't know. I think we're on a busy enough road really where there is a fair amount of room for just expansion of this retail more or less-
Andy Chamberlin (01:14:56):
Yeah, I think so.
Jacob Mills (01:14:57):
... so yeah. That's the goal anyways. Eventually, I'd like to build a new farmstand and probably build some more greenhouses and kind of just add on and sort of maintain. Just kind of sustainably do it right.
Andy Chamberlin (01:15:17):
What does sustainability mean to you-
Jacob Mills (01:15:19):
Okay.
Andy Chamberlin (01:15:21):
... and what are you doing to achieve it?
Jacob Mills (01:15:23):
Kind of just keep stuff at a scale that is kind of environmentally-friendly and being able to just feed a community and people and not do harm to the Earth in a sense. I don't know. I don't know how to put it really. Just be where I'm not relying on a lot of other outsources to run the farm in a sense. You're always going to rely on some people, but just have it be sort of self-sustainable where it can be profitable enough for a family to make a living on it. That's the biggest thing is life's not all about money, but you have to live, too, and the cost of living these days is not cheap.
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:15):
Nope, anywhere.
Jacob Mills (01:16:17):
No. Between food and just housing and everything, that's been the biggest thing with this farm is just trying to make it profitable enough to actually want to do it. I love doing it, but at some point it's hard to work for nothing forever.
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:36):
Yeah, I just want some money.
Jacob Mills (01:16:37):
Yeah. Yeah, if that makes any sense.
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:41):
No, it does. Of course. I mean-
Jacob Mills (01:16:43):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:43):
... everybody.
Jacob Mills (01:16:45):
Yeah, like the place... Well, I guess last year it didn't make any money, but the years in the past, it's paid for itself. It's done okay. I don't really draw a ton out of it by any means, but we've built a fair amount, too-
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:45):
Right-
Jacob Mills (01:16:59):
... you know?
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:59):
... you're reinvesting in it-
Jacob Mills (01:17:00):
Yeah, so I'm hoping-
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:01):
... it seems.
Jacob Mills (01:17:01):
... at some point that it can just become a little more profitable in a sense.
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:07):
Right.
Jacob Mills (01:17:08):
We'll see. I think it can, if the weather cooperates.
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:12):
Do you always want to be a farmer?
Jacob Mills (01:17:14):
Yeah. I kind of grew up doing it. Do I always want to be or did I always want to be?
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:20):
Both, yeah, sure.
Jacob Mills (01:17:23):
Yeah. I enjoy it. I like the kind of peace of mind of it. You get to work by yourself a lot. It's working with the earth. Yeah, it's peaceful. It's... Hmm. You're doing good for the world in a sense.
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:36):
Yeah, so do you ever see yourself doing a different career?
Jacob Mills (01:17:40):
Maybe. Time will tell. Who knows? It's hard to tell and I'm still pretty young.
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:45):
Right.
Jacob Mills (01:17:46):
I've thought about it. I've thought about switching it up and doing something else, but once again, I like doing what I do.
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:54):
Yeah and then you-
Jacob Mills (01:17:54):
I went to work for someone this winter and it was like, "Yeah. Hmm."
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:57):
A little-
Jacob Mills (01:17:58):
Ready-
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:58):
... reminder.
Jacob Mills (01:17:58):
... yeah it was. It was actually a good reminder. I enjoyed what I did, but it was like, yeah, I remembered why I kind of worked for myself and do this. Yeah, that's... I don't know.
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:10):
That's good, too. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:18:11):
Working by the hour is hard.
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:13):
Yeah, and there's still things you can do here.
Jacob Mills (01:18:16):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:17):
You know?
Speaker 8 (01:18:17):
There you go.
Jacob Mills (01:18:17):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:17):
You've still got some plans.
Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
[inaudible 01:18:19] buy a 10 switch.
Jacob Mills (01:18:20):
So-
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:21):
Have you had any advice for a farmer just starting out? Is there anything you would share?
Jacob Mills (01:18:26):
Yeah, you got to enjoy what you do. It's a lot of work and, I don't know, it's a learning process. Go see what other people are doing. See what other people have done and kind of just take it all in and-
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:49):
Did you visit-
Jacob Mills (01:18:50):
... don't get too-
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:50):
... a lot of farms?
Jacob Mills (01:18:50):
... big too fast. Quite a few, yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:54):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:18:55):
Yeah. Not as many as I wish I would have. To be honest, I wish I had worked for some other farms before I went out on my own just to kind of see what other people do and how they do it and what equipment they use. There's a lot of... There's just so many things out there. It really makes... There's just a ton of little quirks and ideas and things that can make your life a lot easier real quick.
Andy Chamberlin (01:19:23):
Right.
Jacob Mills (01:19:24):
I follow a fair amount of people on the internet, too, like smaller farms that... I don't know. Some of them I'm like, "Yeah, that's great," and other ones I'm like, "Yeah, that's like bullshit you see on the internet, too." You know?
Andy Chamberlin (01:19:37):
No, no, no, no. We're [inaudible 01:19:38]-
Jacob Mills (01:19:38):
It's not all that fucking grand and perfect and their gardens don't always look like that, and it's not the way it is. You see these pictures on the internet and they're perfect rows and no weeds in it and it's like, "Yeah, okay."
Andy Chamberlin (01:19:51):
That's one corner.
Jacob Mills (01:19:52):
Yeah, exactly. I feel bad for someone getting into it.
Andy Chamberlin (01:19:57):
Yeah. Why is that?
Jacob Mills (01:19:58):
It's just a lot to take on. It's not take on, it's just, once again, it comes back to financially it's tough really.
Andy Chamberlin (01:20:09):
Yeah, it's hard. It's not an easy path.
Jacob Mills (01:20:12):
No, it's not. There's a lot... I was... I should say grateful enough to not... I didn't have to buy this land in a sense.
Andy Chamberlin (01:20:24):
Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:20:24):
If you were to go and try to buy land and build infrastructure and do it, I honestly don';t really know how someone would do it without a ton and ton of debt, especially with what land's done. If you're fortunate enough to potentially have something or be able to use land somewhere that is fertile and well taken care of, it's a good way of living really. It would be a struggle to start from the beginning on all of this, to buy equipment and-
Andy Chamberlin (01:21:02):
Right.
Jacob Mills (01:21:03):
... I don't know. I think to do it on a real small scale would be kind of cool to start if you just had like a BCS and-
Andy Chamberlin (01:21:09):
Yeah-
Jacob Mills (01:21:10):
... like a couple of acres and...
Andy Chamberlin (01:21:13):
... but still, even then it's really hard because you're limited in size at that point. It's like you got to sell a lot of spinach in order to-
Jacob Mills (01:21:25):
Oh yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:21:26):
... feed yourself.
Jacob Mills (01:21:27):
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think finding a market's almost the most important thing with all of this. Finding a market is almost harder than growing the product to me and marketing it and trying to organize delivering and all of it is almost more of a challenge to me than actually growing the product itself I would say. That's why I wanted to develop the farmstand and the market, so we have, and fulfill the wholesale market, the few that we do really well and just kind of keep it at a manageable scale and grow it as it comes almost. I think eventually it will take off a little more than it has.
Andy Chamberlin (01:22:18):
Yeah. Do you have more land that you could expand if you wanted to?
Jacob Mills (01:22:24):
Yeah, I think there's land around here.
Andy Chamberlin (01:22:27):
[inaudible 01:22:27] find in here. Yeah.
Jacob Mills (01:22:28):
Yeah, if anything, I would like more land to grow cover crops on. I wish I had more land and better equipment to cover crop.
Andy Chamberlin (01:22:38):
Rotate a little more.
Jacob Mills (01:22:40):
Yeah, I think ideally you'd cover crop a field for two or three years before you even plant on it, and then you're very low weed pressure. You have no really disease pressure. It's just pretty kind of straightforward.
Andy Chamberlin (01:22:56):
Right, right. Your fertility's there, all of it.
Jacob Mills (01:23:00):
Where you start taking a lot out of fields, it's hard to get it back, but yeah, time will tell.
Andy Chamberlin (01:23:10):
If people want to find and follow you, are you on social media? Or where can they do that? Learn about your farm?
Jacob Mills (01:23:16):
We have an Instagram page, @mcdonaldfarmstand. We have a website you can buy syrup at, mcdonaldfarmstand.com, and we have a Facebook page, too.
Andy Chamberlin (01:23:35):
That was The Farmer's Share. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jacob as we toured the farm behind McDonald Farmstand. The Farmer's Share is supported by a grand offered by the USDA Specialty Crop Block Program from The Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets. This funding helps to cover some of my time and travel in order to produce these podcasts for the next two and a half years. The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service supports projects that address the needs of U.S. specialty crop growers and strengthens local and regional food systems. I have no doubt that this podcast will meet those needs and help educate growers to support the industry. This show also is supported by The Ag Engineering Program of The University of Vermont Extension. If you enjoy this show and want to help support its programming, you can make a one-time or reoccurring donation on our website by visiting the farmersshare.com/support.
(01:24:32):
We also receive funding from The Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association. The VVBGA is a nonprofit organization funded in 1976 to promote the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of vegetable and berry farming in Vermont. Their membership includes over 400 farms across Vermont and beyond, as well as about 50 businesses and organizations that provide products and services of all types to their members. Benefits to members include access to the VVBGA Listserv to buy/sell plants and equipment, share farming information, and tap the vast experience of our growers.
(01:25:11):
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(01:25:49):
Memberships are on a per farm per calendar year basis, and annual dues this year are $80. These funds pay for the organization's operating costs and support educational programs and research products. These funds also support projects that address grower needs around ag engineering, high tunnel
production, pest management, pollinators, produce safety, and soil health. Become a member today to be a part of and further support the veg and berry industry.
(01:26:20):
You can visit thefarmersshare.com to listen to previous interviews or see photos, videos, or links discussed from the conversation. If you don't want to miss the next episode, enter your email address on our website and you'll get a note in your inbox when the next one comes out. The Farmer's Share has a YouTube channel with videos from several of the farm visits. We're also on Instagram and that's where you can be reminded about the latest episode or see photos from the visit.
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Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, I'd love it if you could write a review. In Apple Podcasts, just click on the show, scroll down to the bottom, and there you can leave five stars and a comment to help encourage new listeners to tune in. I'd also encourage you to share this episode with other grower friends or crew who you think would be inspiring for them. Thanks for listening.