Increasing Acreage & Narrowing the Crop Mix with John Hirsch at Clearfield Farm: EP31

Today’s episode comes from Granville Vermont where we visit with John Hirsch of Clearfield Farm. With over 10 years under his belt he’s refined his farm business to be lean on labor and focused in scope as his primary crops are wholesale carrots and potatoes. He’s also excited to be getting into grain and doing more intensive rotations with cover crops. We start off the episode with a look at his new harvester, hop in the truck to check out the fields, before digging deeper into his motivations and visions of his farming career later in the episode. 

Transcript

John Hirsch (00:00:00):

I'm John Hirsch from Clearfield Farm. We're in Granville, Vermont, and my wife Melissa and I farm certified organic vegetables and some grain. So, this year we will grow about 20 acres of vegetables, maybe a little less, maybe like 18 acres of vegetables, and we will do maybe 30 in grain, and then another 20 in cover crops, something like that. So farm like 75, 77 acres.

Andy Chamberlain (00:00:50):

I'm your host, Andy Chamberlain, 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. One ask I have for you is if you can leave a comment or write a review. There's a feature enabled right now called fan mail, so you can send a message via text to the podcast right from the link in the description. These come through as anonymous, so if you want to be known or would like me to reply, let me know who you are in the message. Give it a whirl. It's quick, easy, and free, and I'd love to hear from you.

(00:01:29):

Today's episode comes to you from Granville, Vermont, where we visit with John Hirsch of Clearfield Farm. With over 10 years under his belt, he's refined his farm business to be lean on labor and focused in scope as his primary crops are wholesale carrots and potatoes. He's also excited to be getting into grain and doing more intensive rotations with cover crops. We start off the episode with a look at his new roots harvester, hop in the truck to check out the farm fields, before digging deeper into his motivations and visions for his farming career later on in the episode. Thanks for listening.

(00:02:11):

Potatoes and carrots?

John Hirsch (00:02:12):

Pretty much.

Andy Chamberlain (00:02:13):

Anything else?

John Hirsch (00:02:14):

Doing some grain.

Andy Chamberlain (00:02:15):

Yeah, grain.

John Hirsch (00:02:17):

Quite a bit of grain. The grain enterprise is mostly centered around doing our own cover crop seed, like harvesting our own cover crop seed. We have a bunch of wheat that we're probably going to just send to an elevator on a tractor trailer because that land that it's growing on isn't certified organic at this point. So we have a bunch of land that's not certified organic. Land that we just bought. So we bought another 20 three-ish acres of farmland. And then this field over here, this is 16, that's not certified organic yet.

Andy Chamberlain (00:02:56):

How many acres are you managing?

John Hirsch (00:02:58):

Total, this year we'll hit 77 acres.

Andy Chamberlain (00:03:04):

That's big for Vermont.

John Hirsch (00:03:07):

Well, okay, so-

Andy Chamberlain (00:03:08):

And how much of that's grain?

John Hirsch (00:03:11):

So the 16 acres is all cover crop, not getting harvested. It's oats and peas and whatever other-

Andy Chamberlain (00:03:18):

Feeding the soil.

John Hirsch (00:03:18):

It's feeding the soil. This down here is grain. That's 23 acres. That's not organic. And I have to talk to NOFA about how we can do this exactly. I don't want to do the split farm, but I think we might have to just be able to sell it. Then we've got a couple acres that we rent on top of the mountain over there that I'm going to try to expand that. But the mountain land around here is rocks the size of a... I could fit a few rocks in this dump truck over here.

(00:03:54):

And at a certain point when you're going up... Well, I have to go up from here. Every time I go up and I break something, it's like, "Is this worth it?" Or should my risk management be like, "I know which job I'm going to work on a flood year." Because right now it's like, "Well, I got a couple acres up there. If there's a flood year, I can shield myself from some risk." But there was a conversation a while ago about how is it better to run on marginal land that's reliable or great land that's unreliable? I don't know. I don't know the answer.

Andy Chamberlain (00:04:33):

Yeah, that's hard.

John Hirsch (00:04:34):

Yeah, it does cost a lot of money to farm challenging ground.

Andy Chamberlain (00:04:38):

And how far away is that?

John Hirsch (00:04:40):

It takes me maybe 20 minutes to get there on a tractor. Realistically, it's two miles maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Two miles. It takes me, maybe I don't know, not even 10 minutes to get there with my truck. So I try to, if I'm doing cultivating up there, I try to just trailer the tractors and then I can can just-

Andy Chamberlain (00:05:08):

To save some time.

John Hirsch (00:05:09):

Yeah. And I can cultivate and be back home. I can do the whole field. Last year we grew carrots up there. Then I was able to cultivate the whole field and be home within two hours. Like leave with the tractor, cultivate, hook it back up, come back down. So there were some things, but I was breaking stuff every single time and I picked rocks.

Andy Chamberlain (00:05:31):

So what kind of things is breaking? The cultivation tools?

John Hirsch (00:05:35):

Yeah, a lot of shear bolts. There's the arm rest of this tractor just filled with shear bolts and I'm just constantly running through all of them. And I got to go to the hardware store and pick up more and yeah, that. What else did I break? I broke a... Did you see the carrot harvester?

Andy Chamberlain (00:05:58):

Right after you? No, the potato harvester I saw right after you got it.

John Hirsch (00:06:01):

Here, let's go look at the carrot harvester. I'm in cleanup mode, so I had some junk in front of it, but I moved it out just in case you wanted to see it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:11):

Well, yeah, I'm here just to see what you want to show me.

John Hirsch (00:06:16):

What I really want to show you is some of the new land that we just bought, because I don't think you've seen it yet. And I'm-

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:22):

No, I-

John Hirsch (00:06:23):

... pretty pumped on it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:25):

I've been here, and then I think we went across the street one time when you were picking cucumbers.

John Hirsch (00:06:30):

Oh, yeah. Oh man, that was a while ago.

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:32):

That was a while ago. Oh, this is-

John Hirsch (00:06:34):

Look at this unit.

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:35):

This is Beautiful.

John Hirsch (00:06:36):

Oh yeah. This is a Univerco Mini-Veg.

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:40):

I did not know anybody with one of these yet.

John Hirsch (00:06:43):

Yep.

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:43):

Now I do.

John Hirsch (00:06:45):

Here she blows.

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:47):

That's a nice unit.

John Hirsch (00:06:48):

I have them doing a prototype... Have you ever seen at Jericho Settlers? They've got the potato head that attaches to their similar model. Theirs is an ASA-LIFT?

Andy Chamberlain (00:06:59):

Yeah. Yeah. I took some video of them picking up carrots, but I did not see the potato head for it.

John Hirsch (00:07:06):

I watched a bunch of videos of them online. And really the deciding, what made me decide on this as opposed to an ASA-LIFT is they're made a couple of hundred miles from here.

Andy Chamberlain (00:07:22):

Right. Yeah. They're just over the border.

John Hirsch (00:07:22):

And so actually this piece here, so this is the share that kind of goes underneath the row of carrots or whatever.

Andy Chamberlain (00:07:33):

The digger piece?

John Hirsch (00:07:34):

This is the digger piece.

Andy Chamberlain (00:07:35):

The lifter.

John Hirsch (00:07:37):

They didn't ship the machine with that. So the tractor trailer gets here. I actually had a buddy of mine get, because you got to get two tractors, one on each side of it and pick it up so that the trailer can drive out from underneath it. And we get the whole thing set up, and I'm looking at it like, "Man, how are the roots going to get lifted out of the ground? I'm just going to,"-

Andy Chamberlain (00:08:01):

Well, it's not that loose.

John Hirsch (00:08:03):

"I'm just going to end up yanking all the tops off." And so I look through the pictures of it. I'm like, "Oh, that thing's missing." So I contact my sales guy and he's like, "We can get you that, but we're about to close for two weeks and no one's going to be there, so you're going to have to wait two,"... And I had people waiting for the next week for carrots. I had told everybody I got this great harvest. Yeah, it's not going to be an issue at all.

Andy Chamberlain (00:08:30):

No problem. Yep.

John Hirsch (00:08:31):

No, no.

Andy Chamberlain (00:08:31):

Yikes.

John Hirsch (00:08:32):

And then, yeah, so

Andy Chamberlain (00:08:35):

Could you drive up to get it?

John Hirsch (00:08:36):

Well, the president of the company... Okay, I'll just say the president of the company drove to a gas station in Alberg to meet me with that piece and two crispy $100 American bills from 1995. And he goes, "Take these." I was like, "No, no." He goes, "No, seriously take it." So now we have a couple of, from Canada crispy 1995 $100 bills in the house as a remembering. Yeah. So great customer service.

Andy Chamberlain (00:09:11):

That's good. That's great.

John Hirsch (00:09:12):

Yeah, they're really willing to help with whatever you want within reason, obviously. And they-

Andy Chamberlain (00:09:20):

They were responsive, which is the important part.

John Hirsch (00:09:22):

They're very responsive. And they built a head for this for potatoes, which is a prototype for them, but they have a ton of interest since we've asked them to build it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:09:32):

So how does that work? Is that a whole chain?

John Hirsch (00:09:34):

You have to... Yeah. Yeah. It's a single row digger.

Andy Chamberlain (00:09:38):

Digger. Yep.

John Hirsch (00:09:40):

It goes on... Oh, not there actually right here.

Andy Chamberlain (00:09:47):

Maybe I did see that over at Mark's.

John Hirsch (00:09:49):

Yeah, he has one.

Andy Chamberlain (00:09:51):

Yep. I can picture it.

John Hirsch (00:09:54):

That's kind of where I got the idea. And what I had said to Univerco was, "ASA-LIFT offers this. Do you guys think you could do something similar?" And what's interesting about that is that I contacted ASA-LIFT and Univerco, ASA-LIFT's computers and phones were down for three weeks when I contacted them. And I contacted Univerco at the same time, and Univerco got back to me. I was like, "I'm going to let this progress as it may."

Andy Chamberlain (00:10:28):

Some things just work out that way.

John Hirsch (00:10:30):

Exactly, yeah. And I've tried to let stuff like that happen more. The way things are going to be.

Andy Chamberlain (00:10:37):

Yeah, maybe the ASA-LIFT would've been cheaper, but...

John Hirsch (00:10:42):

Yeah, exactly.

Andy Chamberlain (00:10:43):

But the fact that if you need a part or support, it's like you said, it's a couple hours north.

John Hirsch (00:10:49):

Exactly. Exactly. Yep. So that is really what sold me on this. I love that. Obviously it's Canada, but it's so regional to us. When are you ever going to find something like this built within a few hours of you? It's just unheard of.

Andy Chamberlain (00:11:05):

It's a quality unit too.

John Hirsch (00:11:06):

Oh, my God. And this thing is beefy.

Andy Chamberlain (00:11:09):

Yep.

John Hirsch (00:11:11):

It carries its own bin with its own hydraulics. You fill up a bin, you drop it, you pick up a new one, you don't even leave the seat.

Andy Chamberlain (00:11:23):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:11:25):

It's just amazing. So since we asked them to do the potato head, and they have since found more customers that want that for this machine, they've asked us for other things. We are doing a Daikon radish trial for them, for a grower in California.

Andy Chamberlain (00:11:49):

Oh, because you're close by.

John Hirsch (00:11:51):

Because we're close and because we're willing to do experimental stuff with them. So they were like, "Yeah, let's just ask."

Andy Chamberlain (00:12:00):

It goes both ways.

John Hirsch (00:12:01):

Exactly. Yeah. So I like what we've built together as a business relationship too. So I got nothing but good things to say about them.

Andy Chamberlain (00:12:12):

Explain that contraption.

John Hirsch (00:12:14):

That's the top, the greens topper.

Andy Chamberlain (00:12:17):

Okay. So it pinches the tops off?

John Hirsch (00:12:22):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:12:22):

Okay.

John Hirsch (00:12:24):

So these rotate like this.

Andy Chamberlain (00:12:26):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:12:27):

Which makes the blades go like this kind of. Does that make sense? They kind of do this sort of shape.

Andy Chamberlain (00:12:36):

Oh, okay.

John Hirsch (00:12:37):

Yeah. So as they spin-

Andy Chamberlain (00:12:39):

They oscillate and lift.

John Hirsch (00:12:40):

Yeah. The next one, these next ones come up. So they're not actually chopping it. It is just pinching. They're pinching the greens off. So you have to pick up the carrots with maybe, I think the manual says four to six inches from the crown of the root. You know what I'm saying? So you pick it up with the belts so that the carrots like...

Andy Chamberlain (00:13:08):

Oh, they need to hang a certain amount.

John Hirsch (00:13:09):

Yeah, yeah. You have to adjust it on the fly. So the carrots from this belt, they'll hang down, the tops of the carrots will hang down about here. Oh, I broke one of these. This piece that holds these up. So these rotate like this to keep the greens from plugging up.

Andy Chamberlain (00:13:30):

Pick the tops up.

John Hirsch (00:13:31):

Exactly.

Andy Chamberlain (00:13:32):

And then it gets pinched by the belt.

John Hirsch (00:13:34):

And this share right here actually has a broken shear bolt in it. That's why it's sitting like this.

Andy Chamberlain (00:13:42):

Shear bolts.

John Hirsch (00:13:42):

Yeah. That happened. And I was like, "Okay, I'm done now. That's it for me for this season." And I parked it. Yeah. But love it. Great machine. We'll start harvesting in July with it with spring seeded carrots.

Andy Chamberlain (00:14:03):

Do you have the potato head yet?

John Hirsch (00:14:06):

They made it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:14:06):

Okay.

John Hirsch (00:14:07):

And we went and looked at it. We are going to test it out on a Quebecois potato field in August. This guy, Gabriel, who's part of Deep Root, I called him. I was like, "Hey, what do you think about letting us?" "Absolutely. It's not a problem at all." Yeah. So we're going to go up there, run it on a couple of hundred feet a row, make sure it doesn't need any tweaks before it crosses the border.

Andy Chamberlain (00:14:40):

Yeah. Little test run before you get down here.

John Hirsch (00:14:45):

Right. And I was saying to the, because I've been working with their engineers, the sales guys and whatnot, and I was saying, "I don't mind getting it here and doing a little fab work here if it needs it." And they were pretty adamant against that. "No, absolutely not. No way."

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:03):

"Don't screw with our machine."

John Hirsch (00:15:04):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:07):

"Let us know what breaks."

John Hirsch (00:15:10):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this broke, that holds this at this angle, and those are like 300 bucks each. So it doesn't take long working in a real rocky field for you to lose money.

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:28):

Got to be real careful to keep the tips out of the zone.

John Hirsch (00:15:31):

Yeah. Yep, yep.

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:34):

So what's a ballpark price on one of these?

John Hirsch (00:15:36):

As it sits here, it's 55 grand.

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:39):

Oh, okay.

John Hirsch (00:15:39):

Yeah. With the head potato head, they want an extra 40 for that. But this is all on a grant.

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:49):

Well, that is half the machine, essentially.

John Hirsch (00:15:52):

It's half the machine. It's half the cost of the machine.

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:54):

More than, because yeah, the head is the whole side.

John Hirsch (00:15:57):

Yep.

Andy Chamberlain (00:15:57):

The rest is the frame. The conveyor, essentially.

John Hirsch (00:16:00):

We did a factory tour there, Melissa and I, and they've got these barrel washers in various stages of assembly, just as far as the eye can see.

Andy Chamberlain (00:16:08):

Wow.

John Hirsch (00:16:09):

They're just selling hotcakes.

Andy Chamberlain (00:16:11):

Oh, that's good.

John Hirsch (00:16:12):

Yeah. That and big carrot harvesters, like multi-row, ones with big booms that fill up like a potato truck kind of. Kind of size.

Andy Chamberlain (00:16:21):

Yeah. This is a tiny unit compared to-

John Hirsch (00:16:23):

This is the smallest one they make. And even looking at it's like, "This is kind of a big machine." It's like almost 15 feet wide. Getting it up and down the road is a little bit of a challenge sometimes.

Andy Chamberlain (00:16:34):

So this runs well off your John Deere?

John Hirsch (00:16:37):

It says 70 horsepower minimum, but I ran it all season in that 66 horsepower.

Andy Chamberlain (00:16:44):

That's a 4066?

John Hirsch (00:16:45):

Yeah, it's a 4066. Yep. And what's really nice about the 4066M is that it's the biggest engine with a hydrostatic transmission that you can get in essentially the smallest frame size.

Andy Chamberlain (00:17:03):

Right. It's still a compact tractor.

John Hirsch (00:17:05):

It's still, yeah. Yeah. But it's big enough. This is made to hook up on a three-point hitch, but you're not supposed to pick the unit up. Do you know what I'm saying?

Andy Chamberlain (00:17:16):

Uh-huh.

John Hirsch (00:17:17):

You just hook it on and you just drive with it on the ground.

Andy Chamberlain (00:17:20):

Will that tractor lift it?

John Hirsch (00:17:21):

It'll almost lift it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:17:25):

Sketchily.

John Hirsch (00:17:28):

It won't really pick up the tires off the ground.

Andy Chamberlain (00:17:34):

This is a pretty heavy unit.

John Hirsch (00:17:34):

Oh, this thing's got to weigh 6,000 pounds. But yeah, love it. Honestly, love the progression that our farm has made over the past few years. This was always my dream is just to everything with machines. I think we had talked about this when I got into farming. I wanted to do corn and beans.

Andy Chamberlain (00:17:58):

In Vermont.

John Hirsch (00:17:58):

Right. Yeah. Well, this is when we were in Pennsylvania.

Andy Chamberlain (00:18:02):

Oh, right, right.

John Hirsch (00:18:03):

Yeah. I wanted to do corn and beans. I wanted to be traditional farmer. And without a lot of land, you just can't. Without a lot of land and a lot of money you can't. So kind of put it on the back burner and got into vegetables just to do something in ag. And I'm just jazzed. We got the combine, we got this. Just something to be said about living uncomfortably for a while while you get to where you really want to go. You know what I mean?

Andy Chamberlain (00:18:34):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:18:34):

And then the business definitely had to be very uncomfortable for a while, which we could have done it. Farmer's market, selling to small grocery stores, maybe trying to do another CSA thing.

Andy Chamberlain (00:18:50):

You started with a CSA thing in Pennsylvania, right?

John Hirsch (00:18:53):

We did home delivery for a bit, but it was mostly farmer's market, kind of.

Andy Chamberlain (00:18:58):

Farmer's market.

John Hirsch (00:18:59):

It was definitely farmer's market.

Andy Chamberlain (00:19:00):

When did you start farming? When did you start that?

John Hirsch (00:19:03):

Well, I worked for somebody in 2013 that did very retail based but not very well managed. So I'd learned a lot of bad stuff in 2013. 2014, Melissa and I started on our own on my parents' land. 2015, my parents said they wanted to sell and they couldn't sell with an operating farm on it. I don't even know where they got that information, but they were like, "This is going to be it. So you guys got to finish up." So we finished up in October, started applying to jobs all over the place. The only place that we got any calls back was Central Vermont, Montpelier actually. And we would've gone anywhere, but it was just like everything was kind of guiding us to Central Vermont. And then when we finally started making moves to move here, we talked to somebody at UVM about the kind of farm we were looking to get and shoestring budget. We wanted the laundry list of stuff we wanted. Because my parents, they had to get out of their property. They couldn't keep up with it anymore. It was just too expensive. So we didn't necessarily have financial help to do anything.

(00:20:47):

So we're like, "We want 20 acres of land, 20 acres of total land, a house to live in. We'd like to do it for 150 grand." And everybody was like, "You're crazy." And then somebody at UVM was like, "You'll never find that. The only place I've seen near that was out in the middle of nowhere," and it was this place. He's like, "You're just never going to find it." So then we waited around. We checked out a couple of different places, and this one came back on the market and we went to the Land Trust and we're like, "We want it." They're like, "Why don't you look around for some other places?" They were having trouble keeping tenants in this place. That was back when the Land Trust would buy properties rather than connecting the next generation with who wanted to sell it. So they've since gotten completely out of buying properties. They don't do it anymore. And this was one of the first Land Trust properties in the nineties or something.

Andy Chamberlain (00:21:57):

That had some legacy to it.

John Hirsch (00:21:58):

Yeah. But it is just kind of an interesting full circle thing. I got my job in, well, it was in Middlesex that, I got that job while I was picking vegetables at my parents' place. I answered the phone and they're like, "We'd like to offer you the job." I was like, I forget what I was picking. "Sick. That's awesome." Yeah. Melissa got a job bartending at Positive Pie with no bartending experience. Vermont's great. This is amazing. We were like 24, 25. And now we've got a combine and a carrot harvester. I can do the majority of the business from the tractor seat. I don't know. I don't want to get choked up. Man, it's awesome. Just trying to be grateful. And with a kid coming too, it's like you got to... Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:23:04):

That changes perspectives I think.

John Hirsch (00:23:06):

Totally. Totally.

Andy Chamberlain (00:23:07):

That's a chapter change for any family.

John Hirsch (00:23:10):

Oh, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:23:11):

You look at your hours you're putting into whatever it be, and you think of life a little differently, I guess. Trying to dedicate some family time, not just work time. I mean, you've always been, you're a hard worker. You're building your business. That's what you're passionate about. But family-

John Hirsch (00:23:33):

Yeah, totally

Andy Chamberlain (00:23:33):

... changes a bit.

John Hirsch (00:23:34):

Totally. Yeah. Well, it's a little windy.

Andy Chamberlain (00:23:37):

Yeah, it is.

John Hirsch (00:23:38):

You want to hop in the truck?

Andy Chamberlain (00:23:39):

Sure. What year is this truck?

John Hirsch (00:23:46):

It's '83. Yeah, so that brown truck is an '85. That was my first truck I bought myself. This is a little older, but it's in, in some respects, better shape. Yeah. I am like daily driving this thing anymore. I hauled all my seed potatoes in it from Williamstown the other day.

Andy Chamberlain (00:24:20):

What model is this?

John Hirsch (00:24:22):

This is a F-350.

Andy Chamberlain (00:24:22):

350. Okay.

John Hirsch (00:24:23):

Yeah, yeah. Yep. F-350, 6.9 diesel, four-speed manual. Got a mechanical PTO dump, which is nice. It is a serious farm truck. So that tilt patch, that's our spring carrots, it's like an acre. And then this is going to be some of the potatoes, planting buckwheat there for grain. And then now down here, this is our new land from this line right here. This is all new. So it's all in wheat right now. Some of it's wet, but honestly, when you get offered to buy farmland anymore, I just feel like you can't say no to some extent. And we're working for it. The bank is going to own us for a bit.

Andy Chamberlain (00:25:52):

How long is that note?

John Hirsch (00:25:55):

Like 30? Well, so it's half through VEDA and half through Farm Service Agency.

Andy Chamberlain (00:26:02):

Okay.

John Hirsch (00:26:02):

So it's going to be 20 through VEDA, which is Vermont Economic Development Authority, or like VACC, Vermont Ag Credit Corporation. I'll pull into our little... So this place here has a little chunk out of the land, but the land goes up the mountain. So these people do a, what do you call this? A hit camp. I don't know if you've ever heard of that.

Andy Chamberlain (00:26:38):

I've heard of it. Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:26:39):

So they have people that come and set up campers and stuff. It's always rotating. So there's somebody here now, so I don't want to mess with them too bad. But yeah, it's just like a cool... We can get out and take a peek. Yeah, it's cool view of the house.

Andy Chamberlain (00:26:59):

Yeah, it is.

John Hirsch (00:26:59):

From here and...

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:01):

Looking up the valley.

John Hirsch (00:27:02):

Yeah. So now...

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:27:04]

John Hirsch (00:27:03):

Here and-

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:03):

Looking up the valley?

John Hirsch (00:27:03):

Yeah. So now we'll leave these people alone.

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:05):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:27:06):

Yeah. I'd blast right past them in a combine, but just standing out here.

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:12):

Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing when you're working, it's another thing that you're just-

John Hirsch (00:27:17):

Yeah, exactly. We're just loitering right now.

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:21):

Yeah. Just disturbing their dog.

John Hirsch (00:27:22):

Right, right. But yeah, we can... I'll show you the... we'll go up into this field and we got a guy setting up beehives right now.

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:35):

Nice.

John Hirsch (00:27:35):

So we'll go check that out. It's kind of a cool vantage point because it's our only upland field in the whole farm area.

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:48):

So are you prone to flooding in these fields?

John Hirsch (00:27:51):

Oh, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:27:51):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:27:53):

Yeah. So my risk management lately has just been, how do I tighten up the operation? How do I spend less? I know it's not everybody's cup of tea.

Andy Chamberlain (00:28:07):

You already seem pretty lean.

John Hirsch (00:28:10):

Well, it's like the potatoes are expensive as well.

Andy Chamberlain (00:28:17):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:28:18):

In terms of your seed cost per acre. We're going to plant eight or nine acres of specialty potatoes, and we'll have, what is that, $3500 an acre, 3 grand an acre, something like that.

Andy Chamberlain (00:28:37):

Okay.

John Hirsch (00:28:37):

So, yeah, so it's quite an expense. And honestly, we could even probably spend a little more.

Andy Chamberlain (00:28:46):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:28:46):

And we'll go in, hop into this field quick. Yeah. So this, they call a 15-acre field.

Andy Chamberlain (00:28:53):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:28:54):

I don't know where they got that from. I think it's only 12 acres. It's just like the funny old time-

Andy Chamberlain (00:29:01):

15 time from guardrail to wooded.

John Hirsch (00:29:03):

Yeah. Oh, well. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Now, we have the riparian buffer. But, the Japanese knotweed just loves it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:29:12):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:29:13):

Oh, it loves it. Yeah. But this little path right here, we've got a little beach down on the river there.

Andy Chamberlain (00:29:21):

Oh, nice.

John Hirsch (00:29:21):

Yeah. Not nice when it's 42 degrees and windy.

Andy Chamberlain (00:29:25):

Yeah. Not today, but.

John Hirsch (00:29:26):

Not today. But when it's 80, 90 degrees.

Andy Chamberlain (00:29:31):

Deep enough to get in it. Pull down.

John Hirsch (00:29:37):

Yeah. Yeah, we'll come up to this spot where this guy's... the guy that's putting in beehives has beehives at Old Road Farm, too.

Andy Chamberlain (00:29:47):

Okay.

John Hirsch (00:29:48):

And he's a local mechanic who's getting into bees. Well, he's been into bees for a while, but you can tell it's upland because of these rocks.

Andy Chamberlain (00:29:59):

Yep. Yeah, good old Vermont Stony Hall here.

John Hirsch (00:30:02):

Oh, yeah. I went to a... Oh, I guess I didn't shut that all the way.

Andy Chamberlain (00:30:11):

The door flew open.

John Hirsch (00:30:12):

Oh, yeah. I went to a... Oh, yeah, see that carrot harvester right there?

Andy Chamberlain (00:30:17):

Oh, yeah.

John Hirsch (00:30:17):

It's actually Pooh Sprague's old carrot harvester.

Andy Chamberlain (00:30:19):

Huh.

John Hirsch (00:30:21):

Yeah, we can get out and look over here. Yeah. That thing is actually almost in operational shape, but I found out that I was getting the new carrot harvester, it's like, well, I think I'm going to stop working on this one.

Andy Chamberlain (00:30:40):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:30:41):

But it's got... fully functional. The only thing that's held up on it is the elevator belt needs to be stitched back together. It's really nice having just one tractor and one piece of equipment in the field, rather than this takes tractor hooked onto it and a truck running alongside it, which I'm sure I could figure out a way to-

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:06):

Make a platform to hold a thing that-

John Hirsch (00:31:07):

Exactly. But it's like-

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:08):

Do you think you're going to keep that as a backup or a set-up to do something special?

John Hirsch (00:31:15):

I think I might set it up to do something else.

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:17):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:31:17):

Yeah. Or just have it in case we have the other one set up for potatoes.

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:25):

Yeah, right.

John Hirsch (00:31:25):

And then not have to switch back and forth.

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:27):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:31:28):

But that's this next winter project.

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:31):

Yeah. No, that's probably a good idea to have one set up for one thing.

John Hirsch (00:31:35):

Yeah. I said to Melissa, "Do you think I should sell it?" She's like, "Absolutely not." Well-

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:41):

It's a sunked cost now.

John Hirsch (00:31:43):

Yeah. Well, he essentially gave it to me. It wasn't running. I put quite a bit into it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:31:51):

Yeah. Looks to be in decent shape still.

John Hirsch (00:31:54):

It's not too bad. Yeah, the only thing is with this, it's a lot of little electronic doodads on it, which I try to stay away from that kind of stuff.

Andy Chamberlain (00:32:03):

Yeah, right. There's a lot of-

John Hirsch (00:32:04):

Lot of little clicky things on there, yeah. But yeah, this is the beehive setup.

Andy Chamberlain (00:32:13):

Yeah. This will be a nice spot for it.

John Hirsch (00:32:14):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:32:15):

And then what are you going to have in this field?

John Hirsch (00:32:17):

This is going to be carrots up here.

Andy Chamberlain (00:32:19):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:32:19):

Carrots here. Carrots over there. Potatoes in the lung section down there. And then one other spot of potatoes in this field across the river here. But pretty neat vantage point. Because we really don't have too much land that's up high like this, so it's kind of a cool spot.

Andy Chamberlain (00:32:42):

Gentle rolling, but not real slope too bad.

John Hirsch (00:32:45):

Yep. And borrowing Old Road Farms rock picker. So we still got it over by that brown truck over there. Yeah. So we're going to pick rocks out of here within the next couple of... really, as soon as it dries out a little bit. We got a crazy amount of rain.

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:06):

Yeah, we did.

John Hirsch (00:33:08):

Where's it all coming from?

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:10):

Does that rock picker have a sweet spot or a limit?

John Hirsch (00:33:14):

For size?

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:15):

Yeah. I see some stuff's that-

John Hirsch (00:33:18):

That one I might need to do by hand.

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:19):

Almost two feet across here.

John Hirsch (00:33:22):

Yeah, that one, I'm thinking-

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:25):

Most of these are smaller than a boot.

John Hirsch (00:33:28):

This is ideal size.

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:30):

Softballs.

John Hirsch (00:33:31):

These are ideal size, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:34):

Less than a foot.

John Hirsch (00:33:35):

And honestly, we picked carrots out of that field up on top of the mountain, around rocks that were like... I got a lot of them out, but it's almost like-

Andy Chamberlain (00:33:46):

Yeah, you're poor equipment.

John Hirsch (00:33:47):

Yeah, the poor... Exactly. I'm like, man, am I ever going to recover financially from farming this field up here? Yeah. It is. It depends what kind of crops you're growing. So I'm going to do orange carrots on this side and rainbow over there where that lime green cover crop is right now. So trying two different ways. There was winter rye in here, and I let it grow quite a bit taller before I plowed it in. That I plowed in early, and then I immediately seeded it to oats and peas. And I kind of want to see the difference in... I think that's going to make the carrots jump a little more. Like they're going to grow a little faster than this, but I'm not sure.

Andy Chamberlain (00:34:38):

Yeah. In theory, the peas should give a little extra nitrogen in there, so-

John Hirsch (00:34:42):

Yeah. But this did have clover and stuff. Both sides had clover and rye. But yeah, that's all learning experience. I don't know. I think every year is a learning experience. That thing, you want to take that home? You guys have rocks, right?

Andy Chamberlain (00:35:00):

Yeah. I need that for rip raff on the side of our river.

John Hirsch (00:35:03):

Yeah, right. Those two fields, we'll be able to get into next year. They'll be organic next year.

Andy Chamberlain (00:35:12):

Nice. Yeah, you were able to acquire neighboring land.

John Hirsch (00:35:18):

Yep.

Andy Chamberlain (00:35:19):

Which is, that's the best.

John Hirsch (00:35:21):

It's awesome. In both cases, in our rental ground, and in our purchase ground.

Andy Chamberlain (00:35:27):

That's perfect.

John Hirsch (00:35:27):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:35:29):

Then you can confidently say you're doing your part to preserve this part of the valley in farmland.

John Hirsch (00:35:35):

We definitely, within a year, well, within I guess maybe two years, got all the glyphosate out of this area, which... because there's different ways of doing everything. And I don't want to say people who use glyphosate are wrong. It's everybody's choice. But I think we feel strongly about not using it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:36:02):

Yip.

John Hirsch (00:36:03):

And our neighbors have made a point to be like, oh, thank God.

Andy Chamberlain (00:36:10):

They're appreciative that you not.

John Hirsch (00:36:11):

Thank God, no more roundup. I don't know. I try not to mind that kind of stuff too much. But yeah, I don't know. It's like the family aspect of it, too. It's just like how they were growing corn for a long time and don't want to be judgey. A thousand ways to skin a cat or however the saying goes.

Andy Chamberlain (00:36:36):

Yeah, there's a lot of ways to farm.

John Hirsch (00:36:38):

Yip. And we're certified organic, and I don't want to say that that's a better way than any other way. We're all just trying to feed people at the end of the day. So do you want to go check out the... the carrots are just germinating. You could see it by eye, but I don't know if your camera would be able to-

Andy Chamberlain (00:36:58):

Well, my camera's sharper than my eye.

John Hirsch (00:36:59):

Really?

Andy Chamberlain (00:37:00):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:37:00):

All right. Let's go look. We're going to get a couple more tractors this year.

Andy Chamberlain (00:37:05):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:37:06):

But all stuff that's pre-electronic.

Andy Chamberlain (00:37:13):

Old tractors.

John Hirsch (00:37:14):

Yeah, pretty much. And the thing about having old stuff is you can't just have one old tractor.

Andy Chamberlain (00:37:22):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:37:23):

You can have one new tractor and it might work fine, but if you have one old tractor and it breaks, you might be waiting on a few weeks just to get a piece for it or something.

Andy Chamberlain (00:37:35):

Yeah, right.

John Hirsch (00:37:36):

And the same thing with trucks. If you have one old truck, you're going to be walking at some point. There's no two ways about it. But new trucks break, too. So...

Andy Chamberlain (00:37:50):

You got to have some redundancy.

John Hirsch (00:37:52):

You have to have redundancy. And what I'm finding, our redundancy sweet spot is a bunch of stuff that I can tinker on myself. Yeah. Do you see the water issue? Yeah. So this is all carrots. We've moved from a 3-row to a 2-row set-up, and the biggest reason for that is we're not bunching them. We're topping them and putting them into a bin.

Andy Chamberlain (00:38:26):

Storage carrots.

John Hirsch (00:38:27):

Yeah, exactly. And the issue that we're running into is, yeah, you can barely see them.

Andy Chamberlain (00:38:35):

Are they up?

John Hirsch (00:38:36):

They're just coming out of the ground. I don't know if you see these guys right here.

Andy Chamberlain (00:38:42):

Oh, yeah.

John Hirsch (00:38:43):

They just popped out. Yeah. It's not even really anything to look at. I flame-weeded them, but then I got rained out of the second flame-weeding that I would've liked to have done. But, when we were doing 3-row, which I think 3-row is nice to make it look like the beds are super full. You know what I mean? And if you're bunching them for whatever kind of sales you're doing in bunches, Farmer's Market, CSA, whatever, it doesn't matter if the sizing is different in each row. But when you're mechanically harvesting, and now you're doing one outside row, and then the next pass you're doing the center row, the center is never as big as the two outside rows, across the board.

(00:39:35):

And I've talked to other growers about this too, and they say the same thing. As soon as you get into mechanical harvesting, you drop into two rows pretty much. And the problem with three rows is that when you start washing the center row, you can tell immediately when you get to that center row in the bin. It's-

Andy Chamberlain (00:39:54):

Interesting.

John Hirsch (00:39:56):

You tip it at just a certain point, and now all the carrots are half the size. It's like, what is going on here? Then you're trying to grade for whatever.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:05):

Right, that's fine if you're doing a market bunch-

John Hirsch (00:40:07):

Exactly.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:08):

Because it's a variety. But when you're selling by size...

John Hirsch (00:40:11):

Right, the consistency is key. And if all the carrots in the bag are roughly the same size, the customers are like, they're drawn to it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:24):

Yeah. Right or wrong-

John Hirsch (00:40:27):

Right or wrong-

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:28):

We like uniformity.

John Hirsch (00:40:29):

Exactly. Exactly.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:30):

We're no different than any other consumer.

John Hirsch (00:40:32):

Yep.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:34):

So what'd you seed them with?

John Hirsch (00:40:35):

I've got a Jang... Oh, here's a-

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:37):

Jang on a toolbar.

John Hirsch (00:40:39):

No, it's a 6-row, 3-point hitch Jang.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:43):

Right, right.

John Hirsch (00:40:44):

It came on with its own setup. It's not like the individual ones on the toolbar.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:49):

Uh-huh.

John Hirsch (00:40:49):

But yeah, the flame-weeding has worked great.

Andy Chamberlain (00:40:54):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:40:55):

Really, the only thing that threw it off for this planting was for the amount of rain. But you can see where I didn't flame-weed... So, I'm only flame-weeding this spot right here.

Andy Chamberlain (00:41:08):

Why aren't you doing the whole bed?

John Hirsch (00:41:10):

Because I have mechanical tools to do it, and I built the flame-weeder myself, so it's not a full bed. It only has three torches for the three rows. And now that I'm only doing two-

Andy Chamberlain (00:41:25):

It's [inaudible 00:41:26] narrow.

John Hirsch (00:41:26):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually a bunch of the backpack ones, like the handheld ones, but I built it onto a toolbar kind of thing. I actually got the idea off of YouTube. A guy made one for flame-weeding direct-seeded onions, which I was trying to get into for the longest time. But, yeah. So the rest of it I can handle mechanically. It's just right where the carrots are. Obviously, once they germinate, there's only so much you can do.

(00:42:07):

But what I try to do is 10 days or two weeks of minimal soil disturbance before I seed them so that I can get all of these weeds are primed, ready to go. And the more soil disturbance you do, the more weeds at different stages you kind of mix in. So yeah, mow board, plow, distant harrow, and field cultivate harrow. I set the beds up with a 3-point hitch, like Williams tine rake, and I hit it maybe twice with the tine rake over the course of a week. And then I seed.

Andy Chamberlain (00:42:54):

Mm-hmm. Seed, then flame.

John Hirsch (00:42:57):

Seed, then flame. And now next week I'll basket weed it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:43:01):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:43:02):

Or I might even basket weed it Friday.

Andy Chamberlain (00:43:06):

Do you wait until-

John Hirsch (00:43:09):

Emergence?

Andy Chamberlain (00:43:09):

Yeah, until they come up a little bit, or do you not really have to because your basket weeders are set up, so as long as you stay in your wheel tracks, you-

John Hirsch (00:43:16):

Ideally, you would think that's how it would work. But I think until they break out of the ground, I think the basket weeder is still disturbing a little too much almost. And I found that if I just wait a little bit longer, I have way less mechanical blight.

Andy Chamberlain (00:43:36):

Yeah, right.

John Hirsch (00:43:37):

You know what I mean? I'll wait a little bit longer because there's a lot still coming up, and I see this pretty thick. I actually made my own rollers for the Jang that work with pretty much every seed that we do to a certain extent. I just changed the gearing to let more or less seed out, but I'm not constantly switching the rollers out. So they work from a beet down to carrots, and all I'm doing is just adjusting the gearing. And it's really like, I'm just swapping the... there's two gears. You have a Jang, right?

Andy Chamberlain (00:44:17):

No.

John Hirsch (00:44:17):

Oh. Well, let me tell you how it works.

Andy Chamberlain (00:44:23):

I'm familiar with them, but I do not have one. No.

John Hirsch (00:44:25):

They run off of this chain system where you put a certain amount of sprockets in the front and the rear that meters the... It's like how fast this chain drive system works is dependent on these two gears.

Andy Chamberlain (00:44:39):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:44:40):

And I run a 14 and a 9, and then I just switch them back and forth. So it goes from half an inch density, I guess up to two and a half inch density.

Andy Chamberlain (00:44:56):

Okay.

John Hirsch (00:44:57):

So two and a half inches between seeds or half an inch. But really, the way that I've made these rollers, it's just letting out a steady stream of seed.

Andy Chamberlain (00:45:07):

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

John Hirsch (00:45:07):

Yeah. Yeah. So they're not singulated by any means.

Andy Chamberlain (00:45:13):

Do you come back and thin them out or not?

John Hirsch (00:45:14):

No. Nope. No, I don't need to. Because I set it up... So, I have a 24-hole roller set up on two-and-a-half-inch spacing, and that gets me just a most perfect little line of carrot seeds.

Andy Chamberlain (00:45:30):

Good.

John Hirsch (00:45:31):

Yeah, it works great for me. The only thing is the middle row was screwing it all up. So drop that.

Andy Chamberlain (00:45:37):

You took care of that problem.

John Hirsch (00:45:39):

Took care of that. Yeah, that was easy. Yeah. Actually, the person that told me I was going to have an issue with that was Paul Harlow. I showed him a picture because we were selling them dirty carrots, actually, which was kind of a neat thing. We would just ship bins of dirty carrots to them. And they were like, this sizing is all over the place. We're just not going to be able to wash these carrots because we're looking for this size. And if some of them come in and they're this big, we have to just get rid of them, which I totally understood.

(00:46:12):

And this was through Vermont Way Foods, which was the wholesaler trying to get local Vermont moving stuff into grocery stores. So it was a big kind of group effort sort of thing. We had this big concept like we were going to sell them dirty... well, we were going to sell essentially Vermont Way Foods dirty carrots. Harlow's was going to wash and bag them with their amazing new wash line. I don't know if you've seen it. It's incredible.

(00:46:45):

And their staff of... I don't even know how many people working on this stuff for five bucks a case to wash and bag, which is awesome. Way cheaper than I could do it. Well, obviously, when I'm doing it myself, I can do it cheaper than that because I just won't pay myself. It's just that easy.

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:07):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You can do it for that.

John Hirsch (00:47:11):

Right, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:11):

Yeah. It doesn't mean you should.

John Hirsch (00:47:12):

Oh, here, let's walk down here quick. I got a little over an acre of peas for grain because I'm going to-

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:20):

Peas for grain, huh?

John Hirsch (00:47:21):

Yeah. Like for cover crop seed.

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:24):

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Look at that, peas.

John Hirsch (00:47:28):

Here they be. Yeah. So I don't know, never grown them for grain.

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:33):

Yeah, right.

John Hirsch (00:47:34):

I've done wheat and rye, but there's a little rye mixed in here, so we'll see what happens. Just put it in with a grain drill. That's all right.

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:43):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:47:44):

It could be thicker. That's the first thing Becky Madden said. Yeah, I'd up that rate.

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:52):

Thanks, Becky.

John Hirsch (00:47:52):

Aw.

Andy Chamberlain (00:47:55):

Yep.

John Hirsch (00:47:55):

No, it's cool. I like seeing stuff in drills from the grain drill. It's cool.

Andy Chamberlain (00:48:00):

Yep.

John Hirsch (00:48:01):

Very. Especially if there was less of this dock and-

Andy Chamberlain (00:48:05):

Yeah, right.

John Hirsch (00:48:07):

Whatnot. But-

Andy Chamberlain (00:48:07):

That's aggressive with the weed.

John Hirsch (00:48:10):

Yeah, very aggressive. You see the other one over there?

Andy Chamberlain (00:48:13):

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:48:15):

I'm thinking that we're just going to rotate these fields out for a year or two. After this, I'll put it in some sort of perennial cover and hope to just cycle through, maybe even do a fallow at some point.

Andy Chamberlain (00:48:35):

This is right next to the river, right?

John Hirsch (00:48:35):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:48:36):

So this is a flooded field.

John Hirsch (00:48:38):

Sometimes, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:48:39):

Yep.

John Hirsch (00:48:40):

That one over there on the other side of the road tends to flood more, so we really don't plant that one too much anymore. This one, you can get away with farming this one. In fact, this land grows fantastic carrots. Like, honkers.

Andy Chamberlain (00:49:02):

Not as many rocks in this patch.

John Hirsch (00:49:05):

No. Yeah. This is Winooski fine silt loam. Most of the farm is Hadley silt loam with little rock outcroppings from however many tens of thousands of years of river overflowing. But yeah, no, we're super fortunate for this kind of ground. Really, really fortunate. And no plow pan, which is interesting. And we took whatever that tool is that you can stick in there. I don't know what it's called. Becky had it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:49:39):

I know. I can't think of it right now.

John Hirsch (00:49:41):

The plow pan-ometer.

Andy Chamberlain (00:49:44):

Yeah, the compression meter.

John Hirsch (00:49:48):

Well, it's going right all the way through. Sick. Unless you hit a rock.

Andy Chamberlain (00:49:52):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:49:53):

Yeah. Which NRCS must have hit a rock. Pretty much every time they're like, yeah, you got a plow pan, it's six inches. I'm like, really? Say, I don't know. And then Becky and her coworker, Rachel, I believe, came out. Yeah, we just did soil samples last week, hit all the valley land. We didn't get up to the mountain land that we rent, but yeah, that was interesting. I've never done so much soil sampling all at once.

Andy Chamberlain (00:50:34):

It takes a surprisingly long time.

John Hirsch (00:50:36):

Oh my God.

Andy Chamberlain (00:50:37):

To go out, you want to get at least half a dozen dozen per plot or cores.

John Hirsch (00:50:45):

Yeah, I mean-

Andy Chamberlain (00:50:45):

Bite it out.

John Hirsch (00:50:48):

Well, there were three of us out.

Andy Chamberlain (00:50:49):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:50:53):

They had two of those probe... like the core samplers, and I had just a shovel. So it's a different technique to get it with a shovel. You have to make a hole, and then you take a shave off the outer edge of the hole. It took a long time. It took like four hours, four or five hours to do. What is this? So I guess it's about 70-something carrots down here.

Andy Chamberlain (00:51:20):

Yeah. Right. You covered a lot of ground and a lot of different soil types.

John Hirsch (00:51:22):

Yeah. Yip. Well, surprisingly, it's mostly Hadley silt loam.

Andy Chamberlain (00:51:27):

Yeah. That's the majority.

John Hirsch (00:51:28):

Yeah, the majority of it. We have a really high water table in the valley, so I'm hoping that all this rain is just filling it up because I'm sure you've heard they're calling for a hot and dry summer from the Farmer's Almanac.

Andy Chamberlain (00:51:44):

No, I haven't caught that one yet.

John Hirsch (00:51:46):

Oh, really? Yeah. We'll see what happens. They're usually pretty spot-on. Like last year they said above-average rainfall, certainly got that.

Andy Chamberlain (00:51:59):

Yep.

John Hirsch (00:52:00):

The year before they said the same thing.

Andy Chamberlain (00:52:03):

Yeah. Well, yeah. The last two years were wet, but then the three years before that were really dry.

John Hirsch (00:52:07):

Right, right. Right.

Andy Chamberlain (00:52:08):

Next we hop back into the truck and loop up and around over into the next field. So what'd you seed into here?

John Hirsch (00:52:16):

Oats and peas.

Andy Chamberlain (00:52:17):

Okay.

John Hirsch (00:52:18):

Yep.

Andy Chamberlain (00:52:19):

This is some of your new ground?

John Hirsch (00:52:20):

This is rented. Yep. This is rental ground. So this is owned by the Short Hills Ski Club of New Jersey, and they have that house with the blue roof on it right there.

Andy Chamberlain (00:52:34):

Because you don't grow corn.

John Hirsch (00:52:35):

I do not grow corn. That's not mine. Yeah, I just picked this up this spring.

Andy Chamberlain (00:52:40):

Yeah. Okay.

John Hirsch (00:52:41):

Yeah. So I've been in talks with them for a couple of years. They couldn't let it go last year because the guy who grows corn already had everything purchased, so I didn't want to shake things up too much. So, yeah, whatever, we don't necessarily need it right off. It's going to be great because we'll get into our new land next year, then we'll get into this the following year. So it's like a great rotation progression anyway.

Andy Chamberlain (00:53:15):

It gives you an opportunity to-

John Hirsch (00:53:17):

Build up some soil. Although from what I understand with corn on corn, the organic matter does build, although I think that might be with grain corn, whereas this is silage corn, so it'll be interesting to see what the soil tests say.

Andy Chamberlain (00:53:35):

Yeah, it will be because-

John Hirsch (00:53:36):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:53:37):

Right. We do sweet corn, but then the stocks get flail mold.

John Hirsch (00:53:41):

Right.

Andy Chamberlain (00:53:42):

So there's a lot of biomass that stays there.

John Hirsch (00:53:44):

Right, yeah. But with this-

Andy Chamberlain (00:53:45):

When it's the silage corn, yeah, you're taking the stalks.

John Hirsch (00:53:47):

You're taking everything. Yeah. They did put down a good bit of manure. They do the slurry, so they spread it.

Andy Chamberlain (00:53:57):

Yeah. If they're putting manure back on it, then that keeps it stable.

John Hirsch (00:54:02):

Right, right, right. Well, that and...

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:54:04]

Andy Chamberlain (00:54:03):

Stable.

John Hirsch (00:54:03):

Right, right, right. Well, and nitrogen, I'm pretty sure they put synthetic nitrogen on it. But we're a couple of years out from this being certified. So I was thinking we'll have to see what the split farm ends up looking like, but if I can get some grain off of here... Like if we do oats or something. The oats themselves, if you leave all the straw, it's still a benefit-

Andy Chamberlain (00:54:33):

Right, right.

John Hirsch (00:54:33):

... even if you take the grain. From what I understand, all of that I have to look into a little bit more too.

Andy Chamberlain (00:54:40):

Yeah. No, that's still a lot of organic matter you're growing and leaving back on the field.

John Hirsch (00:54:43):

Yep. Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:54:45):

Yeah. Unless you're bailing that off for some straw.

John Hirsch (00:54:49):

No. I thought about it, but I think it's just getting into another enterprise that's got its own set of challenges and-

Andy Chamberlain (00:54:58):

Equipment to fix.

John Hirsch (00:55:00):

... breakdowns. Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to cheap it out and get a $600 baler and it's going to break immediately. I know myself, that's the great part about getting older. Okay, I'm just going to pump the brakes on this one right now. There's a guy that I rent land off of that's got the whole hay set up. And if I ever do straw baling, I'm just going to have him do it. And I asked him to do it like a year or two ago, and he goes, "Ah, geez, I don't know. I'm going to have to tweak the baler to..." Yeah, of course [inaudible 00:55:36] a little differently. But, yeah, I don't know. But we'll get the combine fired up?

Andy Chamberlain (00:55:43):

Yeah, sure. Let's check that out.

John Hirsch (00:55:44):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:55:44):

So you're pretty much a one man band, right?

John Hirsch (00:55:49):

I'm a one man band.

Andy Chamberlain (00:55:49):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:55:51):

Yeah. I prefer it. And honestly, when I was working at that vegetable farm before Melissa and I started our own thing, she's like, "So what do you want your farming career to look like?" And I was like, "Well, from working here, I already know I don't want any employees." Because it was just like a constant fight. Not that I don't want employees, I just think that with the way that I was doing it with the mixed vegetable, going to Farmer's market kind of enterprise.

Andy Chamberlain (00:56:24):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (00:56:28):

You're spinning so many plates that your employees aren't necessarily doing... I'll put it this way. Your employees will end up doing work that doesn't get paid for and it'll be stuff that you're trying to sell. So it almost makes more sense for your employees to be working on a wholesale operation. If you can do wholesale crops and you have a really good enterprise budget, like the growers that sell kale to deep root, they're doing a pallet or something. Whereas if you're doing 30 bunches for farmer's market and you get an employee out picking it and nothing's very efficient because you're having to start and stop so many jobs throughout the day, it's tough. It's really tough. And when I finally realized that, it was 2021 and we had lost our tomatoes essentially to leaf mold which we hadn't had up until 2021.

(00:57:46):

So a friend of Melissa's, this woman Karen, working on tomatoes, that was all she did. We had a couple of greenhouses of them. She would trim, trellis, pick, put into pints and whatnot. She did it all, and it was awesome. But the tomatoes died prematurely and we were trying to find where we could make the money back in all these other little radishes, bunch carrots, whatever. It was all for farmer's market. And we also had other employees. And I so quickly realized that the tomatoes for farmer's market was carrying so much of the business, and we are not in a great tomato area. Obviously. The weather's already... And I'm sure we could heat it and whatnot and just run a real expensive tomato operation here. But it-

Andy Chamberlain (00:58:54):

It wasn't a strength of the location or your interests per se.

John Hirsch (00:58:59):

Yeah, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (00:59:00):

It was meeting the market that you were at.

John Hirsch (00:59:01):

Exactly. But it just showed me so quickly that it all seems like it's a cohesive unit, this whole business that's working together to supply a couple of farmer's markets with vegetables, when it was really one of those enterprises out of all of it was carrying so much of it. And that season I barely got any sleep. I think that year took years off my life. I was so stressed and just unhappy with just everything. And it was such a challenge. Oh my God, it was such a challenge. And then the subsequent years, they just kept getting more challenging at farmer's market and trying to run the same business. But with that thought in the back of your head, if one of these crops goes, is this the crop that's carrying the whole thing?

(01:00:02):

And you can run budgets till you're blue in the face with farmer's market, but it's so tough when you're like, I got to do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of this, and you're jumping all over the place. It's like you can't really track your hours when you're doing five different things in an hour.

Andy Chamberlain (01:00:20):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:00:22):

If you have one employee working on one thing all day, that's easy to justify.

Andy Chamberlain (01:00:28):

If you're doing grain and you're doing vegetables and you're doing root crops, you can kind of keep track of things for grain or veggies or root crops.

John Hirsch (01:00:35):

Exactly.

Andy Chamberlain (01:00:36):

But the difference between tomatoes or kale or leeks, all the little stuff-

John Hirsch (01:00:42):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:00:42):

... it's hard to separate.

John Hirsch (01:00:43):

When you bring in 30 things to farmer's market or whatever, even 20 things. I have so much respect for people who can juggle all that because it's not me. It's never going to be me. It was like the square peg in a round hole kind of thing.

Andy Chamberlain (01:00:58):

Like you said, when you started that's not exactly what you wanted to do.

John Hirsch (01:01:05):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:05):

You wanted to be a tractor farm.

John Hirsch (01:01:07):

Exactly. Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:08):

You wanted to do grain.

John Hirsch (01:01:09):

I want to do grain.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:10):

That just didn't pencil out, so to speak-

John Hirsch (01:01:12):

No.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:12):

... right off the bat with the land that you've got.

John Hirsch (01:01:14):

The way we're going about it now pencils out only because so much of it is going into the closed loop aspects. I think if we wanted to get out of doing any vegetable farming and just do grain-

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:30):

That still doesn't work.

John Hirsch (01:01:31):

... I need another job. Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:33):

But wholesale roots...

John Hirsch (01:01:34):

Wholesale roots carries it.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:35):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:01:36):

And it's easy when you're only doing four different types of roots, well five. I'm doing three different types of potatoes and then orange and rainbow carrots. That's the majority of it. I'm doing a little cilantro and dill, it doesn't tip the scale.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:56):

But you're not pruning tomatoes-

John Hirsch (01:01:56):

Not pruning tomatoes.

Andy Chamberlain (01:01:57):

... and you're not washing salad mix-

John Hirsch (01:02:00):

No.

Andy Chamberlain (01:02:02):

... and all this other stuff. Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:02:02):

Yeah. And if I were doing that, I would make sure it's on a big enough scale where it's not... I find things that are on a bigger scale are easier to track. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I'm sure somebody's probably going to hear this and be like, "Oh, what's this guy talking about? He don't know what he's doing." But I don't know. Yeah, I don't know, that's just me. And it takes all types. So-

Andy Chamberlain (01:02:30):

Absolutely.

John Hirsch (01:02:30):

... good for people who can juggle all that. Speaking of strengths and interests, what you say we fire up this combine and let that-

Andy Chamberlain (01:02:38):

Yeah, sure.

John Hirsch (01:02:40):

... let that turbo whistle. I'm like addicted to the sound of this engine. Hopefully it starts.

Andy Chamberlain (01:02:45):

Yeah. I was going to say it's a cold day in May. It's not combine weather.

John Hirsch (01:02:49):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:03:07):

That's quiet compared to your truck.

John Hirsch (01:03:12):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is one we got from a buddy. [inaudible 01:03:14].

Andy Chamberlain (01:03:16):

What year is this?

John Hirsch (01:03:17):

It's a '81.

Andy Chamberlain (01:03:18):

Yeah. We're moving.

John Hirsch (01:03:25):

A little bit.

Andy Chamberlain (01:03:28):

'81 3 row with a corn head right now. But you don't do any corn, so that's not...

John Hirsch (01:03:34):

We don't have to move very far.

Andy Chamberlain (01:03:40):

No, no.

John Hirsch (01:03:44):

The guy still has the drain head, but this is the head that fit on the tractor trailer.

Andy Chamberlain (01:03:53):

Oh.

John Hirsch (01:03:55):

The other head is as big as my, I got an 18-foot equipment trailer-

Andy Chamberlain (01:04:03):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:04:03):

... so-

Andy Chamberlain (01:04:03):

You're going to go back and get that?

John Hirsch (01:04:04):

... yeah. South jersey.

Andy Chamberlain (01:04:06):

That's a trip.

John Hirsch (01:04:07):

Yeah. But I looked for combines around here for quite a while.

Andy Chamberlain (01:04:12):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:04:16):

And the quality that you can get in grain growing areas, even when you factor in shipping costs, you're still way ahead. For the same price of this machine with two heads was 8,500 bucks, which I think is a pretty good deal.

Andy Chamberlain (01:04:36):

This whole machine with both heads was less than 10 grand?

John Hirsch (01:04:38):

Yeah. Shipping was three grand. So I was looking at machines within an hour or so of here, which still would've required a tractor trailer unless I drove it.

Andy Chamberlain (01:04:53):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:04:54):

Which people do.

Andy Chamberlain (01:04:54):

Which is possible.

John Hirsch (01:04:56):

And I told Melissa, I was like, "I might have to drive this thing from New York state." And she's like, "Get out of here. You're not driving the combine over the road."

Andy Chamberlain (01:05:05):

You're going to follow me with the hazards on.

John Hirsch (01:05:08):

Yeah. Yeah. So a machine with a nearly blown engine was 11,5. And that was all that I could find. There was one that it was consuming cooling. It's like, buddy-

Andy Chamberlain (01:05:21):

Red flag.

John Hirsch (01:05:22):

... he's like, "Yo, my mechanic said it'll be fine for a couple more years." Until I get it and then it blows up.

Andy Chamberlain (01:05:28):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:05:28):

Which is Murphy's Law.

Andy Chamberlain (01:05:30):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:05:31):

But it's a nice machine. I really dig it. Pretty much everything works.

Andy Chamberlain (01:05:39):

That's important.

John Hirsch (01:05:40):

Yeah. So this machine was-

Andy Chamberlain (01:05:42):

Doesn't have to be perfect, but functional.

John Hirsch (01:05:44):

It's just got to be perfect for me. Yeah. You're supposed to run this thing wide open.

Andy Chamberlain (01:05:54):

Really?

John Hirsch (01:05:54):

Like jam that thing into the rabbit. But check this out. Pulled a stop engine. I haven't seen that since the '80s.

Andy Chamberlain (01:06:08):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:06:11):

Yeah. So when this thing came off the trailer, this was broken, this wire that leads to this electric lift pump. So I was able to... Yeah, I fixed it, but that was disconnected. So I got it off the trailer, parked it up at the house, unloaded whatever was left on the trailer, and then went to get back in it and start it up. And it was just cranking. It wouldn't fire up again.

Andy Chamberlain (01:06:48):

Oh no.

John Hirsch (01:06:50):

It's like, "Oh, no." It's like, "Why couldn't it do this at the guy's house when I looked at it?"

Andy Chamberlain (01:06:53):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:06:54):

So it took a little tinkering around. But what's nice about this old stuff is you're never going to have to get John Deere to come out and hook a scanner to it. You know what I mean?

Andy Chamberlain (01:07:06):

That's true.

John Hirsch (01:07:07):

It's like, what are you going to scan?

Andy Chamberlain (01:07:09):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:07:11):

It's all mechanical.

Andy Chamberlain (01:07:12):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:07:15):

I mean, that's more my speed though. I understand from both sides. I just think that mechanical stuff is usually, you replace the mechanical stuff. With electronics-

Andy Chamberlain (01:07:34):

You're chasing.

John Hirsch (01:07:34):

... you're chasing diodes and stuff. And they go bad, and then you put a new one on and then that one goes bad.

Andy Chamberlain (01:07:43):

Yeah. I don't know.

John Hirsch (01:07:46):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:07:46):

This will be fun.

John Hirsch (01:07:47):

But I got the service manual, all the stuff I'm going to need. I got a bunch of new belts.

Andy Chamberlain (01:07:54):

So now's a good time to read up on it, get familiar with it.

John Hirsch (01:07:57):

Yeah. I did hear a quote recently. It was like, "They don't break while they're parked in the barnyard."

Andy Chamberlain (01:08:06):

I just heard that too in an audiobook. And they're like, "Yeah, the tractor doesn't break unless you're using it."

John Hirsch (01:08:12):

Right, exactly. It's like-

Andy Chamberlain (01:08:13):

Yeah, that's true.

John Hirsch (01:08:14):

... there's only so much you can do. Yeah, you change your oil and stuff but if it hasn't broken right now, not a whole lot you can do to it to break it ahead of time.

Andy Chamberlain (01:08:25):

Yeah, right.

John Hirsch (01:08:26):

Unfortunately. But yeah, this is the 4066M. Great machine, I've got almost 1,600 hours on it.

Andy Chamberlain (01:08:40):

Yeah. You bought it new, right?

John Hirsch (01:08:43):

I bought it brand new. Yeah. Probably the last time I'll ever do that.

Andy Chamberlain (01:08:47):

Brand new is not common on this farm.

John Hirsch (01:08:50):

No. I did see the value in having one machine with a warranty on it just to be able to sleep at night. But I think what I'm going to go with going forward are the maybe Farmall M's or what you might call them, the two cylinder John Deere's, the old ones.

Andy Chamberlain (01:09:12):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:09:14):

And have one that's nice and modern with hydrostatic transmission. I will say this size with this engine transmission, this is a fantastic chore tractor. This is a great everyday tractor. Keep the rats out of the ECU and this thing is fantastic.

Andy Chamberlain (01:09:35):

Keep the rats out of anything.

John Hirsch (01:09:37):

Yeah. Yeah. But I do have these in here, I'm just a little scared to put them back on here.

Andy Chamberlain (01:09:46):

Oh, the side panels?

John Hirsch (01:09:47):

Just to keep a little more air flow so the rats don't feel like they have a safe space to hide.

Andy Chamberlain (01:09:53):

Don't make it feel like home.

John Hirsch (01:09:54):

Yeah. But it's back behind this panel is where they... And when that happened, when I lost the throttle, I opened this and there was a rat in there staring at me.

Andy Chamberlain (01:10:09):

Get out of here.

John Hirsch (01:10:11):

I was on the phone with Melissa and I was like, "Oh, there's a rat in here." And I saw it running and I tried to chase after it and Melissa hung up on me. She was like, "You're stressing me out." How do you think I feel?

Andy Chamberlain (01:10:29):

Yeah. How's visibility with the forks?

John Hirsch (01:10:34):

It's all right. It gets the job done. I don't know. I feel like-

Andy Chamberlain (01:10:39):

The forks are always hard.

John Hirsch (01:10:40):

... the forks are tough on a machine like this. And it's still under warranty, so I don't dare mess with the seat sensor on it because I know people who-

Andy Chamberlain (01:10:52):

Yeah, you're right. If you stand up and-

John Hirsch (01:10:54):

It'll stop. Which I don't-

Andy Chamberlain (01:10:58):

But, yeah, when you're doing forks, you kind of got to stand up, do good look around.

John Hirsch (01:11:00):

Hey, I got another 400 hours and this thing will be out of warranty and then I will immediately undo that seat sensor. But, honestly, it's been great. There really hadn't been a whole lot of issues. I had to do this tube last week. Well, I looked down and the tire's almost flat. I was doing some tillage in the one field, notice it was flat. What's great about having the loader is you just put the loader on the ground, pick it up, zip the wheel off. I brought it back here, took the old tube out. I had a new one on the shelf already. Put a new tube in, back to work in 40 minutes, which is great. That's part of the beauty of being willing to tinker on stuff is your downtime. If I had to bring this to a shop, I wouldn't have been able to get back into the tillage that day, realistically. It was 3:30 in the afternoon.

Andy Chamberlain (01:12:06):

But otherwise almost 2,000 hours and really hasn't needed anything?

John Hirsch (01:12:10):

No. I service it every 400 hours. I do everything. Front, whatever they call it, MFWD, the front axle. I do the front axle fluid change, hydraulic fluid, oil filter, fuel filter. I don't do the air filter every year, I just blow it out. But I did buy a new one last year, and it looks fantastic still.

Andy Chamberlain (01:12:44):

It's pretty easy to do those routine things on this one?

John Hirsch (01:12:47):

I was able to do most of that stuff within an hour and a half.

Andy Chamberlain (01:12:51):

Nice.

John Hirsch (01:12:51):

Yeah. The longest thing was just waiting for all the fluid to come out of the final drives down there, or whatever they call it. I think those are called final drives, this hub assembly.

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:04):

Yeah. Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:13:07):

Because the port is at the bottom here. But, yeah, love this thing. It's great. Runs the carrot harvester, runs the potato harvester. I mean, honestly, I want to get a couple of old tractors just to give this thing some relief. You know what I mean?

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:24):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:13:24):

Because this will still be probably the number one tractor.

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:28):

Many years old is this one?

John Hirsch (01:13:30):

2018. No, 2019 I got it.

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:33):

Okay.

John Hirsch (01:13:33):

Six years.

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:34):

So it's six years.

John Hirsch (01:13:34):

Yeah. Yeah. And since I need to paint the wash line as well, I'm going to touch up all the little spots.

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:42):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:13:42):

Because that's John Deere green too.

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:44):

Yeah. Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:13:46):

But, yeah, this thing's great. I really highly recommend this model in particular. I think if you got it, you'd be real happy with it.

Andy Chamberlain (01:13:56):

Well, to wrap up a few follow up questions here on my podcast.

John Hirsch (01:13:59):

Oh, sure.

Andy Chamberlain (01:14:00):

So I always ask people, what does sustainable farming mean to you and what are you doing to achieve it?

John Hirsch (01:14:07):

Well, sustainable to me, it's almost the same thing as resiliency. It's like you're able to do it year after year with minimal impact to environment. Finances play a part in it. Can I do this year after year and not dig a hole for myself, I guess? And so some things that we're doing for that are, I have been talking with our agronomist about how to get out of buying fertilizer. So we are super focused on cover cropping. I think we may just lack in the P&K side. Nitrogen is easy with cover crops so we might start incorporating more like wood ash and stuff like that into the rotation. Some other things are, this is tough in farming, the wish list groweth, how do you train yourself to leave well enough alone? Would you really benefit from another loan or another 30 grand in the hole in equipment? Could you do it with where you're at? And just letting it be okay, you know what I mean?

Andy Chamberlain (01:15:50):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:15:51):

You don't have to have this stuff if all you're worried about is did I do a good job and do I get to spend some time with my family? You know what I mean? If you're getting stuff because you're, the keeping up with the Jones's thing. And this is our caveman brain, we are wired to think, oh, if I don't have what my, not even, I mean, we're on two different ends of the agriculture spectrum, but if I don't have what somebody that's doing my same enterprise has, what does that mean about me? Just not letting things get so existential, I guess. It's like comparison is a thief of joy kind of thing. So that to me is sustainability.

Andy Chamberlain (01:16:51):

Where did you learn how to farm?

John Hirsch (01:16:59):

A lot of reading. I worked on a vegetable farm, but they were doing an okay job but it was a place to learn what not to do. Which is sometimes just as important as learning what to do. A lot of research. Have you heard the term YouTube university?

Andy Chamberlain (01:17:24):

Oh, yeah.

John Hirsch (01:17:24):

Oh, big time into YouTube. Honestly, everything I learned about cultivation, I learned from somebody that does the University of Iowa mechanical cultivation webinar. I forget what exactly it was, but it was like pick a spacing.

(01:17:45):

It doesn't matter what it is, but don't have every single crop you're doing be it a different spacing. If it's going to be three rows, make them three rows at 15 inches. Don't do some at four inches and some at 16. Do them all at 15. Have all of your equipment ready to go. All the cultivation stuff, you can hop on every tractor and not adjust anything and just hit the field. And a lot of what you guys are doing, UVM has been just an awesome resource. A lot of Veg and Berry listserv, learned a lot off of there. I think that we are in an interesting career field where I don't think any of us will ever know everything there is to know about agriculture. I don't know what I'm doing. You say, where did I learn?

(01:18:54):

I don't think I've learned it all. I am learning every day, and I will be the first to admit that I could probably do things better. I could have learned more. But there's something to be said about doing the job and not learning about it before. I mean, you need to learn about it before you do it. But there was this thing I read that was talking about, it was like a project in a college, it was a photography class. A professor took half the students and said, "You are going to be judged based on the quantity of pictures, and you guys are going to be judged based on the quality of your pictures." And the only way to get a passing score was to take at least 100 pictures from the quantity side or one great picture from the quality side.

(01:19:54):

And what had happened was the ones who were focused on quantity did way more practice and took a much better final picture than the quality based students because they were fixated on getting the perfect shot. They were researching it. They were racking their brain. What's this thing to get a picture of while not practicing. So like we said, there's 100 different ways to do everything. I think that you could work for somebody to learn and they could have taught you all the wrong things. And you may not have known it unless you went to 10 different farms to work. But I think the thing to do is if you have an inkling that you want to do it, I think one season is good and then just jump in, I think. And it's going to be tough financially. You're going to make a lot of mistakes.

Andy Chamberlain (01:20:52):

It's the practice.

John Hirsch (01:20:53):

How do you get away from it?

Andy Chamberlain (01:20:54):

Yeah. And it's all a unique situation.

John Hirsch (01:20:56):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:20:56):

I mean, you can read about or talk to somebody else who's harvesting field peas for cover crops but...

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:21:04]

Andy Chamberlain (01:21:03):

... harvesting field peas for cover crops, but only the fundamentals is going to be beneficial to your situation-

John Hirsch (01:21:08):

Exactly.

Andy Chamberlain (01:21:09):

... in an 80-some-odd combine to go out to do your couple acres of peas.

John Hirsch (01:21:14):

Yeah, in a flood-prone field. And these guys are in Washington state or wherever with the relevant information. Yeah. So, I don't know, maybe that's not the right way to look at. But I don't think there's anything wrong with learning while you are working a different job, too. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Andy Chamberlain (01:21:36):

I have a sense of what you'll say, but what are you most excited about in your next year of farming life?

John Hirsch (01:21:48):

Having a kid. Honestly, I'm so stoked. I'm so excited. I don't know, dialing it in, running a combine like this myself for the first time, getting that potato attachment for the carrot harvester, that'll be cool.

Andy Chamberlain (01:22:12):

Yeah, you got a lot of fun things to look forward to this week.

John Hirsch (01:22:16):

Yeah, I mean, man, what a blessing. What a great time. I mean, just turned 35, not last weekend, but the weekend before. So, I don't know, just feeling grateful. And it's not that it comes without financial stress and stuff like that. Yeah, sure, it's always going to be tough. It's a tough industry. The profit margins are awful. You got to do it because you love it. But yeah, definitely a kid. It's a little boy, too.

Andy Chamberlain (01:22:56):

Oh, exciting.

John Hirsch (01:22:56):

Yeah, so I would've been fine with either, as long as they're healthy. So, now it's shifted my focus like, do I get a farm all in that doesn't have a buddy seat? And then I'm like, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:23:13):

You can strap a car seat to the toolbar.

John Hirsch (01:23:17):

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, right on the hood. Yeah. It's going to be a little hot today.

Andy Chamberlain (01:23:22):

Tilmor needs to make a car seat mount.

John Hirsch (01:23:24):

Yeah, right. Yeah. Then I'll buy one brand new.

Andy Chamberlain (01:23:28):

With an umbrella clamp. What fulfills you in this career? You talked about passion and you're glad you're not into roofing,

John Hirsch (01:23:39):

Only for the passion and the money. Money's great in roofing. I like looking out at a big old field. I don't know what it is. Like a big planting of carrots. Love looking at it. I don't know. It's so odd. We talk about the caveman brain. I don't even know. I don't know what it is about it, but just looking at a big field, especially when I running the baskets on the G, and not just doing a bed, doing a couple of hours out on that thing. There's just something about the amount that you're doing that really... yeah, that's what gets me going.

Andy Chamberlain (01:24:37):

When you're out there cultivating for a couple hours, you got headphones in listening to something?

John Hirsch (01:24:41):

Oh, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:24:42):

Or are you listening to the birds and the wind?

John Hirsch (01:24:44):

I'm always listening to the Ag Engineering podcast. I actually do. Boy, I'm all over the place. I had a buddy in high school that said, if you only listen to one genre of music, it gets so boring. And I think about that every time I listen to music, I'm like, I got-

Andy Chamberlain (01:25:05):

That's true.

John Hirsch (01:25:05):

... to switch it around constantly. So, my go-to for maybe not mindless work, but if I don't want to be totally focused on what I'm listening to, I really like lo-fi instrumental. I listen to a lot of death metal. Rap, I listen to a lot of rap. '90s country. I'm pretty much only listening to stuff on those headphones, the noise-canceling headphones, which are amazing. They're like Sony something. They've got buttons on it, so you can just-

Andy Chamberlain (01:25:46):

Are they earmuffs?

John Hirsch (01:25:47):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:25:49):

Or headphones?

John Hirsch (01:25:50):

They are like noise-canceling earmuffs, but Bluetooth.

Andy Chamberlain (01:25:54):

Okay. Yeah. Nice.

John Hirsch (01:25:55):

So, yeah, I can't listen to radio, but I got Spotif. y and then podcasts. I like to listen to podcasts too quite a bit. And the genres are all over the place. Julia Luis-Dreyfus has a... or wait, is that her name? Yeah, from Seinfeld. Elaine from Seinfeld?

Andy Chamberlain (01:26:17):

Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:26:17):

She's got a really good podcast. This one was her interviewing Jane Goodall. I was like, man, I haven't done anything in life. [inaudible 01:26:30] Jane Goodall. But yeah, all over the place. Yeah, definitely listen to yours a lot. I listen to every episode pretty much.

Andy Chamberlain (01:26:40):

You mentioned earlier about a positive thinking. So, is there any quotes or mantras that you've got or you've been referencing lately?

John Hirsch (01:26:55):

Man, one that I just heard, and it's one of those things where it affirms something that you're already feeling, so I don't know if it count so much, but it was like something like joy doesn't come from having more things. It comes from having less things. And I think it's not just on the gear end, it's more like how many plates are you spinning at once kind of thing.

(01:27:27):

And when I was doing farmer's market, you had to spin a lot of plates all the time and almost to your detriment. If you weren't, people wouldn't come to your stand as much. So, it was like you were incentivized to be doing way more than you really should manage at once. But what's the option? So, I do a few plantings a year. I've got the carrots down to two plantings. If something happens with the first planting, I'll replant. But I won't plan to replant. I'll do this early, well, spring planning, and then I'll do another one in July, late June, July. And I'll plan it all at once because I don't need the tops to be at these different stages so that I can bunch them for farmer's market. You know what I mean?

Andy Chamberlain (01:28:32):

Oh, right, yeah. You don't need the successions so much.

John Hirsch (01:28:34):

I don't need successions. Yeah. So, put all the potatoes in all at once. Carrots over two plantings. So, I have summer and winter storage carrots. Yeah, I'm doing a couple other things. I'd like that daikon radish trial. That was at a different timing. But yeah, I think I'm going to do some beets this year. But still it's like I'm spinning way less plates. So, yeah, it's like I'm doing less and it feels more joyful. I guess.

Andy Chamberlain (01:29:07):

It's been, whatever, over 10 years since you started farming now. Is this what you thought it would be when you were starting? Is this what you envisioned? Or is it in a completely different place?

John Hirsch (01:29:20):

It's in a completely different place. So, the only reason that I started farming ourselves the second year... well, so I worked for somebody and then the following year I started on my own. That following year, I was going to work for a guy who did 1,500 acres of corn and beans because that's what I wanted to get into. So, I found a connection through the vegetable farm I was working and this guy was like, "Oh yeah, I need another odd tractor driver combine." Well, they call it a grain cart driver. But he died in a farming accident unloading fertilizer.

(01:30:16):

So, yeah, not to get too morbid, but that changed the whole trajectory because I think if I would've done that, I would've maybe tried to find a way to do to get right into corn and beans. And probably just would've worked at maybe pulling wrenches or something like that, doing something you can't do corn and beans full. The margins are too slim, too volatile. You're not setting the price, you're just taking whatever you get when you drop them off. It's very expensive. So, I think that, as much of it is a tragedy, it pushed us to this direction. And I'm making this as close to what I was envisioning. But obviously it's never going to be exactly what you think when you get in... I don't think anything is.

Andy Chamberlain (01:31:15):

No.

John Hirsch (01:31:16):

Even if you go to school, and you go for this career and then you get out, I don't think even that.

Andy Chamberlain (01:31:22):

Yeah. But when you started farming, it wasn't like, "Yeah, I'm going to be a vegetable farmer." You are thinking grain. Even when you started growing vegetable farmers, it wasn't your envision to necessarily be like, "I'm going to grow carrots and potatoes."

John Hirsch (01:31:34):

No, no, no. I think my goal was always to do what I could with machines, because I'm a gear head. And I don't mind working on stuff. I like tinkering. The carrots lend themselves to machine harvesting pretty well. I mean, they make a machine to do it. Potatoes, they make a machine to do it. And there are other things that I could diversify into with those machines, but it was really the focus to stop picking things so individually by hand, you know what I mean?

Andy Chamberlain (01:32:14):

Right.

John Hirsch (01:32:15):

Like managing more acreage obviously, but bigger plannings at once. But that's like we were talking about earlier. That's just how my mind is. I don't think there's two right ways to go about this industry. This is just what I can speak to. This is how I make sense of it. But I think for me, sitting in a seat, picking 10,000, 15,000 pounds of carrots in a day sounds a lot more appealing than I can do a thousand by in a day. Maybe I did more than that.

Andy Chamberlain (01:32:56):

Still.

John Hirsch (01:32:56):

But still.

Andy Chamberlain (01:32:58):

The economy is a scale with equipment is-

John Hirsch (01:32:59):

The economy of scale. Yeah. Yep.

Andy Chamberlain (01:33:01):

So, do you have a vision for the next 10 years? You're just kind of rolling with how things are going year to time?

John Hirsch (01:33:08):

We're going to grow quite a bit bigger next year. I think it's just systems, getting systems styled in. Maybe a couple of niceties. But I think for equipment-wise-

Andy Chamberlain (01:33:28):

Yeah, equipment and crop-wise, somewhere-

John Hirsch (01:33:30):

Equipment and crop-wise, I think we're in a pretty good spot. A couple more tractors would be nice. Not another one of these though. I mean this thing's great, but I think to have two, I think we need to have a lot more land in production.

Andy Chamberlain (01:33:47):

If you could restart now, knowing what either, what would you do differently or what advice would you have to a young farmer now?

John Hirsch (01:33:58):

Advice. Don't take advice. I forget who said that. No one's going to be able to tell you exactly what is going to be-

Andy Chamberlain (01:34:09):

Don't take advice from somebody who isn't doing it themselves.

John Hirsch (01:34:13):

Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:34:13):

That's the important thing.

John Hirsch (01:34:14):

Well, and then the other thing is don't take advice from somebody who isn't where you want to be. So, I don't know if I would take advice from me. What could I do differently? Honestly, I thought about this a couple of months ago and I don't think there was a way to do this differently. It's going to take eight, 10 years. And people are being more forthcoming about that now. It's a grind and there's some sleepless nights, and I think it's the rite of passage and everybody has to go through it. But really advice would be find someone who is doing as close to what you want to do and don't emulate them, but look to what they're doing as a source of inspiration.

(01:35:16):

And I definitely have people that I look to for inspiration. I don't want to drop any names, but few in Vermont, a couple in Maine. Yeah, I don't know. Being able to learn from everybody, but understanding that you're going to have to do it differently. Because unless your farm is their next-door neighbor, there's not a whole lot that transfers, especially in Vermont. But even more like homogeneous states, too. Ones that are where the climate is the same from the eastern end to the western end. We're not in that boat here for sure. I mean, this is part of Addison County, and you talk to people from Middlebury and they're like, "Where are you from?"

Andy Chamberlain (01:36:07):

Really? This is Addison County?

John Hirsch (01:36:09):

Well, they're like, "Granville, New York?" I was like, no, Granville. We're part of Addison County and they have no idea. Because it's so different.

Andy Chamberlain (01:36:16):

It's over the mountain.

John Hirsch (01:36:17):

It's over the mountain.

Andy Chamberlain (01:36:20):

What do you do outside of farming that brings you joy? Or how do you disconnect?

John Hirsch (01:36:29):

I do dig farming, so it takes up a lot of my mental space. I am a gear head, so, well, they're all Melissa's, but we've got a bunch of old Volkswagens, so I keep myself pretty busy tinkering with them. We've got a 1973 square back that I just converted from fuel injection to carburetor, and hoping to be able to take that out in the next couple of weeks to one of the local cars and coffee meets, which I've been looking. Every time I go past, it's Saturday morning from 8:00 to 12:00 or something, every time I go past them, "One of these years I'm going to be out there with these 70-year-old guys and their Corvettes. It's going to be me in that pants with a crotch hole rip". So, I play bass. So, I've been getting into doing that more. I'm trying to learn a bunch of ska songs like Mighty, Mighty Bosstones and who else? Streetlight Manifesto, that kind of stuff. I don't don't know if you've ever heard. Ska is sort of like sublime, but with horns, and saxophone and stuff like that.

Andy Chamberlain (01:37:45):

Oh, I'll have to look them up.

John Hirsch (01:37:46):

It's pretty neat. Yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:37:48):

Well, is there anything else that you wanted to share that we didn't talk about?

John Hirsch (01:37:52):

Boy, I feel like we covered it all, haven't we?

Andy Chamberlain (01:37:53):

We talked about a lot. Yeah.

John Hirsch (01:37:57):

I would say get off social media. We did and honestly, it feels great. And there's a little bit of local farmer connection that we might be missing.

Andy Chamberlain (01:38:08):

From a business standpoint or from a personal standpoint?

John Hirsch (01:38:10):

No, there's no business standpoint to have your farm on social media. From what I'm seeing anyway. And this could be different if you're in close to a city and you're getting a lot of engagement from the local community. But take a good long look at the likes on each post and I guarantee you they're like 75% other farms liking your stuff. And you can't put a dollar figure on that. That's just you being connected to your community. And so, I would say that it's better to call or text the local farmers you want to jive with.

(01:38:55):

I don't think that you guys... well, not you guys, but farms in general... and we were doing this too. You're taking the perfect pick for the Gram, and is not representative of what your business and your farm looks like. This is what you've curated to put out to the world. Which that might make me be like, "Oh, man, their carrots are so much cleaner. I got to get out there." And there might be a benefit like that. It's kicking me into gear, lighting a fire under me. But I think for a lot of it, it's just like the comparison thing. It's like you're just comparing yourself. And this is a quote that I like. It's something to the effect of, you can't count other people's money. Which means not like I can't go into your wallet and count out the bills. It's like you don't know the backstory of any of this. You don't know if they don't have money. If they've got a lot of money, where's it coming from? Who's paying for this or that?

(01:40:05):

So, to think that you are going to know how all this is happening by looking at this curated picture on Instagram, it's just not reality. And you can't compare yourself to that. And I found that as soon as we got off of social media. Yeah, there's a few people that I used to talk to a lot on Instagram and I don't anymore. And for those reasons. Every once in a while I ask Melissa to sign on so I can get on message some people. But everyone's pretty understanding that I don't know if social media has been the benefit to our society that we try to think it is.

Andy Chamberlain (01:40:51):

From a business standpoint, do you think it was helpful when you were going to farmer's markets versus now, you're right, your wholesale veg farmer, that's-

John Hirsch (01:40:59):

It wasn't helpful.

Andy Chamberlain (01:41:00):

Your customers aren't there, but do you think it was helpful back then?

John Hirsch (01:41:02):

It wasn't.

Andy Chamberlain (01:41:03):

No.

John Hirsch (01:41:03):

No, because it was all other farms liking our stuff. Which that's what I'm saying, the benefit is in the ag community, but it's not necessarily in getting customers. I don't know if I could even tell you if I've made money on Instagram, you know what I mean? And I'm sure I might be in the minority. I might not be, but I might also be in the minority. And this is part of taking my advice. Don't take my advice. I could be way out of left field.

(01:41:38):

But I think that other people that I've talked to share the same sentiment, which is like, you are going to like other farm stuff if you're a farm, because that's the kind of stuff you're looking for. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you need to separate that from gaining and retaining customers. So, we sell everything to grocery stores now and they are not going on our label and finding our website and messaging us. And we do have a website. And I edited it this morning actually. I changed some pictures around. And of course we pull it up on the phone and one of the pictures is turn 90 degrees the wrong direction. But I could have sworn that I edited that. But yeah, I don't know. I think we as a society thought that with the internet, it was like we have all this information at our fingertips. And then we argue about politics on Facebook and it's like, I don't know. It's definitely helped my stress level for sure.

Andy Chamberlain (01:42:55):

Well, that right there is a good reason to get off.

John Hirsch (01:42:56):

That's the benefit for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Chamberlain (01:42:58):

Your own mental health.

John Hirsch (01:43:00):

Right. And anytime that I had a few minutes, I'd just be like face buried in the thing, just scrolling away, and I don't know, just trying to be more intentional with my time.

Andy Chamberlain (01:43:14):

What helped you break that addiction, we'll call it?

John Hirsch (01:43:16):

Deleting it.

Andy Chamberlain (01:43:17):

Just from cold-

John Hirsch (01:43:19):

Cold turkey. Out of here. Yeah, my dad's a big proponent in the cold turkey method. He smoked from when he was like 12 to, I don't know, 50 or something like that. One day he's just like, "That's it. Not smoking anymore." And I don't know, seeing somebody do something like that, that helped me. It's like this isn't that big a deal. Yeah, I don't know. Definitely for stress. I think that was the big reason. I was just comparing myself to a standard that I didn't quite know the back story of and I was judging myself against it, and I didn't think that was healthy.

Andy Chamberlain (01:44:09):

And that was the Farmer's Share. I hope you enjoyed this episode with John Hirsch of Clearfield Farm. The Farmer's Share is supported by a grant offered by the USDA Specialty Crop Block Program from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets. This funding helps to cover some of my time and travel in order to produce this podcast until March of 2026. The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service supports projects that address the needs of US specialty crop growers and strengthens local and regional food systems. I have no doubt that this podcast meet those needs and help educate growers to support the industry.

(01:44:49):

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 thefarmershare.com/support. The show is also supported by the Ag Engineering program of the University of Vermont Extension. We also receive funding from the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association. The VVBGA is a non-profit 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.

(01:45:32):

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, access the community Accreditation for Produce Safety, also known as CAPS. This program is designed for growers, by growers to help you easily meet market and regulatory food safety expectations. You can access the VVBGA's Soil Health platform where you can organize all the soil tests and create and store your Soil Amendment plans and records, access to webinars for growers in the VVBGA annual meeting, an email subscription to the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Newsletter, comradery, enhanced communication and fellowship among commercial growers.

(01:46:21):

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 projects. 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.

(01:46:52):

You can visit thefarmershare.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. 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 in 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.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:47:50]