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2018 - The Farm

Well, I've been gone a few years from the board, and away from growing peppers, but looks like life is pushing me back that way again. 
 
I recently (last month) closed on a 25 acre farm in Central Illinois with some primo soil, and I'm going to give a commercial grow a test run. 
 
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From up on the roof, when I was doing some roof repairs on the outbuildings. Not much as far as the eye can see, but cornfields...
 
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Has a 4 stall garage and a horse stable on the property
 
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Probably do my grow room upstairs here after I insulate it
 
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Built some doors for the horse barn and patched the roof last month
 
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Anyway just dropped a cold grand on seeds from pepperlover and buckeye, going to hit a greenhouse supplier up for other materials next week.
 
Have plans to build a 30x72' greenhouse in the spring, and a ~1200 sq foot dedicated grow room. Too late really to help with this year's grow, but next year it'll save me a lot of hassle on hardening off. 
 
The greenhouse, I am going to do a piped infloor heat slab, with a horizontal loop geothermal system (I own a mini excavator) that is solar powered. So heating should be nice, uniform, not create heat / cold bubbles, and not dry out plants like forced air would. I build circuit boards in my day job, so I will also build a microcontroller to handle the automated watering system with soil moisture monitors and actuated plumbing valves on the water supply.
 
Also plan on building a "deep winter" greenhouse for year round production. Got blueprints I made from a couple of years back, those are walled on three sides with heavy duty insulation, with the glass wall side angled to face winter solstice, so you can grow in the deep freeze months of the north. In the summer, those get hot enough to use as a natural dehydrator, replace the tables with racks for bulk drying.
 
Only doing a half acre or so of peppers to start with this year, the balance will be put in corn. I can't manage more than that with the labor I have available. (When you start talking thousands of plants, simple tasks like up-potting grow in to hundreds or thousands of man hours...)
 
Going to hire some local kids to help, school has a good ag co-op program for high schoolers, they can get school credit working on local farms. Since the plant out and harvest doesn't conflict too badly with corn, shouldn't have a problem finding labor around here.
 
Anyway, that's the plans.
 
We'll see how it goes.. er.. grows.
 
 
Pics from this morning's market. New one we're going to, was a LOT of interest in Habanero and ghost peppers in that town, which is crazy, because the other market we go to I can't even give away something as mild as a Jalapeno.
 
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We had a lot of traffic at the farm today for our "grand opening" of the retail sales area
 
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Sold out of a bunch of stuff today, the shelves I picked up from Bergners store closing, they put their fixtures on sale finally.
 
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This pic is from the market Saturday; mostly young women and older folk go to that one, not a strong market for peppers, but we've managed to sell an average of 15 dry quarts of sweet peppers there each week now. Strong market there for cucumbers, melons, etc. 
 
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Also it is REALLY weird recording pepper harvest in "bushels" and "pecks"
 
We harvested five bushels of peppers this week so far, various types, 11 bushels of cucumbers, 4 bushels of beans, and 9 watermelons.
 
Neither, it's a unit of measure for volume. Comes out to roughly 35 liters to bushel, so we've harvested about 175 (dry) liters of peppers this week. Total we're up to 8 or 9 bushels (1/3 a cubic meter?)
 
 
Can you offer tastings of a prepared food at your Saturday market, without jumping through all sorts of regulatory hoops?  I would bet money that if you had some tasting samples of some hot pepper jams with some pretzel sticks or cream cheese & crackers, along with a few simple recipes, you could sell many more hot peppers at your Saturday market.
 
nmlarson said:
Can you offer tastings of a prepared food at your Saturday market, without jumping through all sorts of regulatory hoops?  I would bet money that if you had some tasting samples of some hot pepper jams with some pretzel sticks or cream cheese & crackers, along with a few simple recipes, you could sell many more hot peppers at your Saturday market.
 
We have to get health department certified to give out samples. That includes doing the full three-sink-basin wash sink, etc. Samples have to be prepared in a certified kitchen the day before and refrigerated properly / etc.
 
So yeah there's a bunch of regulatory hoops.
 
Got our Facebook page up and rolling pretty good, starting to gather a community following;
 
http://www.facebook.com/LawrenceProduce
 
Today's big announcement is I found a local food distribution place that distributes food to area needy families (over 1,000 of them) which has agreed to take our unsold produce. 
 
It's either that, or unsold food goes on the compost pile... would rather feed folks who need it.
 
Obviously not a place I can dump our hot peppers, but at least I can get rid of unsold sweet peppers, tomatoes, beans, corn, watermelon, cucumbers, etc....
 
 
TrentL said:
Got our Facebook page up and rolling pretty good, starting to gather a community following;
 
http://www.facebook.com/LawrenceProduce
 
Today's big announcement is I found a local food distribution place that distributes food to area needy families (over 1,000 of them) which has agreed to take our unsold produce. 
 
It's either that, or unsold food goes on the compost pile... would rather feed folks who need it.
 
Obviously not a place I can dump our hot peppers, but at least I can get rid of unsold sweet peppers, tomatoes, beans, corn, watermelon, cucumbers, etc....
 
That’s very nice of you Trent you Rock!!


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TrentL said:
 
We have to get health department certified to give out samples. That includes doing the full three-sink-basin wash sink, etc. Samples have to be prepared in a certified kitchen the day before and refrigerated properly / etc.
 
So yeah there's a bunch of regulatory hoops.
 
That's really a shame.   
 
Here in Missouri there's something called a cottage food law, if I recall you can make and sell food at Farmers markets without using a commercial kitchen as long as it's less than $50k per year. Wonder if your state has a cottage law?
 
Imagine if you did unload your peppers on the needy.
 
"Little Maria here has no shoes and lives in a superhot country, but she never gets superhot food. Until now!"
 
PtMD989 said:
Can you make and sell your powders without a permit?


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No, it's a low acid food which is regulated. 
 
Ethansm said:
Here in Missouri there's something called a cottage food law, if I recall you can make and sell food at Farmers markets without using a commercial kitchen as long as it's less than $50k per year. Wonder if your state has a cottage law?
 
We have that as well, but wholesale commercial sales are prohibited without state inspected kitchen, and there's some ugly restrictions on processing "low acid foods" (e.g. peppers). Lots of fruits are restricted here under cottage food laws if there's not a "kill step" (e.g. baking, etc).
 
 
Ghaleon said:
Imagine if you did unload your peppers on the needy.
 
"Little Maria here has no shoes and lives in a superhot country, but she never gets superhot food. Until now!"
 
Yeaaah.. they weren't on the donation list.
 
Field pics from last Friday, was too busy to upload 'em until now;
 
Dead cantaloupe field (this has been cleared and tilled since the pic was taken)
 
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Okra. It's amazing, we get 1 frigging lousy quart a day off of 3x 56' rows. Takes an hour to go through and clip the damn pods every day and that one lousy quart sells for a lousy $5. I have NO idea how in the hell places grow commercial Okra and make money at it. It seems like an impossibility.
 
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First block of pickling cucumbers. The 4th replanting finally took;
 
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NuMex Jalapeno (and assorted mutants)
 
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Some sweet anaheim, santa fe grande, sweet french bell, 7-pot brainstrains here;
 
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Aleppo and others;
 
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TFM Scotch Bonnet and Yellow Fatalli (far left is sweet charleston I think)
 
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First block of slicing cucumbers;
 
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Some Aji's, sweet charleston, big Sun Habanero
 
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Can't remember. More peppers. Moruga reapers... carolina reapers.. and ??? :)
 
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Second block of pickling cucumbers. These were heavily favored by cucumber beetles.
 
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Criolla sella, Santa Fe grande, and ??

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Last block of peppers on this side; farmers Jalapenos, Serrano, Poblano...
 
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Royal Burgundy; the day after this was taken, we harvested a bushel per ROW.
 
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Second block of slicing cucumbers
 
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More Royal Burgundy beans...
 
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And that's the west side of the field
 
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