Farmall Cub

Matt,

The farm down the street is certified organic. They sell shares for $500.00 as part of their CPA (or what ever it's called), they also sell their squash and vegetables to Boston produce markets and to the Islands of Nantucket and Martha's VIneyard.
We sell to them for 75 cents a pound. We do not use any fertilizers just manure and can get alot of squash per plant. It's never ending how much we can pick. We have wide rows so they really spread out and they do. Even when I sold to local restruants at half the super market price...with next to no overhead...it's a money maker. We, my partner and me are inspected by the farm down the street and as far us having to come up with $10,000...we don't...they do.
As for pumpkins if I can sell a 100 pound pumpkin in flawless condition for $30.00 each it doesn't take much to get a lot of money. If I get 2 or 3 pumpkins per 10 square feet for the smaller pumpkins that adds up too.
JimDawg from this forum told me about selling to the farm down the street, last year he got $2000 for growing squash on one acre.
I don't know...fertile soil? I have 2 feet of top soil built up from 50 years of manure...so does JimDawg. So maybe that helps.
As for haying my friend that I buy hay from has $100,000 into his equipment and I think he said he got 18,000 bays...I'll find out for sure tonight...when I give him a call.
Next spring I'll keep really accurate records and post those...

I rent out all of my tillable land. The piece near my house and one about 5 miles from me. I get the tax break on the land and the rental income pretty much covers my taxes. I have enough land left to put in a large truck garden to do the roadside stand thing, which I have yet to do. Also put in about 20 high bush blueberrie plants and a patch of rasberries, have friends who have made there play money from these type crops. One or two acres of asparagus is very profitable if you are in the right growing zone, the bed takes 3 years before you can harvest and the short growing season is pretty labor intensive.

wow, I can't believe a farm that is certified organic would risk loseing its certification forever, by selling a product from another location not inspected by the USDA.
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he must be doing square bales they do bring more money per ton then round bales. However they are much more labor intensive.
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I am just trying to figure out how your a bringing in more money per acre then we do per 10 acres.
I would like to some pictures of your squash fields.

Matt,
I'll scan pix of the pumpkins tomorrow and post.
Also you probably aren't getting 75 cents a pound,right? We have the longest growing season in all of New England with the
warmest average temp so that helps. If you look at the map of the east coast and see Cape Cod there is Buzzards Bay. Which is the bay we are on...hence Buzzardwing from this forum's name. The Gulf Stream brings warm water up the coast and keeps us snow free and much warmer than inland towns in the winter and spring. And cooler in the summer with ocean breezes. We also have great soil, my land is on a glacier river plain and was a goat dairy farm for many many years. People were stealing my soil before I had the papers passed on the farm while it was vacant. I really don't know what else to tell you.
I also would have mentioned the name of the farm that buys our produce but suspected they could get in trouble. They seem to be doing very well...they sponsor all kinds of local events.

Keith's bales are square bales and his hay is sold long before the summer is over. Most fields can get get 3 cuts which helps.
Some guys in Dighton say they get 4 cuts??? That is crazy!! That I don't believe.

Chris

When I first grew pumpkins many, many years ago I could never have ones as big as my uncle grew. Well one day I asked him his secret. He said what you had to do was take a five gallon bucket, drill a very small hole in it. Then he said to insert about a foot of the smallest possible diameter hose in the hole and seal around it good.

After the plants were in the ground I was to place a bucket by each plant and fill it with water and leave it alone all summer. The idea was that the water would seep out over the summer real slow and give each plant just the right amount of water to grow big and strong.

Since our plants were on another piece of land that I had owned but seldom visited I thought this would work well. After about five months I had forgotten about our pumpkin patch so I thought I better go see how things were going. When I got there all I saw was pumpkins about the size of golf balls. But, the field was full of 55 gallon barrels. Well, I called my uncle and he said he would come over to check it out.

When he got there he went over to the first three plants and checked everything that I had done. I finally asked why I had small pumpkins and 55 gallon barrels in my garden.

He looked me right in the eye and said “You dern fool! You put the hose in backwards.”

Price for squash averages 35 cents a pound, if they were weighed out, but we sell by the bushel.
growing season, they are in the ground by the second week in april. by July they are plowed under and cucumbers are in the ground. they plant can only produce fruit for a certain amount of time and the plant stops produceing or slows down. generally about a 2 to 3 week period.

I sell my hay at 3/4 market value. however it is sold before I bale it. I also only handle it once. It never makes it to storage on my farm.

Truck Garden time! Close to city? People love good farm fresh produce!