Greetings
Hello and greetings to my fellow readers! Thank you for visiting our family farming and homestead blog. I started this blog journey in early 2020 when we decided to start growing our own small farm business, which we have named 3 Corners Farm. I am here to update you on our growth and compare where we were when we started, to where we are now.
I will get right into it.
Comparisons
Last year at this time in September, Travis was pretty much done growing what he could on our three acre farm. He had built up a small community of local customers, but our homestead garden spot had dried up and stopped producing much at this time of the year.
At the beginning of this market season, in April, is when Travis started working for our business full time and started building the new, larger garden in a nearing town, separate form our homestead. This new space has irrigation and potential to grow because it has more land and it is also open to the sun, which our homestead garden is not. Here on the Homefront we have much more shade from trees, and we live off well water so must be conservative with our water usage.
Currently, Travis is selling an abundance of greens and other produce through two main outlets. One is a local farmers co-op, and the other is at our local farmer's market. We also have an on-line store set up to order from (we do local deliveries), however, the majority of our business at this time is through the co-op and community market.
Below are a few images of what we had to sell at the market in the start of June this year, compared to what we had to sell this recent Saturday in September. Most of the produce from this year has been grown at the separate irrigated lot. The list of produce grew a lot in three months!
June 6, 2021
Finalizing Certification
Travis has opted to go with being Certified Naturally Grown instead of Organically Certified. The reason Travis chose this route is because Certified Naturally Grown runs much like a Co-Op and is operated by farmers like us. To be Certified Organic, the difference is that it is run by a corporation, which we feel is not ideal for our small sized farming operation.
A good news update is that Travis has just recently passed the inspection and we are officially Certified Naturally Grown! If you go to the Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) website you will see us there. We are the only naturally certified farm in the Columbia River Gorge area.
Some of the things the inspector looked at for certification were as follows;
1. Not using synthetic fertilizers or insect spray.
2. Crop rotation, which type of compost is used, as well as which seeds are used to plant crops.
3. There must be a minimum space of 100 feet between any nearing orchards and the first row of garden, amongst a few other details.
We are also insured for all our products, which I went over in a previous blog, "Farm Happenings and Building Our Business".
Lessons Learned
We have learned so much in this journey and met many amazing people along the way! One of the main lessons learned is what sells best in our area. Travis was able to look up information from our sales history and discovered that we have mostly sold greens. Top seller was salad mix, second was Arugula, spinach came in third. We have also sold a lot of home made breads.
There is so much more to share but I will wraps this up for now. Until my next blog post, we send our love, we wish you many blessings, and take care.
Amy E. Darr
3 Corners farm
Mosier, Oregon U.S.A.
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