There must be someone here who wants to invest in a veganic farm.

I have one potential investor, who is willing to to invest only if I can get at least one more investor.

I have been thinking of suplying specialty vegetables to vegetarian restaurants in the NYC area and I have done a little research re what they buy. We need to look into how much they pay, and whether we can supply stuff at competitive prices.

NYC is a fantastic area to market things in.

Please contact me at my email address.

I know some of you have enough money to be able to put it into a somewhat risky venture like this, in a new area. But there are now absolutely zero vegan farms in the US, and there are several veg restaurants in the NYC area where I can go talk to the chef and see what they are having trouble getting at competitive prices.

What a great idea! I would love to invest if I had the money, but what little I have is going toward my own farm. But I do want to tell you I think this is a great idea and I wish you all success. :)

Ludi, maybe, just maybe, by pooling our money, we could buy 3 acres, instead of 1 acre each?

We have to start cooperating, instead of each living in our own little world, with the alcohol-drinking veggies and non-drinking veggies refusing to work together, or the anti-abortion veggies refusing to work with the non-anti-abortion veggies. After all, what does it matter, on a vegan farm, if I have one view on abortion and you have another?

I am not against the idea of me investing in your farm, instead of vice versa.

So let's hear some details of your projected farm. Either here or by email. Either by plain email or encrypted.

How are you going to market your vegetables. What are your expenses going to be, your projected income? How much money can you invest in land and tools, etcetera, how much money will come from investors, how much money will you have to pay them per month, what will that leave over for you? How do you think such a plan work out in reality? Why. I will feel free to criticise your ideas and you should feel free to criticise my ideas. And not with "it won't work." but with Why you think something in particular won't work.

I would like it if some NYC area veggies would go explore NYC veg restaurants with me. Just go eat specific vegetables we want to say, in each of several restaurants. See what they taste like. We might even be able to get a restaurant owner to invest in a nearby "kitchen garden." Really a small farm.

I have no money, don't live in US, but good luck to you Soilman. Sounds good. Hope it works out...

That doesn't mean you can't be helpful, bjorn again. Where do you live? Maybe you have something you can sell?

Soilman, I own 20 acres, and have a very small portion of that in vegetables, which I hope to begin selling this coming year. My farm is not vegan, however, as I have pet chickens who provide fertilizer from their manure compost. I'm starting very modestly to see if I'm capable of maintaining the focus necessary to grow vegetables consistently. I'll be selling to my neighbors on our country road (population on our road, about a dozen families, plus tourist traffic). The references I'm using are Andy Lee's "Backyard Market Gardening" and Eliot Coleman's "The New Organic Grower" - I recommend both of these.

Here's a link to Eliot Coleman's farm website:

http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/

I have Colemans "New Organic Grower." It was one of the first books I bought, about 8 years ago. I have found some of its tips helpful. Definitly buy the Italian made walk-behind tiller he recommends (BCS) and not a Troy Bilt, which he recommends against (without mentioning brand names, but you can tell from his descriptions).

I also follow his recommendations as to how far away to space tomatoe plants, and how to construct a trellis for climbing beans, peas, etcetera (with some of my own modifications.)

Some of it is very good. Some of it is just fluff. Some of it is just mistaken info. Some important and useful information that I found in other sources, is left out.

I use the hand-hoe he designed (the one that is pictured on the cover, by the way). It is a good tool. Much better than the hoes sold in garden centers thruout the US.

And yes I make his potato-rutabaga recipe. I got it from Freya Dinshah, who got it from the Nearings, which is who Coleman apparently got it from.

He points out, correctly, that "Pests are most eaily kept in balance when the soil grows different crops over a number of years. A good rotatoin spaces susceptible crops at intevals sufficient to hinder th ebuildup of their specific pest organisms." But he fails to mention that a very important factor in pest management is the pest's natural cycles. Some pests are prevalent one year, and nearly non-existant another year. Sometimes these are rhythmic cycles, sometimes, if they are rhythmic, we don't know what the rhythm is. Sometimes the particular weather will make a big difference. Knowing what year will be bad for which pests, is ofen just as useful, and often more useful than simply rotating crops. One thing you can do is just grow a crop, and if you find out it is really difficult to erradicate the pests that particular year, resign yourself to poor production of that crop, that year. And plant other similar crops that are resistant. For example collards can be decimated by imported cabbage worm, one year, and only mildly affected another year. But they are always the first of the cole crops to be attacked by icw, and always get the worst infestation. He mentions nothing about this extremely useful info, at all. I found it by luck, when looking thru zillions of cooperative extesnion sites, for various US regions. My experience bears their info out.

So I figure: grow turnip greens too, just in case your collards are decimated. And plant them far away. There is a weather factor for imported cabbage worms, but I forget what is is, offhand.

He also fails to mention slugs in the index. If I recall correctly, he does not mention a simple way to avoid slugs, which is vital that you know if you have compost, since compost is something he suggests as being important.

His info on growing melons is really limited. There are lots more things you need to know, to get a good melon crop. he doesn't address leaf fungi, which is a major major problem in my area, and can wipe out a whole crop overnight. There are organic things that will minimize this problem -- such as planting early so that you don't get a cold snap during a certain stage of plant development. But some years there are earlier cold snaps than others, and you can't control the weather. If you do have a cold snap, as far as I know -- and I have looked all over -- there is no organic way to prevent damage. You have to spray the leaves with some kind of very strong fungicide.

By the way, Carol Deppe's Breed Your own Vegetable Varieties is a gem. Even tho it is primarily about breeding and seed saving, and not about gardening tips, it contains lots of useful gardening tips. And info that Coleman leaves out, such as climbing varieties of many crops taste better than those that have had their climbing ability bred away, in preference for bush form (and easier machine picking). As have varieties that you harvest all at once, over those that you pick slowly over a few weeks. This is an important thing to look for when you buy seeds. If you buy a variety that says "uniform bush, with uniform size beans, all beans mature at once" you will be getting one that most likely doesn't taste as good as one that climbs, produces variable sized pods, and you have to pick them every other day for 3 weeks. However there are some exceptions, where the bush varietiy is just as good.

Colemen talks about using chicken feces, if I recall correctly. And other feces. He doesn't mention however that your choice of feces can affect the final flavor of your food plant. For some plant, chicken may just fine, for another cow may be better. Generally the best is cow, then horse, chicken next, pork last. but for some plants it may not make a lot of difference, for others, a lot.

I found this hard-to-find bit of information in a grower's manual written in 1877, more than years before the advent of industrially-produce plant food.

I briefly mention the off-flavors factor here. (http://shakahara.com/food3.html#excrement) Scroll down to "sh.. adds off-flavors."

I'm not saying you shouldn't have an opinion about Coleman, but to dismiss him in the way you do I think diminishes his importance in the alternative agriculture world. But, whatever.

I like Masanobu Fukuoka and Bill Mollison and John Jeavons in addition to Coleman. But they don't write much about the details of commercial small farming.

Coleman far prefers horse manure to other forms of manure. Whatever.

Probably not going to spend much time discussing this with you Soilman, since your focus is to pick apart the references I chose to use for the COMMERCIAL aspects of my small farm.

I don't even have a slug problem, so that's irrelevant to my situation. Coleman advocates using ducks to tackle slugs.

Basically, screw it. Is how I feel about this thread now.

"Coleman advocates using ducks to tackle slugs."

That certainly would not be a vegan solution.

I don't know why Ludi calls what I am "picking apart" Coleman's "the New Organic Grower" or Coleman, as that implies I am doing something negative. I am simply discussing the pros and cons of what coleman said, and where my opinion coincides or differs. Dissecting someones remarks is a positive thing, not a negative thing. We have our own brains.

By the way, I really doubt Coleman gets better yield per acre or better tasting vegetables using his methods, than I get using mine.

And lots of The New Organic Grower is just fluff. From the format where the whole left side of each page is left mostly blank, in order to make the book more pages than it needs to be, to the excessively large type even for my aged eyes that have trouble with small type, to entertaining, but useless comments, like

For the best quality and best growth, vegetables require the riches soils of all farm crops. And that richness has to be real. Not stimulants, but what British farmers so aptly call "a soil with good heart." Organic matter is the key to "heart" in a soil.

He could have told us the same thing by simply saying "for best quality and growth, vegetables require a soil that is rich in organic matter."

He never, anywhere, gives fact and figure about exactly how much organic matter soil does need. Just these vague generalities about it. In fact, such information is available from other sources. Organic matter can, and should, actually be measured. And he fails to mention how many cubic feet of one or anothre kind of plant matter, is needed per square foot of soil, to produce various percentages of organic matter in the soil. For a soil with 5% or more of organic matter, there is a fairly precise answer to how many cubic feet of leaves, or straw, or other plant matter, you need. He neglects to tell us the actual amount that is necessary.

He also follows the uneducated convention of using the word manure interchangeably with excrement or feces, when in fact the word manure does NOT mean feces. Not at all. It simply means something you add to the soil.

also, first he recommends compost, including leaf compost, then he fails to mention that you will have slugs if you don't keep the compost sufficiently far away, and separated by dry soil that the slugs can't locomote over, from those crops that are prone to slug infestation. Leaf compost breeds slugs. If you follow his recommendations without knowing this caveat, you will have way too many slugs.

the 270 pages of the New Organic Grower could easily have been condensed into 125 pages, with medium sized print, and use of blank space where it helps the eye focus on an area, rather than just putting in blank space all over the place for no reason than to waste paper.

I don't see the point, in the context of this thread, is all. I posted MY references for the commercial aspect of small farming. I didn't say Coleman knows everything about farming or that those are the only books to use. So what's the frikkin point? He doesn't say how to raise vegetables under drought and 100 degree temps, either, so what? SO WHAT?

Geez, and you don't even admit that the word "manure" to many people means animal poo. God damn.

ma·nure (m-nr, -nyr)
n.
Material, especially barnyard or stable dung, often with discarded animal bedding, used to fertilize soil.
tr.v. ma·nured, ma·nur·ing, ma·nures
To fertilize (soil) by applying material such as barnyard dung.

manure
n : any animal or plant material used to fertilize land
especially animal excreta usually with litter material
v : spread manure, as for fertilization [syn: muck]

You may well know far more about small farming than someone who has been a successful small farmer for some 30 years, yes, you may well.

What a god damn stupid stinking waste of time this is.

I don't know more about commercial farming than Eliot Coleman. I would not be surprised if I knew more about maintaining rich, productive soil, than he does. And I would not be surprised if my vegetables, raised in the soil that I husband, taste better than the vegetables he raises in the soil he husbands.

I have had 10 years of gardening experience, and over 7 years of experience of getting a little 2000 square foot are of backyard, to produce enormous amounts of astonishingly delicious vegetables. I have turned 2000 square feet of very sandy soil -- almost plain sand -- into rich black soil. And I have done so without spending a penny on commercial on commercial sources of organic matter. All the organic matter in my soil is the result of my collecting leaves, grass clippings, other plant materials, and by planting cover crops and planting and green manures. No peat moss (except a few handfuls for seed starting trays).

At this point in time, the garden is self-contained -- I do not need to go outside my area of land for plant matter. I use leaves from trees on my land or overhanging my land, and my own grass clippings from my own lawn, which does not have commercial plant food or pesticides used on it. I do not have to gather leaves from around the neigborhood anymore.

In order to get my garden this way, I had to go to many sources of information beyond The New Organic Grower. It just did not have enough information. And by neglecting to warn me about slugs, I lost lots of lettuce, in the early years, that I could have eaten, if only he had said to be careful to keep compost piles away from lettuce plants, or put in a dry-land barier to them. Evenutally I read that composted leaves harbor slug eggs, and you need to know what to do to make sure the eggs don't get into your lettuce growing area, when you use compost in that area.

from the American Heritage Dictionary

etymology
From Middle English manuren, to cultivate land, from Anglo-Norman mainouverer, from Vulgar Latin *manoperre, to work with the hands : Latin man, ablative of manus, hand; see man-2 in Appendix I + Latin operr, to work; see op- in Appendix I.

So you can see that the primary meaning of manure, the verb, is to work the soil with ones hands. This loosens it, and that, it so happens, speeds up bacterial action, and eases root penetration, and thus is a form of soil cultivation. By cultivation, I mean human intervention, as opposed to leaving soil in its natural state, which, it just so happens, is less fertile, and provides less yield, than worked soil. It does however, tend to provide the stems and leaves of plants with stronger flavors.

So basicly, the noun, manure does not even mean soil additive -- it means any soil improvement that is intentional and man-made.

Feces are only one kind of manure -- and they are manure only when they are applied with the specific intent of improving the soil. Feces that you find lying around, is not manure, unless and until you decide to use it to improve soil. Otherwise, it is just feces.

One reason I am so emphatic about rejecting the misuse of the word manure, is that the misuse arises out of the misuse of animals. It arrogantly assumes that the most likely way to improve soil, is to use the by-products of cultivating animals -- mainly food-animals -- something I am quite against. Since I am a vegan, it is only natural that I am also against the arrogant assumption that by manure, one means feces from (largely cultivated domestic) animals.

By stressing the concept that manure does not mean domestic animal feces, I am stressing the fact that food does not mean domestic animal flesh.

This topic is very interesting to me because I hope to own my own farm in the next four years. This thread brought up some questions-what makes a farm vegan? what is the difference between a vegan farm and an organic farm? How do you stop pests from destroying your crops without pesticide? If insects are harmed during harvesting does that mean your farm is no longer vegan? Enlighten me please :)

The details the definition of of veganic farming and gardening are not uniformly agreed upon.

Basicly there are 2 types, vegan, and vegan-organic. I do plain vegan and do not attempt to be strictly organic, although I of course rely upon green manures and cover crops and compost, as much as possible.

Whether it is vegan or not to kill insects is up in the air. Or kill or harm reptiles birds or mammals. Most agree that it is not vegan to kill insects just for the hell of it. Whether it is ok to kill them because it is necessary in order to be able to eat, is what is up in the air. I submit that you shouldn't kill insects unnecessarily, but if your life or livelyhood depends on a good yield, esp of food crops, it is morally ok and vegan to kill insects to protect your food crops. Otherwise you could die from malnutrition. Most vegans think it is ok to kill swat pesky mosquitos. Most even think it ok to use poisonous sprays to control them, esp if they may be disease carrying. By extension, it is ok to kill insects if, should you not do so, you would not have enough to eat, or not have a good food crop to sell, for the money you need to buy food, clothing, and shelter.

Personally, I use insecticides to kill insects. My veganism does not prevent me from killing animals; it prevents me from killing animals unnecessarily.

Also, I am reasonably certain I can be less destructive of the insects, and the enviroment, by growing my own food, as compared to purchasing commercially grown food, so me killing insects as compared to the farmer I buy from killing insects, would be the lesser of the 2 evils.

I can also make sure I use insecticides according to legal requirements, wheras sometimes farmers exceed the legally allowed use.

On the subject of veganic-organic -- that is just too difficult for me to attempt. I don't want to have to restrict myself to avoiding cheap modern chemicals at my disposal. I do want to use such chemicals minimally tho. My philosophy is compost, grow green manures, and cover crops as much as I can, send in a soil sample to cooperative extension for testing, then add commerical preparations as recommended by cooperative extension to increase soil macro and micro nutrient to the level they recommend for max yield. They will measure organic matter and take that into account; they are not stupid. So even if your soil nitrogen is low, they know a large amt of organic matter is a good alternative that will supply nitrogen anyway.

I do not see any point in buying very expensive rock phosphate when I can buy much cheaper phosphoric acid. Phosphoric acid is made from rock phosphate, anyway. Nitrogen plant food is made from the air and natural gas. http://shakahara.com/nitrogen.shtml

While it can run off and cause etrophication (spelling) of streams and lakes, I don't know what to say about that. It is no worse than feces (high in nitrogen) running off and doing the same thing -- plus adding coliform bacterial in addition.