Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Guest]

I suspect that Tom Wagner is himself a “rare breed” not to mention a “Zebra of a different Stripe”. I don’t think there are many independent plant-breeders left.

So far I’ve met in person exactly two, and not for lack of trying.

Well, fancy that: it’s hard to make a living as an independent plant breeder. There are reasons for division of labor. Systems of production work best when each “unit” within the system can concentrate on part of a more complex process, instead of trying to do the whole thing by themselves.

Why? Because if one person tries to do everything, he goes broke buying tools and other resources that sit idle most of the time while he’s working on a stage of the process that doesn’t require that particular tool. It results in high capital overhead and inefficient allocation of tools.

We’re chronically short on “seed money” (no pun intended) too. We can’t just buy our way out of the production bottlenecks we’re constantly in.

What would make more sense is for us to expand our business by partnering with OTHER independent plant breeders who themselves need income. We provide the sales and marketing overhead that we’ve already invested a lot of time in, and someone else supplies the seeds.

The interesting thing about commerce is that one person’s by-product is someone else’s valuable commodity. For example, Tom was producing lots of seed as a by-product of his breeding work, most of which either got eaten or composted (he doesn’t seed every tomato from every plant). He had tried to run his own seed business, but that’s too much overhead for a one-man operation.

There are probably more professional and amateur plant breeders out there, and in a few cases, growers, who have a surplus of something sufficiently interesting, unique, or useful, to be marketable. Having us sell it could bring someone some needed income. In this economy, I suggest not turning up a nose to small but fairly effortless income streams.

I’ll post a semi-permanent link on this page to solicit offers. Wish us luck; it could be a win-win-win situation for our future partners, our customers, and us too.

[12540dumont]

I was thinking on this same thing today as we were looking at equipment to clean seed.  As a small farm, we end up with all this equipment that sits idle.  As a farmer, I barely have time to focus on my field trials, and CSA.  Cleaning and processing seed takes a tremendous amount of time.  The storing of it is beginning to eat up a lot of space.  Both of my farm fridges are full of seed.  I also struggle to get it all done as quickly as possible to avoid weevils/varmints/accidents.

I can't even imagine all the equipment Tom must need to do his research.  We constantly struggle with equipment that was never meant to be used as we use it.  On a farm we can either throw money or time at a problem.  And there is never enough of either.  Only half joking I told Leo that I was thinking about stealing my son's airstream and taking it on the road as the "Silver Seed".  Inside would be all the tools that a farm may need for a week or two a season...threshers, combines, grain drills, seed cleaning machines, driers...I would just go farm to farm like a bookmobile of tools.

I hope you can round up more plant breeders.  I can't wait to see what you come up with that I can plant!  Regards,  Holly

[Rob Wagner]

Holly, we really need to organize. We need a "guild" of small farms connected to "eat local" restaurants and stores, local/specialist seed sources, and small-scale processors who can own and run shared equipment, or rent out equipment when they're not using it.

Even my dad--who's married to a former investment banker--thinks that the current globalized mega-plantation system has gone too far, and production needs to be "right-sized" and localized to take advantage of what would otherwise be wasted land and resources.

The key commonality seems to be "local". There are customers who WANT fresh, local produce from people they know and trust. They want to know what's in their food (or more precisely, want to know that there's nothing controversial in it).

Tom and I are going to grow more food this year than we can eat ourselves or sell as seed. Some of it will get tossed into storage, but we'll have more than we can store too--best bet would be to sell the surplus (God willing that there is any, and we don't have a massive crop failure). I would love to sell some to local bakeries and breweries, if they were interested. But the whole network needs to be developed.

One problem I perceive is that ALL of us are capital-starved.

Something that might make sense, is for those of us who have some capital to act as "incubators" for people willing to try providing the missing services in the network. The folks to thresh and warehouse the grain, for example.

Might even be able to supply other resources. For example, my farm has some unusable acreage. Someone could use it for processing and warehousing once the infrastructure were built; I just can't be involved on a daily basis.

It's ridiculous that it ever got to this point. Asia is not like this; they have giant conglomerations AND tiny farms and factories. Everything is "right sized". But they still have factories; we don't. Too many parts of the supply chain are missing, and it becomes cost prohibitive to special-source everything. Items as simple as equipment the right scale for a small farm have to be special-sourced and are very expensive for us.

A lot of our supposed free-market advocates were actually closeted central-planning fanatics (Dr. Milton Friedman, among others). Prof. Ludwig von Mises got himself blacklisted jumping up from a meeting he was invited to when he arrived in the States, shouting "you're all a bunch of Socialists!" (well, central economic planners of one stripe or another anyway), and slamming the door behind himself. I could rant for a while but I'll shut up now.

[12540dumont]

Rob, I love it when you rant.

I spent all morning looking at small combines, treadle peddle threshers, and seed cleaning machines.  I am not going to even attempt to do wheat by hand.  I've spent 2 days in the barn cleaning broccoli, cabbage, zinnias, marigolds, sunflowers, parsnips...the list goes on and I feel like I haven't even made a dent yet!  And then I went into the long barn to start assembling canning jars.

So, in our budget there's a table top seed cleaner from seedburo, the mini batt from riecchardt and I'm still waiting for a proforma invoice from Vidhatindia.  I ordered the catalog for Cecoco, and darn it this year, I'm going to be start collecting appropriate farm equipment
  Mahaweli Agro Mech, (no website), Industrial Complex,
    Thambuthagama, Sri Lanka   ph. +94 25 2267212
 www.vidhatindia.com ph. +91 562 2242690   
  www.seedburo.com  ph. 312-738-3700

I keep waffling between low tech, no power, and get 'er done and fast.

I also received your sorghum, thank you very much.  I hope to be able to help you and Tom as much as I can.

Although I have delivered produce to restaurants, they have not proved to be reliable customers.  My CSA is excited about the grain IF it can be ground properly before they receive it.  My first grinding of the polenta was too coarse.  I put yours in my coffee grinder, let me know how it is.
 www.riechhardt.com Minibatt micro-combine 701-356-4020

I have inherited 20 dozen canning jars.  They are taking on a life of their own.  Each canning jar goes out and recruits another.  I believe that these canning jars will somehow be useful to our seed storage.  If I can get my son to come up and get potato starts from Tom, I'm going to send you guys a bunch of these quarts.  They are terrific for seed storage, and the way they are breeding, we'll have a never ending supply.

Leo (my spouse), had one of his scathingly brilliant ideas about seed storage.  We have an old restaurant salad bar cooler in our barn (220v).  I don't have 220 in that part of the barn, but Leo thinks that with some work, this useless hunk of junk could become a very good seed storage machine, freeing up both barn fridges for their intended use of short term vege storage for the CSA. 

Not all of us are capital-starved...there's that one percent, now would be a good time for one of them to THINK about the future and invest in local farming/seed/processing.

I love your writing.  It's always so well done.  Thank you.

[Rob Wagner]

Thanks Holly.

You are a remarkably resourceful person. One thing I have noticed, is that contrary to nasty Hollywood stereotypes, farmers are not dumb. Most of the ones I know are pretty smart. That's because the dumb ones sold out or went bankrupt a long time ago; only the smart ones survive.

I forgot to tell you about the Sorghum.  The reason there's not much is because the possum ate it. Most of my hard-earned harvest. This is what happens when you don't have good drying and storage facilities.

Got a fairly good harvest for this far north of the dwarf white before the possom ate it. BTW it's short but no more so than most sorghums nowadays. Shaped different though, a skinnier plant.

Anyway you've got enough to plant a short row and decide how you like it. Should grow great gangbusters for you.

I'll send more of the perennial Sorghum next year when I know that it's really perennial--I mean, seed from survivors. I suggest using that as chicken-food (or beer). They're nice-looking little plants. Should be interesting to see how they do for you; they tiller readily and I would guess you'd get full heads on the tillers.

Help yourself to some of the 3rd type, the bird resistant, just don't mix it up with the others for obvious reasons. It looks a lot like the sorghum whose pix you posted, which I think is typical of commercial types. It is neither as early, nor as cool-tolerant, as the other two, which is why I need your help on it. I got about a dozen kernels from one single plant that bloomed in time. The La Nina threw it for a loop, but that's typical of Sorghum up here anyway. The other two are more tolerant of the weather here--but they were bred in Oregon, where they had to deal with nearly empty heads until they grew enough generations to acclimatize it.

I should send some to Castanea. He's been frustrated trying to find grain sorghums. There are not many in public domain. Between all of us, we'll build up a few.

[12540dumont]

Defeating possums...
Leo put a hook in one of the rafters in the barn, from it he hung a chain.  I bound up the corn, sorghum, and mesh sacks of other things and hung them from "S" hooks off the chain.  At the very top Leo put an escutcheon. Now the rats/mice can't get by the escutcheon to climb down (he used a cheap funnel).  And those darn possums can't get at it from the floor.  They spoiled a whole tray of tomatoes!


As crazy as this is, I still have sorghum and tomatoes. 

The chains are easy, because at the the end of the season, I can just use an S hook to hang them up higher.  I need to use a ladder to hang and get things down.  Just about the time that all the corn got processed I was able to use them for onions.  I was also able to put in a row of them to keep everything up where it is warm and dry. 

We read that sorghum cross pollination is about 6%, so we will probably grow the Bicolor bird resistant in our front garden or as our only sorghum. 

I am resourceful, but dumb as a fence post.  Otherwise I would have fallen in love with an livelihood that actually earned income!  I sent Castanea a bouquet of what came up in my yard.  Darn stuff is very hard to thresh!

[Rob Wagner]

Otherwise I would have fallen in love with an livelihood that actually earned income!

Well you'll be sittin' fat and sassy as unemployment rates keep climbing and prices keep rising ("stagflation"). Lot of folks don't have any idea at all how to make money, including fresh graduates with very expensive degrees paid for with loans...and some of them had to work hard for engineering and science degrees they can't market. 

I'm planning to write a report regarding some ideas for what to do about it on a personal level.

Lots of folks have too much debt too. That's a harder problem; they assumed if they could get the loans they could pay them back (for the rest of their lives...). Student loans are particularly onerous at the moment. Inflation will eventually erode its value but the "stag" part of stagflation makes it a horrible burden.

[12540dumont]

Rob,
We have always been risk adverse.

When I got my degree, I went to school for 8 years with no loans.  I worked at the college to get one free class.  I had night classes.  I got an AA at a Junior College.  I thought I'd never finish.  Traveling to Italy changed my life.  When I came home I quit my job and borrowed against my life insurance to get my Masters.  I didn't finish as the weather changed enough that we no longer felt that I could make a living doing knit wear.  It was the first year we had no winter.  Student loans are easy to get and hard to pay off.   But I learned a lot from that experience.

I learned that you can re-invent yourself.  And re-invent yourself again and again.  Leo calls it the tree in the wind effect.  The trees that bend in the wind, don't get ripped out in the first storm.  So, I just keep bending.  When I got laid off from my job 4 years ago, I took stock of what I know, what I can do and made some hard choices.

[Rob Wagner]

Now let me get this straight: you lived a cautious, frugal life ahead of the biggest financial wreck in history, doing what you love, and you claim that you're not smart?!

I think that's called modesty.   

I've only reinvented myself once, but it was a big change and I'm not done. I should announce some of the projects I have on my plate some time, to see who else is interested in "going on the ride". About 5 years ago or so, I almost died. Surgery saved my life (I gotta find the doc and give him his thank-you gift), and gave me a 2nd chance at live.

My kids mostly grown up except for the surprise midlife-crisis baby (I have a two year old--when we go walking with my adult son it looks like I'm the grampa). Raising them to have a better start in life than I did was my primary life-purpose at the time. Now I have new phases of a longer project to work on.

[12540dumont]

Rob, raising children was the hardest job of my life, one I fear I've done a miserable job with.  This is one job I would never undertake to do again. 

Leo says to tell you I've always been sassy.  I'd love to hear about your projects.

[Rob Wagner]

Rob, raising children was the hardest job of my life, one I fear I've done a miserable job with. 

It might not have been you. An awful lot of people I know ran into trouble. Some of it was bad examples, some of it was bad advice, and some of it was running into--I'll be nice and say "messed up" people, who were lurking in places that I for one did not expect to find them.

I made some of my own mistakes.

About the time of my "reinvention", something happened to me--one of those curses that turns into a blessing when it pushes you into a new direction that changes your life for the better. One of the many results was that I figured out a lot about what goes wrong with raising kids. Now I know what went wrong and why, and how to do it right.

My youngest will get the benefits of my new insights--as will readers of my next book. I'm sure that this is an improvement, because my consciousness has been raised to a whole new level.  I'm also still working with the older ones to fix some of the things that went wrong, particularly meeting messed up people as teenagers and being too naive to figure out that they're messed up. Teenage problems I will cover in a future book. It's not what people think it is--it's not raging hormones. Those might not help the situation, but they're not the root cause.

Oddly enough, my youngest has not been the challenge we were expecting. It's going better than I expected. To an extent, experience can make up for lack of youth.