John & Peter of Shenk’s Berry Farm & Hillside Cultivator: EP17 | Show Notes
Peter Shenk (00:00:10):
I am Peter Shenk, and we’re here at Shenk’s Berry Farm, which is where we also operate Hillside Cultivator Company, and we’re here near Lititz, which is in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
John Shenk (00:00:22):
I’m John Shenk. It’s at the same place. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:00:29):
Today’s episode comes to you from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in a town called Lititz, where we visit with John and Peter Shenk of Shenk’s Berry Farm.
(00:00:38):
While their farm may not ring a bell, you may have seen these guys at a trade show or recognize their side business, especially if you’re into strawberries, as they also run the company of Hillside Cultivator. I visited with the two of them after attending the Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Conference, which for those in the Northeast, is very similar to the New England Vegetable and Fruit Conference, which happens in Manchester, New Hampshire. Generally speaking, these conversations tend to be larger scale and conventional ag, but there’s plenty of spread across this three-day event with presentations and discussions about all things ag.
(00:01:12):
John and Peter take me around their farm in early February and share their experiences growing strawberries for over 40 years. With that, we get into the details of varieties, weed control, plastic culture versus matted row, irrigation, weather patterns, climate change, and disease. The second half of the conversation covers topics including no-till pumpkins, cover crops, running a cultivator business on the side of a family farm, black raspberries, the space between certified organic and conventional practices, and general lessons learned and key principles of maintaining sustainable farm business.
(00:01:49):
I’m your host, Andy Chamberlin, and I take you behind the scenes with growers who share their strategy for achieving the triple bottom line of sustainability. These interviews unravel how they’re building their business to balance success across people, profits, and our planet.
(00:02:04):
Before we get started, I wanted to share a review left on Apple Podcasts. Jack Richpark thinks these episodes are valuable conversations. He shares, “West Coast farmers love to hear what Vermont folks are up to. Thanks for making the show.” Thank you, Jack, for the review. I’m glad you’re enjoying it. If this show has impacted you, I’d love to hear it via email or publicly as a review in the podcast app. The Farmer’s Share is supported by the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association and the Ag Engineering program of the University of Vermont Extension. If you enjoy the show and want to help support its programming, you can make a one-time or reoccurring donation on our website by visiting thefarmersshare.com/support. And with that, this is the Farmer’s Share.
John Shenk (00:02:47):
Okay. Well, I’m John.
Peter Shenk (00:03:03):
I’m Peter.
John Shenk (00:03:05):
I did not grow up on a farm, but I worked on farms when I was a kid and also did 4-H with strawberries. And then after graduating from college, which was a place called Warren Wilson down in North Carolina, I came back here and was able to find this farm and started out renting land here. Then over the years, we were able to buy parts at a time. And as you can see, it’s all different slopes of hills. And so we moved towards berries because they’re perennials and we don’t have to plow it up all the time. Yeah. So strawberries were the first berries I grew, and then raspberries and some blueberries.
Peter Shenk (00:04:12):
These are black ones here, black raspberries. As well as this slope, these are black raspberries. And you can see the difference. These we got through pruning already, and these we did not. So that’s the transformation.
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:25):
And that’s the growth from a year of growth, essentially.
Peter Shenk (00:04:30):
Yeah, and some of the branches off already.
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:33):
I know it’s the off season, but it’s beautiful. I love the way you lay it out.
Peter Shenk (00:04:39):
It’s the one thing about the hills, it kind of makes for a unique layout and it makes it interesting, but it makes it a little challenging to farm.
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:49):
All pick-your-own?
Peter Shenk (00:04:50):
It is now, yes, for the berries.
Andy Chamberlin (00:04:54):
Yeah. What’s your growing acreage?
Peter Shenk (00:04:56):
I’d say offhand, with the black raspberries, it would seem like it’s a little bit over an acre, somewhere between one and two.
Andy Chamberlin (00:05:05):
For the, yeah, black raspberries?
Peter Shenk (00:05:07):
For the black raspberries. Red raspberries, maybe half an acre. And then here are a few blueberries. And that’s, I don’t know, three-quarters of an acre maybe. Does that sound?
John Shenk (00:05:18):
Yeah, it’s about.
Peter Shenk (00:05:23):
Yeah. And these blueberries, dad planted them in the ’90s. Do you know what year?
John Shenk (00:05:30):
’95.
Peter Shenk (00:05:30):
Okay. So they’ve been in for a while and it’s been a learning process about how to prune them, what to do with them, and…
Andy Chamberlin (00:05:40):
So you’ve got them kind of held up by wires too?
Peter Shenk (00:05:43):
We have a few. So the wires on top were so we can drape a netting over it. We have a lot of robins here. They’re the worst for us. They’re the bird that consume the most. And then a couple of these varieties really lay down on us when they get fruit on them, so we put a couple wires in there. And I think that’s a combination of different varieties do that more than others and also learning to prune them’s been a work in progress to get that more upright growth. So these kind of stay down in this part of the farm, and then the strawberries are higher up on the hill there.
Andy Chamberlin (00:06:24):
You probably said it, but I missed it. When did you buy this land?
John Shenk (00:06:31):
It was in two stages. The first was in 1982, I think. And the other was in 2013.
Andy Chamberlin (00:06:43):
Oh, okay.
John Shenk (00:06:44):
So we had a good person that worked with us over those years.
Peter Shenk (00:06:49):
So all these crops are on drip irrigation. You might’ve seen coming in, there’s a pond down there at the bottom, and that’s what we pump out of.
John Shenk (00:06:59):
It’s convenient.
Peter Shenk (00:06:59):
And it works well. But again, being on the slopes, it’s always getting the water where you want it and the right pressure and taking care of all the leaks. It takes time, but it’s nice to have that water source.
John Shenk (00:07:19):
Yeah, we really couldn’t have had a vegetable and berry farm here without the pond. Yeah, it’s essential. And this ground is fairly well-drained also, so that’s good for berries, but also takes more water.
(00:07:37):
So there’s a line that’s buried up through here, and then the drip comes off of that, and then also the overhead irrigation.
Andy Chamberlin (00:07:45):
Overhead for the strawberries?
John Shenk (00:07:47):
Oh, yes. Or sweet corn or something like that.
Peter Shenk (00:07:55):
The strawberries. We’ve been doing a combination of overhead and drip. The overhead, we don’t want to run that quite as much when we’re picking without an interval in between since we’re not treating the water. But it’s really good for frost protection.
(00:08:14):
So the combination seems to work well. Especially last year when we were so dry, the drip, it had a little trouble keeping up, but we also didn’t waste as much water because we were a little low. So these are the red raspberries as well as those three rows we passed down there. And these four, we’ve done the winter pruning on. And the only thing we didn’t do is we’ll nip the tops off come spring, just because the really tall ones, when they get berries on the tips, they just tend to droop down and cover up the other berries. And it makes it harder for people to pick so we try to make it that all the berries that get fruited on the canes, you can find somehow, which of course they don’t, but it’s worth trying.
Andy Chamberlin (00:09:13):
Yeah. I’m interested in getting into brambles, but it’s something I’d know very little about. We did some strawberries growing up, so I’m familiar with that process, but this is new territory. But I like them being perennial, and I like the management being mowing, and so those are the appealing things for me. But the pruning, the managing, the trellising is all new stuff to figure out.
John Shenk (00:09:43):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:09:43):
Yep. I enjoy it because it’s a combination of learning to grow, but also just it’s a physical problem too. It’s a structural problem. How do you get these canes to be where you want them standing up and trellised? And so I like that aspect of it, because the better you get at figuring out what works for you, then it looks nice.
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:10):
Right. Right.
Peter Shenk (00:10:11):
I like that.
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:11):
It’s visual appealing. Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:10:13):
Yeah.
John Shenk (00:10:15):
Yeah. Peter likes things to look nice.
Peter Shenk (00:10:19):
Yeah, we try.
Andy Chamberlin (00:10:19):
It’s important.
John Shenk (00:10:21):
This field here was where we had cantaloupes and watermelons. And then we try to get as much of the acres covered with rye over the winter, because then we use that for straw in the spring. And you can see some, there’s a few radishes in here too, like here, to help with penetrating the soil and creating some… Well, they’ll decay over the winter, and then that’ll give some passageways for water to get in the ground and everything. And normally they are winter-killed, but this winter when we had snow, it was still… Under the snow, the ground was above freezing.
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:15):
The ground froze.
John Shenk (00:11:16):
So I’m hoping that they die over the winter.
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:19):
Yeah, I know. We’re still waiting for winter.
John Shenk (00:11:24):
Yeah, so we’re not mowing them off with the rye. You can kind of see the strips where the plastic was laid. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:11:34):
This is really thick. I didn’t think it was crop ground. I thought it was just lawn. What’s your seeding rate, do you know?
John Shenk (00:11:41):
Well, it’s about three bushels to the acre. Plus, Peter, do you know how many pounds of radishes you put in?
Peter Shenk (00:11:50):
Not a lot. I think there might’ve been two or three pounds. Yeah, not much.
Andy Chamberlin (00:12:01):
Roughly when was this seeded in?
Peter Shenk (00:12:04):
This was probably sometime in October.
John Shenk (00:12:08):
Yeah. Yeah, it was after the watermelons and cantaloupes were over. But the reason that it’s so thick is we’re trying to choke out as many of the winter annual weeds so we don’t get seeds from them in our straw for the strawberries. Here you can see a couple. But Peter’s kind of moved towards broadcasting the seed, and then we have a disc where you can move the blades to be more straight and just run over it enough to incorporate the seeds. And that way, it doesn’t have rows like a drill does.
Peter Shenk (00:12:54):
Yeah. We err on the heavy side of the seeding rate because we’d prefer it to just get thick and choke things out.
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:01):
Yeah. Yeah. You’re probably a little warmer down here than our Vermont fields too, and that helps it grow a little thicker than where we-
Peter Shenk (00:13:12):
The trend here has been the falls are lasting longer-
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:15):
Yeah. Oh, we understand.
Peter Shenk (00:13:17):
… so we were still getting good growth probably up through December even.
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:22):
Yeah. We’ve had very, very little snow ourselves, hardly any. The ground’s frozen now, but it didn’t really freeze until January.
Peter Shenk (00:13:33):
Yeah, we had a little bit there at the beginning of January, but then like dad said, the snow, that kind of insulated things and it thawed out again.
John Shenk (00:13:42):
Yeah. You would get more like a foot or two up there, wouldn’t you?
Andy Chamberlin (00:13:45):
Usually, yeah. We’ve had a whole whopping 6-inch storm so far. That’s about it. We’ve only had an inch or two here or there. It’s been a lame winter so far.
Peter Shenk (00:14:00):
Yeah, my kids are disappointed. Like dad said, we’ve pretty much put rye on anything, and we put some rye in there, but you can see the difference. That was planted a few weeks later.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:00):
Yeah.
John Shenk (00:14:15):
Yeah, and that field was actually rye before that… Well, it had hairy vetch with it too. And then we smashed it down, gave it a little bit of Roundup to make sure everything died, and then planted the pumpkins in it. So it was like a mulch under the pumpkins.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:36):
Did you direct seed the pumpkins or transplant?
John Shenk (00:14:37):
We did direct seed them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:14:43):
Yeah?
John Shenk (00:14:45):
Yeah. Peter, do you want to explain how that was done?
Peter Shenk (00:14:47):
But since we’re doing such a small patch, we use our two-row John Deere corn planter and just take the hopper off, and I just sit on the back and drop seeds every couple feet. And so it goes all right but we had a little too much residue, so something in between would be nice.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:10):
So it wasn’t getting down to the soil enough?
Peter Shenk (00:15:15):
Yeah. It kind of just ended up in the straw, some of them. So we went back over and replanted and filled it in.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:22):
You said that was hairy vetch before?
John Shenk (00:15:23):
It was a hairy vetch and rye mix.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:26):
Yeah?
John Shenk (00:15:26):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:27):
And then you did a burn down.
John Shenk (00:15:30):
I smashed it first and then put a little Roundup on it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a little hard to get a total kill with… Well, we just use this disc and cultipacker and with the blades straight so it’s not having like a rolling stock chopper would do. But it gives clean pumpkins that way.
Andy Chamberlin (00:15:59):
I know. I’ve really wanted to figure out that process. We haven’t done it yet. We do three acres of pumpkins ourselves just traditionally, but I want to get to a mulch system because of the clean pumpkin. And being pick-your-own, that just would just make it that much nicer. But I know weed control is a trick with that. How was your weed pressure doing it that way? Pretty-
John Shenk (00:16:22):
It wasn’t too bad. There were a few thistle patches that I went back over and spot-sprayed. Yeah. I did put a little bit of CURBIT with the Roundup. I think is it Strategy that people use for pumpkins? One of those herbicides.
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:41):
Yeah. We’ve used Sandea.
John Shenk (00:16:44):
Sandea, that’s the one. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:16:45):
Yeah. So disc and then cultipack, that…
Peter Shenk (00:16:53):
Yeah. And so you can see it running straight there. That’s where it parked. When we finished putting this rye in, we just there. So that was the last thing we did. And so that’s how we incorporate the rye.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:07):
Yeah. And you broadcasted the rye before you rolled it over?
Peter Shenk (00:17:10):
We did. We have a Vicon pendulum spreader, so it’s got kind of the tail off the back that wags, and we’ve been impressed by that. When you do the work to figure out your rate and what space to drive at, it really puts it out quite even.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:29):
Yeah, we have a Frontier that shakes out like that. Yeah, we’ve liked it.
John Shenk (00:17:34):
Yeah. I think they might be a little more accurate than the spinner spreaders where it might come off heavier on the one side than the other.
(00:17:43):
Yeah. And then we have a few leftover Brussels sprouts that I didn’t mow down just in case we wanted to eat some. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:17:56):
Keep the fridge open.
Peter Shenk (00:17:57):
Yep.
John Shenk (00:17:59):
But we had kale and collards that would’ve still been good. But I want to plant sweet corn there in the spring, so that’s to give it a little time to decay. Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:18:13):
Yes. And there’s our pipe stash for doing corn and spring frost protection. So yeah, it’s a few different styles of pipe, so it takes a little bit of thinking in the spring to make sure you get the right kinds of lines hooked into each other right. But we accumulated it over the years as people sold different lines, we’d get them. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:18:46):
I see the standoff pipes. Are you irrigating the corn up until knee-high or so and then-
Peter Shenk (00:18:52):
We’ll go even farther, whenever we need to. It gets less even coverage. At a certain point, we’re just kind of blasting it into the rows. But yeah, we’ll irrigate as we need to.
Andy Chamberlin (00:19:07):
Okay. Yeah.
John Shenk (00:19:08):
Well, we have a drive row about every 10 rows, and so we could put the pipe there and then let it go out. But of course if it hits something at a close range, it sort of disperses it at that point.
(00:19:27):
So these are some of the strawberries, covered for the winter. We’re kind of struggling. We’ve been grown strawberries a long time, but it seems that different soil diseases have been catching up with us. We’re not sure what all’s going on. But underneath, things are just so wet under there. And I don’t know, it just seems like a good place for disease to be growing. And I’m not sure if we wouldn’t be just as well off not having this straw on them. But in the summer then, that’s what mulches the aisles for people to pick.
Andy Chamberlin (00:20:19):
Right.
John Shenk (00:20:20):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:20:23):
Keeps it clean and cool and dry and…
Peter Shenk (00:20:25):
And people comment when it’s nice. They like having a good straw mulch.
Andy Chamberlin (00:20:29):
Yeah. And it softens it too, on your knees.
(00:20:33):
How many years do you run a planting?
John Shenk (00:20:35):
About three.
Andy Chamberlin (00:20:36):
Okay.
John Shenk (00:20:37):
Yeah. We usually keep them three and then try to stay out for four or five years. So most of this part of the farm here is where we grow the strawberries because of parking. We have a parking lot over there, and it gets a little too far for people to walk to the back side of the farm.
Peter Shenk (00:21:03):
So there’s kind of this valley that runs up the middle of the farm and all the pick-you-own stays on the south side of the valley here. Well, except for those black raspberries. But it seems to be that that’s about as far as people feel like walking.
Andy Chamberlin (00:21:20):
Yeah. So these here with the disease issue, are you able to have a rotation in between three years and the next planting?
John Shenk (00:21:30):
Yeah. We’re going to plant on some land that we have rented across the road next year. But we’re always planting about an acre and then keeping them for three years. That’s the goal. We have some we planted in 2022 that some of the plants just collapsed, so we weren’t able to maximize that. So we’re still trying to figure it out, because we have plenty of people to come and pick. Right now, the limitation for us is growing them well.
Peter Shenk (00:22:12):
We don’t try too hard to market because they’ve been doing it long enough that people know we’re here. It’s just a matter of growing nice strawberries. If we can grow nice strawberries, we don’t have trouble selling them.
Andy Chamberlin (00:22:27):
How many years have you been growing strawberries?
John Shenk (00:22:30):
Since about ’78. 1978, yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:22:38):
And you’re still struggling, so what do you think has made it difficult for-
John Shenk (00:22:43):
Well, we had good years in between. But it’s one of those things where the longer you do it, the more variety of problems that are encountered. And then also the fact that these last two winters haven’t been as cold. And that might be part of it too, that they’re just sort of in that range where fungal diseases can persist longer under that mulch. But typically, we’ll uncover them about the beginning of March, and that way once the ground reaches 40 degrees, they’ll start to grow.
Peter Shenk (00:23:32):
We’ve also had some more intense periods of dry the last two years, and it gets hard to keep up with irrigating everything the way we should, especially on this ground where it drains. And so I think that hurt us a little bit this year. And in June, it was May into June, it was quite dry here, and it gets hard to decide, “Well, what should we focus on irrigating?” because it’s hard to get pipes on everything at the same time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:00):
Right. Right. That’s right. I think of 2023 as a really wet season. But for the strawberry season, you’re right. It started out very, very dry.
Peter Shenk (00:24:11):
It did. Until about July, and then it started rain.
Andy Chamberlin (00:24:14):
And then it didn’t rain again.
John Shenk (00:24:15):
Where you are in Vermont, you had that, what was it like 12 to 16 inches of rain? We would’ve had maybe two or three. But the rain that did come was heavier rains, so it wasn’t spread out as much. And here, if we don’t have rain for a week or so, shallow rooted things are going to be on the dry side. And we were just trying to conserve the water that we had.
(00:24:45):
But the tendency now seems to be that these frontal boundaries will set up southwest to northeast. And then a low pressure moves up along it, and you were on the side of that that got the rain and we were on the side that didn’t get as much rain. So even to the west of us here, they had more rain.
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:10):
Oh, okay.
John Shenk (00:25:11):
Yeah. Yeah. Did you get to hear the keynote speaker?
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:14):
No.
John Shenk (00:25:15):
He’s a weatherman from near Harrisburg. It was really good. It was a really good talk.
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:21):
So he was talking about the patterns and stuff like that?
John Shenk (00:25:23):
Yeah. A lot of the things that we’ve been noticing, he had the charts and the graphs to show and then could explain a little bit how the changing climate is causing those things. And so it helped me to see that some of this stuff isn’t just my imagination, but there’s documentation for it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:51):
Yeah. He had the data to back it up.
John Shenk (00:25:52):
Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:25:54):
Did he give any good forecasts, like going to continue to be wetter, drier, more extreme in general?
John Shenk (00:26:02):
A little bit. I think long-range forecasting is very difficult. But I think this was the year we were in an El Nino, is that right?
Andy Chamberlin (00:26:12):
I think so.
John Shenk (00:26:13):
And the indications they have is that it’s going to switch fairly quickly back to a La Nina, which changes upper atmospheric patterns and stuff. And then it also has to do where the high pressure system parks in the Atlantic Ocean, how systems move and the potential for more hurricanes this year, stuff like that.
(00:26:40):
But it’s just I don’t know how you would forecast where these frontal boundaries are going to establish themselves, but my recollection was that earlier, we’d see dark sky this way and it was a cold front coming, and I could say, “We’re going to get rain out of that.” Now, our storms come from the southwest and follow, move up along this frontal boundary, and you don’t know if you’re going to get a thunderstorm or not. So it’s changed a lot, in my experience.
Andy Chamberlin (00:27:23):
Yeah.
John Shenk (00:27:24):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:27:27):
Yeah. I mean, as a kid, I remember much stronger thunderstorms, but you don’t know if that’s just your memory as a kid or if that’s the way it was. But it’d often you’d see it get dark, and then we’d run around and close the barn doors because you knew something was coming and unplug the electric fence and the computer. And now, we rarely do that routine. Even when it gets dark, you’re not sure if it’s going to really push across or have holes in it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:27:57):
Well, right. That’s what I’ve observed, is it’s spotty. The next town over will get hammered. It’ll completely miss us. Or like you said, the thunderstorms just aren’t there. It may rain heavy, but we don’t have the thunder. And that’s where we got lucky. We got a foot of rain in July, and a lot of that was over a three-day period where it just did not stop, but it was steady. And so we were okay because it was a steady rain. We didn’t have that downpour that washes out everybody’s roads. Unless you were on a big river and then that’s where a ton of flooding happened because the watershed filled up. But personally, that’s where we got a little bit lucky because it was steady.
John Shenk (00:28:42):
So if you had soil that could allow the water to infiltrate, it wasn’t too bad then.
Andy Chamberlin (00:28:50):
Exactly. You could go out there and your boots would sink in the soil because it was so just soft and saturated. But our ground was able to absorb a lot of that. Luckily also, right before that big storm, I went out and I rototilled between our pumpkins, and I think that also helped because it fluffed up all the soil and just made it like a sponge. So that was kind of a lucky choice there. Otherwise, we might’ve had a lot more erosion or runoff problems.
John Shenk (00:29:22):
Well, the takeaway for me is that we to be prepared for either extreme, like be prepared to do the irrigation or have the ground nailed down with cover crops or something so that if we do get those heavy, intense rains, it doesn’t wash the soil.
Andy Chamberlin (00:29:46):
Right. You’re on a pretty good slope. If you had open dirt, it would have some problems.
John Shenk (00:29:53):
Yeah. And in the establishment year for strawberries, you have that aisle way that is exposed. And so we try to do things that will allow the water to get into the ground, or at least not have too wide of a strip that’s tilled at one time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:30:14):
Yep. I see some grass strips here. Is that where spray lanes or is that for part of that erosion control?
Peter Shenk (00:30:22):
All of the above. And for pick-your-own, it’s nice to have plenty of space for people to walk. The less they have to jump over, the less berries get smashed. So yeah, it’s based on the sprayer that we have, that we built. So we do about 32 feet, like eight rows on 4-foot centers, and that works well. So that’s kind of how everything on the farm is. Everything you look at eventually comes down to some kind of 32-foot strip or something of that nature. But it doesn’t hurt to have those grass aisle ways too. For the erosion, that’s also helpful.
Andy Chamberlin (00:31:06):
You’re right.
John Shenk (00:31:06):
Yeah. On both of the sprayers, the herbicide sprayer and the one they’ll use for fungicides, cover four rows. So I go around each section of eight rows and just do four rows at a time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:31:27):
For your strawberry hilling, I see it’s got a nice rolling character to it. Are you intentionally hilling those up, or is that just a result of the matted road causing biomass?
John Shenk (00:31:40):
Well, we plant the field’s flat when we plant. But due to the nature of my cultivator, there’s soil moved towards the row. And then through subsequent years, that continues to happen. So as the older the patch gets, the higher the ridge is, because on a strawberry plant, the new roots come from out of the top of the crown. And so at renovation time, part of the idea is to get more soil toward the crown area so that the new roots have something to go into.
(00:32:27):
But these would’ve been planted like one plant every two feet. And then what you see now are the daughter plants that have rooted between and filled in the row. And you can see a little bit of compost here. We’ll show you the compost stuff later. But before we put the straw down, I spread a little bit of compost over top because I was still concerned about getting more roots growing, and I thought, ” Well, maybe that’ll help a little bit.” But we use compost for-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:33:04]
John Shenk (00:33:00):
Maybe that’ll help a little bit, but we use compost for many of the nutrients, except I’ll add nitrogen because the compost doesn’t have quite enough nitrogen to it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:33:14):
Yeah.
John Shenk (00:33:16):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:33:16):
Do you use a granular for that, or are you injecting it into your irrigation?
John Shenk (00:33:23):
In the spring, when I uncover, I’ll put 20 pounds to the acre of actual nitrogen, but I use ammonium nitrate.
Andy Chamberlin (00:33:33):
Yeah.
John Shenk (00:33:33):
No, ammonium sulfate. Yeah. Yeah, you can’t get ammonium nitrate anymore. Yeah. You can get calcium ammonium nitrate, but then we do put drip tubes in the row as the plants are starting to grow up. Then they’ll grow up around that tube, and we can put just some spoon-feeding fertilizer down that way, during the time when they’re bearing strawberries.
Andy Chamberlin (00:33:33):
Yup.
John Shenk (00:34:08):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:09):
Can’t quite tell, but do you have two rows here?
John Shenk (00:34:14):
This is just one row. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:15):
Okay.
John Shenk (00:34:16):
It’s a little wider than normally we would’ve done, but they weren’t quite as thick.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:22):
So one row, two feet apart, on four foot centers?
Peter Shenk (00:34:25):
Yeah, right.
John Shenk (00:34:25):
The plants are two feet, and the rows are four feet. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:29):
Then the drip line, you just lay on top?
Peter Shenk (00:34:32):
We do, yeah. We try and wait until they just started to grow a little bit, because the wind will take it off otherwise, so on a relatively calm day, we’ll put it down and just let it kind of settle in. Ideally put water in it right away, that helps it drop in. And then after a week or so, they’re growing pretty well that time of year that they just get some leaves up around it, and then it’s-
Andy Chamberlin (00:34:55):
So you’re not hoeing any dirt on it or stapling it or anything?
Peter Shenk (00:34:59):
… nope. Occasionally-
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:01):
Hoping for a calm day till-
Peter Shenk (00:35:02):
… yeah. Occasionally we’ll have to go out and kind of fix it a little bit, but if we time it right in the beginning when they’re growing quickly, they’ll usually kind of swallow it up pretty quick.
John Shenk (00:35:17):
And then Peter made a wrapper for the drip tube so that we can wrap it up between years and then take it out before renovating the strawberries.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:32):
… and do you reuse that or not bother?
Peter Shenk (00:35:34):
We do.
John Shenk (00:35:35):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:35:35):
We’ve used it quite a few years because everything’s curving. It’s always different lengths for different fields, so once we have a set of tubes that works in this field, we’ll bring them back every year until we’re done with that field.
John Shenk (00:35:54):
And we get the 15 mil drip tube so that it lasts for the time.
Andy Chamberlin (00:35:55):
Right, right.
John Shenk (00:36:02):
Yeah. It’s more expensive up front, but I like to not have to waste it more than necessary.
Andy Chamberlin (00:36:08):
Yeah, for sure.
John Shenk (00:36:09):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:36:09):
Do you find it keeps consistent watering across the sloping hills?
John Shenk (00:36:15):
Well, there’s a little bit of an issue with that. This field here is 750 feet long, I think.
Peter Shenk (00:36:21):
In the ball park.
John Shenk (00:36:22):
And that’s about as far as you can go and still have pressure at the end. But one of the brands has a pressure compensating. That’s how they promote it as pressure compensating. And it works, I think about as well as it could, but the other end of the field will tend to get a little less water. Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:36:50):
At the other end, there is a little bit of a drop where it gets wet, it tends to collect water there, and so it works out that that’s the far end.
John Shenk (00:37:01):
Yeah. This year we’re planning to supplement with some overhead. We had kind of moved away from that a little bit because of concerns about pumping water out of the pond and how clean it was and everything.
Andy Chamberlin (00:37:18):
From a food safety standpoint?
John Shenk (00:37:19):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:37:20):
Yep.
John Shenk (00:37:21):
But it seems that if you allow enough time, I’m trying to gather information on this, whether going and spraying with a peroxide type spray, will sanitize them after overhead irrigation.
Peter Shenk (00:37:40):
Right.
John Shenk (00:37:41):
And also, maybe we can inject it into the water. Some people do that with chlorine, but I’m a little hesitant to use chlorine and this is just my opinion, this is not based on actual knowledge, but the chlorine is going to tend to be harder on the microorganisms in the soil, although we’re mainly trying to just take care of the surface contact. But people do that.
Peter Shenk (00:38:13):
Our first step is, we’re trying to get animals away from the pond and get more water tests and see if we can-
Andy Chamberlin (00:38:13):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:38:22):
… get to a point, where with a one or two day buffer between irrigating and harvest, okay. Because if we get to that point, we close on Sundays for pick-your-own and so by Saturday afternoon, we could be irrigating if we had a one day buffer.
Andy Chamberlin (00:38:43):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:38:43):
And for how long the season goes, if we could drench them good over one weekend, that takes care of a lot.
John Shenk (00:38:54):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:38:55):
If we drench them before we start picking and then drench them a week in, before you know it, you’re kind of through most of it.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:04):
Right. So you got to do that a couple times.
Peter Shenk (00:39:05):
Right. So that’s where we’re at, is trying to see if we can get to a spot where we can do a good weekend soak. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:14):
Are the animals around the pond, yours or neighbor’s?
Peter Shenk (00:39:18):
They’re ours. We’ve always had a few sheep that hung out. We have a couple cattle, but we keep them away and the sheep are more in closer proximity.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:28):
Are you using that pond as a water source for them too?
Peter Shenk (00:39:31):
Yes. Yeah.
John Shenk (00:39:33):
We only have three sheep anymore.
Peter Shenk (00:39:36):
Yeah, it wasn’t a big herd, but it was, not all the wildlife we can control. We do have deer around and a number of other things-
John Shenk (00:39:36):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:39:43):
… and sometimes some geese and ducks.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:48):
And just taking a few more water tests and monitoring it. And I know it can fluctuate quite a bit too.
Peter Shenk (00:39:53):
That’s my understanding. Yeah. So we’re a little behind on getting a good picture of what that looks like.
Andy Chamberlin (00:39:59):
Yep. What are you using for a planter for these?
John Shenk (00:40:06):
The brand is a mechanical planter. Holland makes a planter somewhat similar. Ours has a double disc opener and then kind of a shoe that holds the soil apart. Then it has these little pockets that clasp the plant, which are on a chain that goes down, and then they open, and then the plants released in that open channel. Then the press wheels push the soil back. So yeah, there’s a couple different kinds on the market, but that’s the one we ended up with.
Andy Chamberlin (00:40:42):
For bare root planting?
John Shenk (00:40:43):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:40:43):
Yeah. Work pretty good, you like it?
John Shenk (00:40:48):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s working fairly well. We used to use one that was originally a horse drawn planter that had the shovels that open and then press wheels. Well, I had made that into a three-point hitch thing, so if need something cheap that was, yeah. Oh, and then it dispenses about a cup of water at each plant, maybe half a cup.
Peter Shenk (00:41:21):
Yeah, it’s variable. We tend to go a little high. We put an extra tank on, it seems like a good way to get them going, drop a bunch of water at the bottom. And since we’re not doing massive acreage, we are filling up every, I don’t know, couple of rows.
John Shenk (00:41:21):
Yeah, round trip.
Peter Shenk (00:41:40):
It’s pretty often, so we put it down there, but especially in a year like this past one, that turned out to be very helpful because the water down underneath there stuck around longer.
Andy Chamberlin (00:41:51):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:41:51):
And I think it helped us getting through May, but then by the time we hit June, I believe that was used up as well.
Andy Chamberlin (00:41:59):
Right. Yeah.
John Shenk (00:42:01):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:04):
And then how are you managing weed control for that initial season, that planting year?
John Shenk (00:42:09):
I’m going to make some adjustments to what we’ve been doing, but we usually put a pre-emergent down. This year we did some Prowl H2O with, I think I put a little Devrinol with that, I think. And then throughout the summer, I’ll do a two ounce rate of Cinnabar, but that needs to be washed off the plants right away. And that’s where I get to watching the radar a lot. If I can time it with a rainfall that’s not going to be too heavy and just think you’re supposed to get maybe be half an inch of rain to get it into the ground a little bit.
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:51):
Right. But off the plants?
John Shenk (00:42:53):
Yeah. And then in the fall, do a little bit more Cinnabar and then when they go dormant, you can use the 2,4-D Amine, the amine formulation to kill off some broadleaf weeds that are there. And then also there’s a number of options for the pre-emergent herbicide to put down in the fall, Chateau, more Cinnabar, Devrinol, Spartan. There’s a couple different ones. A lot of that decision-making has to do with what kind of weeds you’re dealing with-
Andy Chamberlin (00:42:54):
Right.
John Shenk (00:43:35):
… and matching the right herbicide to the right weed issue. But when I said about sort of reconsidering some of that, just to try to make sure that I’m not using a root inhibitor at a time when we’re trying to get roots growing.
Andy Chamberlin (00:43:51):
Right, right.
John Shenk (00:43:51):
Yeah. Devrinol is a rooting inhibitor, so you’re not supposed to use that midsummer when you’re trying to get runners to root.
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:01):
Right.
John Shenk (00:44:02):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:03):
Shoot yourself in the foot?
John Shenk (00:44:06):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:44:06):
You set yourself back. Yep.
John Shenk (00:44:09):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:44:09):
Wait, Chateau has been the one we usually use before we put the straw on, but this patch here we didn’t put it on because it does seem to be a little hard on the plants, but it also helps a lot with the end bit and the chickweed and the dead nettle. But here where the plants just weren’t so strong, we felt like we’d take that chance and try and help the plants out by not doing that. Yeah, we found that to be be fairly effective, but does come with some risks there.
John Shenk (00:44:44):
Yeah. I probably will put something on, maybe Devrinol when we take the straw off just because it helps with grasses and maybe some small weeds too.
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:00):
Yeah. Right. The in row stuff, the straw is doing a lot in the aisle ways.
John Shenk (00:45:00):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:45:05):
But that being said, weed control, there’s a lot of hand weeding too.
John Shenk (00:45:11):
Oh, yeah. We forgot about that part.
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:15):
Do you any-
Peter Shenk (00:45:16):
We didn’t forget, we just don’t like to talk about it. No, we do a lot of cultivation too, because we have some cultivating options because we’re also selling those cultivators.
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:28):
… right.
Peter Shenk (00:45:28):
So we use our Eco Weeder to go in between the plants up into July, and then the Hillside Cultivator, we use throughout the whole season just to do-
Andy Chamberlin (00:45:46):
Is that a weekly pass?
Peter Shenk (00:45:49):
… not that regular. Yeah. The rolling cultivators will take out a weed that’s been established for a little bit. It can take them out when they’re a couple inches tall, so we don’t have to get through quite as quick as if you’re doing real fine cultivation, real shallow cultivation.
John Shenk (00:46:08):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:46:08):
So yeah, we don’t go through more than we have to. It just feels like it keeps packing down the middle a little bit more each time.
John Shenk (00:46:17):
Pre-emergent herbicides are mostly for the weeds that come up in the row. It’s easy to take care of the weeds between the rows.
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:25):
Right.
John Shenk (00:46:26):
So what often we’ll do is try to get everything cleaned up good, cultivate the aisles, and then put a herbicide on and wait until we see weeds again to start cultivating and pulling weeds again. Yeah and I really don’t know many people doing matted row that aren’t doing hand weeding. They just are not the kind of herbicides they’re going to give total control of weeds.
Andy Chamberlin (00:46:56):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:46:58):
And as good as the Eco Weeder is moving soil around the weeds still just want to stand back up. Yeah, we can do pretty well up until when they start runnering, and then once they start runnering, it gets a little harder because there’s that time in July where they’re starting to fill in the row and you have daughter plants that have rooted, so you don’t want to disturb them, but yet they haven’t gotten thick enough to form a canopy to compete yet.
(00:47:26):
Once you get later in the summer, then ideally if they’re growing well, they do start to compete better. And so we’re hoping that by the time the fall weeds start germinating, that we have a thick row because we have seen even by variety, that our thick varieties that are really filling in, we get a lot less germinating fall weeds on. So it seems like the herbicides are helpful, but the best defense is if you have a strong row that you can push soil right up to the edge, that’s the best thing you can do. But of course, you always want it to be a good healthy row.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:10):
Yeah, right.
John Shenk (00:48:13):
Yeah. Some years in the past, it seemed like the rows just grew so thick that that was more of a problem, but now we haven’t had that problem for a while.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:24):
All June bearers?
John Shenk (00:48:25):
Yes.
Peter Shenk (00:48:27):
Yep.
Andy Chamberlin (00:48:27):
What’s your favorite varieties?
Peter Shenk (00:48:29):
Sometimes it varies from year to year, but we still grow Earliglow because there’s a following around here of people that know they like those, and so that’s what we start out with. And for us, that’s still the best tasting berry. That’s what we’ll pick for ourselves if we’re making some jam or freezing them. So they’re good, but then the size drops off pretty quick. And then right now our middle season berries are Flavorfest and Darselect. The Flavorfest’s, they’re nice berries. They’re usually pretty popular, people like picking those. The Darselect’s the flavors a little more variable year to year. We’ve had years when they were quite good, we’ve had years when they weren’t quite as sweet.
(00:49:19):
But the exception of this year, one thing we really liked about them, was they’re quite vigorous. They make a strong row. And so like I said about weeding, this past spring, they were the only variety that we didn’t go in and pull dead nettle out of because they had shaded it out in the fall, so that’s one nice trait about them. And then after that, we’re finishing out with the AC Valley Sunsets. They’re good, they can tend to get soft. And we’ve also had years where we had the Anthracnose that they seem more susceptible than some of the other varieties. Would you say?
John Shenk (00:49:59):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:49:59):
Seems to be one of the things to watch out for in them. Every time we plant, we always think about doing another variety or we do do another variety just to-
Andy Chamberlin (00:50:11):
Keep trying.
Peter Shenk (00:50:11):
… try something that you never know what’s coming out. And actually, we were growing some Rutgers Scarlet as well, and we liked them, but they weren’t available from the nursery this year, so we’re not putting in anymore at the moment. But yeah, they weren’t a perfect berry, but they did taste good and had good color, and so people liked picking them. They weren’t the highest-yielding thing, but they kind of had a spread-out season to them and so in combination with everything else, they worked well.
John Shenk (00:50:46):
Variety choices vary a lot depending on locations. And the conversations I had with different growers this week or the sessions we were in, it really seems that it varies according to soil types and how far North people are. There’s some varieties do well further North, but here we can get hot weather that’ll just make them get soft.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:17):
Okay, yeah.
John Shenk (00:51:18):
Yeah. Or just a lot of variation. So people have different favorites, different places. Even around here, a lot of people aren’t growing Earliglow’s anymore. They’ve gone more like to Galette or something like that.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:18):
Because they don’t do as well?
John Shenk (00:51:18):
Galette’s are a little bit larger.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:18):
Oh, okay.
John Shenk (00:51:42):
But on our soil, the time that we had them, we didn’t like the flavor as well but that might’ve just been the season too.
Andy Chamberlin (00:51:51):
Yeah, right.
John Shenk (00:51:51):
So might take another look at it again. Like the Rutgers Scarlet, we really liked it. We don’t know why the nurseries quit growing them. And that was a New Jersey variety, so the climate would’ve been similar to ours.
Andy Chamberlin (00:52:09):
Right, right.
John Shenk (00:52:10):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:52:12):
And I think they were trying to breed for flavor, which is what we feel like is important for us, is that they taste good because you can buy strawberries elsewhere, but part of the appeal of pick-your-own and coming and getting a fresh berry is that you’re getting something that you can’t get elsewhere.
Andy Chamberlin (00:52:13):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:52:30):
In terms of, its perishability and how good it tastes and the freshness of it. If they’re big and they don’t taste that great, we’re not really providing something that’s that different from what you can buy.
Andy Chamberlin (00:52:46):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:52:49):
Which is why we still grow Earliglow’s, is because people like how they taste and you won’t get quite that same flavor anywhere else. Not that you won’t get good flavor.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:01):
Right.
Peter Shenk (00:53:02):
But if you’re used to that kind of taste in a berry, then that’s kind of what you like.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:09):
Yeah, it’s rare to have a strawberry that’s bad, but when you go to pick-your-own, you expect it to be juicy and extra sweet.
Peter Shenk (00:53:16):
Yeah, yeah.
John Shenk (00:53:18):
Well, I would say I think that you can get bad strawberries because a couple years I was being a judge for 4-H strawberries, and part of it was, I had to taste all these different strawberries, and I had some that I just really didn’t like.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:35):
Oh, interesting.
John Shenk (00:53:37):
And I thought it might’ve been, again, this soil issue that on some farms, well or gardens, one variety just didn’t do as well.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:46):
Interesting.
John Shenk (00:53:47):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:47):
Doesn’t have the nutrient uptake that it needed?
John Shenk (00:53:49):
Possibly, yep.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:50):
Yeah.
John Shenk (00:53:51):
Yeah, because there were lots of Earliglows at the 4-H thing, but they didn’t all taste the same.
Andy Chamberlin (00:53:59):
Interesting.
John Shenk (00:54:01):
And some I just could barely. Yeah. Yep.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:06):
Even if it was red and it looked good, it didn’t meet the flavor?
John Shenk (00:54:10):
Yep.
Andy Chamberlin (00:54:10):
Oh, interesting.
John Shenk (00:54:13):
Sometimes it was because they were overripe too.
Peter Shenk (00:54:18):
Some berries taste okay with a little bit of pink or white on them, and others do not.
John Shenk (00:54:25):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:54:25):
Sweet corn is the same way. Some is good on the young side, and some needs to be fully mature.
John Shenk (00:54:31):
Yep, exactly. Some of us around here feel that this more gravel or shale soil, produces sweeter cantaloupes and strawberries than some of the other ground that’s lower around here is limestone soil. And it looks like it’s a lot more fun to farm, straight rows and flat fields but we just have this bias that maybe this kind of soil with all its difficulties might make sweeter vegetables or fruits.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:08):
Yeah. No, I don’t think you’re wrong. The technology isn’t mainstream enough to measure all the micronutrients and all the little minerals and things in the soils, but I think you’re right, there’s a terroir to certain soil chemistry. It’s just hard to measure at this point.
John Shenk (00:55:28):
Well, yeah. I mean, you used a fancy word there that I’m not as familiar with, but like grapes, depending where they come from, have very different flavors and stuff.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:39):
Exactly.
John Shenk (00:55:40):
So I think that’s what you’re talking about?
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:42):
Yes, the terroir is off into the wine industry, certain regions have a different flavor profile.
John Shenk (00:55:46):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:55:47):
Exactly.
John Shenk (00:55:48):
So anyway, that’s a way to make us feel better about-
Peter Shenk (00:55:54):
It’s a reason to keep doing it anyways, in this location.
John Shenk (00:55:57):
… what my mother-in-law called a hill and ditch farm.
Andy Chamberlin (00:56:00):
Accurate?
John Shenk (00:56:01):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:56:03):
Yep.
John Shenk (00:56:04):
Because back when we came here, this would’ve been regarded as a second-class farm. It still is in some ways compared to some of the land you might’ve seen around here. But in some ways, farming is getting pushed on to more marginal soils because it’s easier to build houses on the flatter-
Peter Shenk (00:56:31):
Fry man, yeah.
John Shenk (00:56:32):
… yeah. And it’s happening all over the place.
Andy Chamberlin (00:56:36):
So you’re noticing that pressure in Pennsylvania as well?
John Shenk (00:56:41):
Oh, extremely. Yes. You go from here to Lancaster and land that was prime farmland is now the extension of the city. Yep.
Peter Shenk (00:56:55):
Yeah. Well, as another farmer was pointing out, that where there was good land, that’s where people settled. That’s where the economy did well and then more people live there and it just kind of grows out from there. And that’s a little bit how Lancaster is because it was very productive land and people did well, and so that helps drive the economy along and more growth. So it kind of competes with its own prosperity in a way.
Andy Chamberlin (00:57:26):
Are you finding the population’s growing right around here?
Peter Shenk (00:57:30):
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (00:57:31):
It’s good for the customer base, I suppose. Right?
Peter Shenk (00:57:33):
Well, that’s why we say all we have to do is grow nice strawberries.
John Shenk (00:57:36):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (00:57:37):
There’s plenty of people.
John Shenk (00:57:39):
Yeah. If we can grow good strawberries, marketing is not a problem. Now, it may be if we go through a couple years of not having good picking, so we have to recover from that a little bit. But as I’ve said recently to some other people, this is causing me to kind of look back over everything that I ever thought I knew and reassess everything that we do. So in some ways, you cycle back to all the basics and try to evaluate all the different things that we’ve been doing. And there are new diseases of course, too, like this one, they call Neopest, the short way of saying it, but there are new diseases around and then some of the fungicides don’t work anymore, stuff like that. So it’s always a changing target, but it helps one never to think they know it all.
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:48):
You’re constantly being humbled?
John Shenk (00:58:49):
Yes.
Andy Chamberlin (00:58:51):
Do you think farming has gotten harder throughout your career, like you said, new diseases?
John Shenk (00:58:59):
In one regard, yes. In another regard, no. After all these years, we’ve accumulated the equipment that we didn’t have in the beginning and so in that sense it’s better. There’s also a lot more specialized resources. When I started farming, there really weren’t mulch layers around. And some of the people around here, like Rain-Flo and Nolt’s, developed mulch layers that didn’t exist in the late ’70s and ’80s, so there’s a lot more equipment and that kind of thing. But I do think climate change is making things harder because as they say, the extremes are greater. So my experience would validate that.
Andy Chamberlin (01:00:02):
There’s two sides of that. In a way, you’ve got more tools in the toolbox, more options to combat things, but more challenging conditions?
John Shenk (01:00:14):
Yeah. We had challenging conditions before too. I mean, I remember some really dry years.
Peter Shenk (01:00:21):
Well, I mean some of those intense thunderstorms. I remember multiple times as a kid getting hail and it still happens. We’ve had neighbors a mile away, it hailed, but we haven’t been nailed by that recently, so hopefully we’ll continue that trend but I don’t know. Some of those things have gotten very spotty too. When it does happen, you don’t want it.
Andy Chamberlin (01:00:49):
Which is bad.
Peter Shenk (01:00:54):
But that’s one thing we haven’t had for a few years now.
John Shenk (01:00:58):
Yeah, we had a year when we had a beautiful patch of strawberries and we got hail and it was just mush to deal with.
Andy Chamberlin (01:01:11):
You mentioned the last couple of years of strawberries has been, we’ll say, challenging. How has it been for the other crops? Have they also been a struggle or no?
Peter Shenk (01:01:22):
I would say they’ve done well for us.
John Shenk (01:01:24):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:01:26):
To the extent that we’ve done what we should have. Every year, when you’re growing so many different things for a small market, there’s always something slipping through the cracks but we’ve had good years with the other crops.
Andy Chamberlin (01:01:43):
That’s good.
John Shenk (01:01:44):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:01:45):
Yeah. This year was good for us and the market went well. We had a good sweet corn year, so that helps to balance out what happens in the berries.
Andy Chamberlin (01:01:58):
Right, right.
Peter Shenk (01:01:59):
Something else going on, so that’s kind of nice to be diversified in that way. It’s one of the challenges when you’re diversified, it’s hard to always get everything done the way you should to each different thing. But then on the flip side, there’s always something else to help bring in some revenue, so it balances out.
Andy Chamberlin (01:02:20):
Have you done any plastic culture strawberries or just done that row?
John Shenk (01:02:24):
We did plastic for maybe 20 years.
Andy Chamberlin (01:02:27):
Oh, wow.
John Shenk (01:02:28):
And that we’d have on the back side of the farm for us to sell. We’d hire kids to pick them. And on plastic, the plants were more individualized and so the berries tend to be a little bit bigger and nicer, but it’s a more expensive way to do it. And for pick-your-own, it was a little hard to justify the expense for pick-your- own and so that’s why we stopped that now.
Andy Chamberlin (01:03:02):
Because you’re not getting as much per pound or the yields are less?
John Shenk (01:03:05):
There’s just more input costs, like the plug plants or I don’t know, they might be up to 50 cents a piece now and then the plastic. And a lot of people are doing that on an annual or biannual system. So just a lot of input cost.
Andy Chamberlin (01:03:27):
But you said it wasn’t worth it for pick-your-own?
John Shenk (01:03:29):
Well, we don’t sell them for as high a price. Yeah. Now the labor of picking is, that’s another factor. But yeah, I’m not saying I’d never do it again, although that’ll be more up to Peter.
Peter Shenk (01:03:49):
Yeah. Well for the pick-your-own too, it’s a little painful to watch people jumping over rows and going from here to there. And if it was plastic, it’d be hard to watch all the holes getting made and things.
Andy Chamberlin (01:04:03):
Valid point right there. I didn’t think about that.
Peter Shenk (01:04:05):
So it’s nice when it’s a matted row. I mean, people stop it. You don’t feel like you went all of this work to groom a nice productive patch and then have that being kind of trampled on. And also, people miss things, when we were picking to sell, we did too. But to get that optimum productivity off each plug plant, you don’t want to be missing a lot, especially when it’s black plastic and it’s June, a berry you didn’t get once is not going to be there in a day or two, it’s just going to be mush. And so, yeah, it feels like with the matted row, it’s not quite as much input, so you don’t feel quite the pressure to get every berry off. I don’t know, that’s at least how it feels, I think.
Andy Chamberlin (01:04:57):
So the berries on the plant, we’ll call it shelf life, is better on a straw mulch than the black plastic because-
Peter Shenk (01:05:04):
I think you have a better chance. I mean, they’ll spoil out here too.
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:04):
… yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:05:11):
But if you have a bright sun on black plastic, a berry will scald fairly fast. Whereas this past year when we had mild weather, I suspect that there were probably berries that people missed once and then two days later they got them and they were still okay because we were having cool nights in the 60s, and even upper 50s, I think, and days weren’t that high. So I think if it’s not too hot, you do have a little bit more of a chance of maybe getting something twice that you might not on plastic. I don’t know.
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:45):
So that’s some good nuanced conversation.
Peter Shenk (01:05:47):
That’s kind of speculative. I’ve never done a study about how long does a berry last laying out here.
Andy Chamberlin (01:05:52):
Well, no, but you’ve farmed them, you’ve picked them, you see it.
Peter Shenk (01:05:55):
Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely a cooler atmosphere. You’re on straw, you’re not on plastic.
John Shenk (01:06:01):
Yeah. They come a little later. Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:06:02):
Yeah.
John Shenk (01:06:03):
And actually-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [01:06:04]
Peter Shenk (01:06:00):
You’re not on plastic.
John Shenk (01:06:00):
They come a little later. And actually, for people that are growing them to retail and are trying to get an earlier market for their farm market, then plastic culture does make more sense. One of the factors around here has been the variability and the quality of the plug plants, especially with the Chandler variety, which is a, I think, originally, a California or Florida type variety that works here, but it’s highly susceptible to anthrax. So it doesn’t work to keep it a second year. But there have been problems with the quality of the plants, and it’s a more finicky system, in that way of doing it.
(01:06:54):
Now, there are people that are growing eastern varieties on plastic and then, keeping them for two years, and I can see that working out and being less cost for the plants, the bare root plants costing less than the plug plants. But the one thing I’m a little bit interested in is a system where people use a biodegradable plastic to establish the plants in and then, cultivate between it, but it allows you to get partway through the first season without having to put a herbicide on. And herbicides are a compromise, in terms of plant health. You need to have just the right amount to kill the weeds, but not hurt the strawberries, which is a balance.
Andy Chamberlin (01:07:54):
Yeah, that’s one of the challenges, because I’d like to get into strawberries again. But our markets are very against spraying, like our customer base is, and it’s like I don’t necessarily want to be certified organic and we’re not and don’t really intend to be, but trying to minimize the spraying to absolute minimum. So I was trying to figure out, how can I use bioplastic to the advantage of doing a hybrid system, something I haven’t figured out yet? Which is why I’m talking to growers, who’ve been doing it for decades, to try to figure out what works for them and what could work for us, because it’s hard.
John Shenk (01:08:33):
With selling cultivators, I’ve had lots of conversations with growers from all over the place, and it seems that most of the organic people that I talk with are using plastic. And if they’re doing matted rows, they’re probably doing that on an annual system as well.
Andy Chamberlin (01:08:55):
Interesting.
John Shenk (01:08:56):
Maybe with straw, planting through straw, or something like that, to suppress the weeds, but then, you limit your cultivation ability. I haven’t really run into many large organic growers in the east, because of our weather and everything, and then, all the hand weeding that goes into it. So it can be done, I think, or at least a lower spray kind of situation.
Andy Chamberlin (01:09:34):
Right. The trade-off, how much hand weeding and everything.
John Shenk (01:09:39):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:09:40):
It’s also hard to balance people’s expectations. If everybody had the same opinion on wanting it to be not sprayed so much and then, understood what trade-offs you have, in terms of berry quality, I think it would work just fine. But when you have one person that says, “Well, I don’t care how it looks. I just want it to not have any spray,” and then, the next person says, “Well, I’m not really concerned. I want it to be big and nice and just easy picking,” it’s hard to have both people satisfied.
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:11):
That’s true.
Peter Shenk (01:10:12):
So yeah, I think you could go either way, depending on how your customers felt about it.
John Shenk (01:10:18):
Yeah. And I’ve looked at websites for my customers to see what they look like, and often, on the organic farms, people are willing to tolerate different appearances of things and be happy with it. So there is, again, the advantage of the time we live in, there are more products that allow somebody to use less synthetic materials.
Andy Chamberlin (01:10:50):
Well, we covered a lot of ground on strawberries.
Peter Shenk (01:10:55):
Yeah, well, that’s the thing that gets talked about most around here.
John Shenk (01:10:59):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:11:01):
Are there a lot of strawberry growers around?
Peter Shenk (01:11:04):
I’d say there’s pretty many that are small in our category, growing for their own farm stands and things like that. There aren’t large growers around, but there are a lot of people that have an acre, two acres, three acres. They’re growing for the auction, for their own farm stands. A lot of small farm stands around here.
John Shenk (01:11:25):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:11:25):
What are you excited about for the next year?
John Shenk (01:11:28):
I’m really looking forward to seeing if we can do something to pull these things through to make them better than we think they are. Like at the conventions and stuff, I’ve been asking a lot of questions to people that supply different kind of products, if there’s some kind of biological that’ll help or the right timing on fertilizers or something. But then, I think the thing we’re excited about is if we can do a new planting across the road and get a nice stand.
Peter Shenk (01:12:18):
Yeah. That’s why farmers keep going, we say, because every year, you think, “Oh, this will go different, we’ll start fresh, and this will be fun this year, to go into a different field, it’ll be…” But it is nice. Across the road is the flattest ground we farm, and so, those rows are going to be straight and it is more enjoyable to work that over there. So that’s something to look forward to. The contours, they’re visually appealing, but challenging to farm.
John Shenk (01:12:53):
Well, with the drip tube, when you go around the curve with it, it wants to pull straight. So I think, last year, didn’t we have little posts in the ground?
Peter Shenk (01:13:03):
I think we put some pegs in to go around, just to get started with.
John Shenk (01:13:07):
To hold it in place. And then, during the day, when the sun comes out, it kind of snakes.
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:13):
It can stretch out.
John Shenk (01:13:15):
But that seems to straighten out, once it gets embedded in the foliage. Yeah. I’m always anxious just to eat some strawberries again, and I think we will have something for us to eat anyway.
Andy Chamberlin (01:13:27):
That’s right. There’ll be something out here.
Peter Shenk (01:13:31):
Yeah, that’s a good thing to say, that we’re always looking forward to having something fresh, on the market side of things too. I always look forward to getting the first watermelon and cantaloupe and sweet corn and things that you just don’t get that flavor the rest of the year. So I always look forward to that.
John Shenk (01:13:50):
Yeah. Well, this is really good to hear, because we’ve been having these debates about if we’re going to keep going to market in Philadelphia. And Peter’s been advocating, “Let’s do berries and do it well and focus and not get distracted.” And I’ve like, “Well, I really like growing this other stuff.”
Andy Chamberlin (01:14:14):
The other stuff’s fun too.
Peter Shenk (01:14:15):
Yeah, but you can get that taste in a garden too.
John Shenk (01:14:18):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:14:18):
It’s a couple of rows,
Peter Shenk (01:14:22):
But that is one of the challenges for us. We got the cultivators, we do the farmer’s market, and we have the picker and berries. And it’s nice to be diversified, but that comes with drawbacks too, where they kind of compete against each other. And so, you have to figure out, “Well, at what point is it most optimum, can we do it well and still get everything done? And then, how much help do you want to have? Do you want to try and get more people to help you do all those things well? Or do you want to keep it at a size where you do a lot of the things yourself and then, you do it the way you like and don’t have to manage people?” So that’s kind of a little bit of a personal preference too. How do you like to run things? What do you enjoy doing yourself?
Andy Chamberlin (01:15:04):
Do you hire a crew? Or is it a family operation?
Peter Shenk (01:15:07):
It’s mostly all family, and then, we just kind of have casual help that we hire people, some kids, to help us pull weeds. We’ve got a couple people to help us run the stand during pick your own for a couple weeks, but we don’t have a designated crew. Every year, we put together whoever’s around, available, interested in working a little bit, just kind of piece it together.
John Shenk (01:15:32):
When I talk to these farmers that have 30 H-2A workers and stuff, it’s just kind of beyond what I can comprehend. Housing and transportation. Yeah, we sent a blueberry cultivator out, well, actually I think it’s going to be five went to a farm out in Washington.
Andy Chamberlin (01:15:53):
Five cultivators to one farm?
Peter Shenk (01:15:55):
Oregon there.
John Shenk (01:15:56):
Not all at one time.
Peter Shenk (01:15:57):
They’re doing blueberries
John Shenk (01:15:59):
And they have several hundred acres of blueberries, and I think he said… How many H-2A workers was it? 300?
Peter Shenk (01:16:07):
It’s the hundreds.
John Shenk (01:16:10):
And last year, they had a crop failure, and they paid the flights for the people here, the flights to go home. And they had to pay them part of what they would’ve earned. And I just can’t comprehend that kind of risk and investment and cost and whatever.
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:34):
How many acres are you growing on?
Peter Shenk (01:16:36):
38 is what the farm is. Then we have a couple rented, so it’s very farm 50.
Andy Chamberlin (01:16:43):
And just run through your main crops again for me one more time.
Peter Shenk (01:16:46):
So strawberries is probably, by total revenue, strawberries would be the highest of one single crop. So we do strawberries, raspberries, blueberries. That’s our pick your own season. And then, starting July through Thanksgiving, we go to just a variety of everything. So it’s corns, watermelons, cantaloupes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes. And then, we move into the fall, and we do broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, collards.
John Shenk (01:17:27):
Cabbage.
Peter Shenk (01:17:28):
A lot of the things you’d expect to…
John Shenk (01:17:32):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:17:33):
That’s a wide-range. Most of the vegetable crops, is that on plastic culture?
Peter Shenk (01:17:39):
It is not. Well, yes, some are, some aren’t. The summer ones are, and then, the fall ones are not. So we do all our bare ground. The strawberries just cultivate them. And since we’re already set up to do bare ground things, we have the cultivators, we have the transplanter, that works for us.
John Shenk (01:18:02):
And it’s good to have different types of cultivators, because they cover different problems and we’re always kind of experimenting with stuff.
Andy Chamberlin (01:18:15):
I want to hear more about that. How’d you get into the cultivator business?
John Shenk (01:18:18):
Oh, okay. So one of the problems that I encountered with strawberries on the side of a hill like this is that, at renovation time, the way we’d do it is, first, you mow them down, and then, what I would use is a six foot wide rototiller with the middle teeth taken out. And so, it would straddle the row, and it would chop off the sides. But on a hill, what would happen is it would, on the downhill side, it would leave kind of a ledge. It would cut away, but it wouldn’t return the soil to the edge. On the uphill side, it would kind of pile soil there. So you’d end up with steps almost, and it didn’t bring the soil back against the roots on the downhill side of the row.
(01:19:14):
So we were starting to attend meetings of the North American Strawberry Growers Association, and people would share different things they were doing, different kinds of equipment, and then, there’s always a time where people were just sitting around and kind of talking. And these guys were talking about Lilliston cultivators, which is what that rolling cultivator was originally called. That was the brand name was Lilliston. And so, I got a pair and rigged up this toolbar that I’d have a tooth in the front on both sides, and then, the Lilliston cultivators in the back were on another bar that pivoted in the middle and could be actuated with a cylinder. So I could make the downhill side more aggressive than the uphill side and sort of ridge toward the bottom of the row. And that was sort of my first primitive kind of cultivator. Then one of my friends that I got to know, who was a strawberry grower in Maryland and was also part of the North American Strawberry Growers Association, was here visiting me, and he saw what I had. And he said, “Hey, why don’t you make something like that for me?”
(01:20:46):
And then, he kind of said, “You ought to do something with this.” And I had a guy help me do the drawings for a cultivator that originally was, if you look down from the top, it was like a parallelogram. And you could shift it, so that it would help move soil uphill. And that’s why I called it hillside cultivator. But then, with starting to go to trade shows with it, everybody would tell me, “Well, this is how you should do this. This is an idea for that.” Pretty soon, all the farmers that were older than me at that time knew a better way to do it, but it pays to listen to people’s inputs. And so, then within a year or so, I had gone to the hydraulic adjustment for both sides, which didn’t totally compensate for that ability to ridge uphill, but it did allow for shifting on a hill. But then, it also became something people wanted for plastic culture too. So that’s kind of how it happened. And that’s 20 years ago now.
Andy Chamberlin (01:22:04):
So is that one tool can do multiple things? Or do you have different models?
John Shenk (01:22:10):
We have a model without hydraulics, which does the same things, but the hydraulic ones seems to be what’s most helpful to people. And that’s what we sell the most of, and you can do lots of different things with it. So on a general farm, things from doing potatoes to plastic culture, strawberries, and many different jobs.
Andy Chamberlin (01:22:41):
And are you doing all the welding and manufacturing of that?
John Shenk (01:22:45):
No, I didn’t intend to get into having a machine shop, because I wanted to still farm. And so, I found a guy that would make the parts, some of them are laser cut, that are included, and then they go from there to powder coating, get powder coated. We get them here and then, put them together and ship them from here.
Andy Chamberlin (01:23:10):
So you do the assembly?
John Shenk (01:23:11):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:23:12):
Nice.
John Shenk (01:23:13):
And Peter does most of that now.
Peter Shenk (01:23:16):
I do the assembly and the parts ordering and packing them up. Dad does the sales and the shipping and going to the trade shows.
John Shenk (01:23:26):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:23:27):
Yeah. So that’s kind of how it splits up right now.
John Shenk (01:23:29):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:23:30):
Yeah. Which works out well for us, because he’s more available and able to take phone calls right now. My family’s young and you get a lot of interruptions, putting things together, making drawings for any parts or documenting that is something that comes more naturally for me. So I like doing that organization side of it.
John Shenk (01:24:00):
And my original drawings were with a pencil and graph paper. It’s sort of like how I learned to draw things back in shop class, from front top side view kind of thing. And then, Peter went to college and got an engineering degree and then, worked away a little bit, but came here and made everything much more proper drawings and could illustrate the manuals and stuff much better, and then, do spreadsheets and database whatever to keep track of stuff. Yeah. So he does that part.
Andy Chamberlin (01:24:48):
Are you doing much innovation or engineering? Or basically keeping it the same for the time being?
Peter Shenk (01:24:57):
Yeah, we’ve been pretty stagnant here for the last few years of not trying to change a lot, which is kind of nice. It is nice when people call and they need something or when the parts don’t change that much.
Andy Chamberlin (01:25:11):
Right. Right.
Peter Shenk (01:25:13):
So that’s nice. We get ideas from time to time. Actually, we have a lot of ideas, but we just don’t always have the time to work on it, which is one of those things where you’re kind of competing against each other in your different businesses about, “Well, should we work on developing something new? Or are we busy farming and just keep the cultivator business going as is?” And so, that’s kind of a trade-off there. But one of the nice things about the cultivator is that dad made it for something he wanted to do, and it’s much easier to sell something that you designed, because you wanted to accomplish a certain task. And so, that’s a lot of how our ideas come about is we have things that are kind of overlap between farm improvement and cultivator ideas about things we would like to do for ourselves. And then, would that be something that somebody else might want as well? And that’s a nice way to start out a product, but it takes time to get something that works right.
John Shenk (01:26:21):
Yeah. We have a couple ideas. I’m hoping in the next couple of years we can get them done, but it has been something that I never would’ve thought about ahead of time. But every change you make then means you have to maintain an inventory of parts for previous models. And so, it was really fortunate that the first main thing we did stayed the same for a long time, and so, it’s not as complicated from that standpoint.
Andy Chamberlin (01:27:00):
You described the basics of the machine, the rolling cultivator and the hydraulic adjustment. Are there regular add-ons? I saw at the trade show you had a couple extra shovels and fertilizer hoppers. And are there things that people regularly add on to, that you would recommend, aside from the basic package?
John Shenk (01:27:22):
Well, sometimes, people will want to be able to do two rows of something, compared to just one row. So there’s some pieces for that. A number of years ago, a guy from Germany came over and introduced the finger weeders. That was the K.U.L.T.-Kress company. Now, lots of people are doing finger weeders, but we did add some finger weeders to the cultivator, which we use in the early establishment part of the strawberries. Because they’ll kind of tuck in alongside of the plants and take out some of the little weeds. And then, we also put them on the side of the gangs to go along the edges of plastic.
Andy Chamberlin (01:28:11):
So using finger weeders for that?
John Shenk (01:28:12):
Yeah. And we get them from K.U.L.T.-Kress.
Andy Chamberlin (01:28:12):
Okay.
John Shenk (01:28:18):
But they kind of brought some European innovations here, spent a lot of time introducing them, and effort.
Peter Shenk (01:28:28):
The other little nuance to the rolling cultivator aspect is that you can also get them as disc gangs, instead of the spider wheels that we mostly use. And that was something, again, that was started out for strawberry growers, where, when you want to narrow your row and cut or chop through straw mulch, we’ll often put a disc gang in the front. So it’s just three disc blades together in a 17 inch wide yoke, much the same size as a spider gang, and that’s for doing more cutting work. But that would be the other option for a rolling part of the rolling cultivator.
Andy Chamberlin (01:29:12):
If people were trying to do a little bit more hilling, would you still recommend the rolling cultivators? Or go more for the disc?
Peter Shenk (01:29:23):
The spiders can hill quite a bit. Yeah, they’ll move a lot of soil. I suppose, if you wanted the absolute maximum, a disc would really pull soil.
Andy Chamberlin (01:29:33):
They’re a very versatile attachment.
Peter Shenk (01:29:35):
A spider gang, if you angle it hard and give it a little pitch there, it’ll move a soil, if you want it to.
John Shenk (01:29:42):
And again, it depends a little on the soil type. If it’s a heavier clay, a disc will tend to throw a slab, where the spiders, because they’re not like a continuous concave piece, they’ll move more smaller parts and break up the clumps more.
Andy Chamberlin (01:30:09):
That makes a lot of sense.
John Shenk (01:30:09):
Yeah. So the one place where we’ve used the disc gangs in place of spider gangs is in parts of New York or even New England, where there’s a lot of rocks. And baseball sized rocks can get lodged between the spiders, whereas discs that are six inches apart won’t get a rock lodged in them as easily. So that’s one of the questions I ask, “What’s your soil like?”
Andy Chamberlin (01:30:40):
That’s a key component. We have quite stony fields, so it’s a key consideration there.
John Shenk (01:30:47):
But it’s really been interesting talking to so many different people in different places and all the different ways folks farm.
Andy Chamberlin (01:30:59):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:31:00):
It’s kind of like you mentioned about why you got into the podcast was being able to talk to a farmer, hear what they’re up to and things. And dad’s been able to do a lot of that with the cultivator business, talking to them on the phone and going to these different conferences, and so, made a lot more contacts and learned a lot more through the business than we would’ve otherwise if we’d have just been farming on our own.
Andy Chamberlin (01:31:26):
For sure.
Peter Shenk (01:31:27):
So that’s nice.
John Shenk (01:31:28):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:31:29):
What do you envision the next 10 years to look like across your businesses?
Peter Shenk (01:31:37):
At the moment, our idea is to try and focus more on berries and cultivators, just for a number of different reasons. Locally here, people know that we’re here. It’s a good community, and the cultivators fit in well, they do compete in the spring. That’s where the most overlap is, where we’re doing berries and selling cultivators, but the cultivators make for a nice winter work. So it really fills out the year well,
John Shenk (01:32:08):
The one thing about this farm is that there’s so many different perspectives to look from, and I didn’t ever quite appreciate how valuable a drone would be like on fields where they’re flat, like out in the Midwest. And people wouldn’t be able to see what the middle of the field looks like, because here we can see the spots that are not doing as well. I have a turning machine up behind there. We had the compost over there last year, and I got it with a grant from DEP, Department of Environmental Protection, about 25 years ago or so.
Andy Chamberlin (01:32:56):
So are you using the wood chips for compost or mulching the…
John Shenk (01:33:00):
That’s more for mulching.
Peter Shenk (01:33:00):
Mostly mulching.
John Shenk (01:33:02):
And the leaves are more for the compost. And I have a couple beef cattle, and they can go in there in the wintertime, we have hay in there. And then that way I can collect some manure to put with it.
Peter Shenk (01:33:18):
Our system there is, we put all our straw for our strawberries in the one end of it, and so, that stays in all summer and through the fall, and then, usually, sometime in December, we’re spreading straw. So then we pull that out, spread it on the fields, and that opens up half the high tunnel. Then we let the cows in that half, and the hay is in the other half. So then we just feed it there. So it serves a few purposes.
Andy Chamberlin (01:33:48):
I see stacks. Are those all tomato cages?
John Shenk (01:33:51):
Yes.
Peter Shenk (01:33:52):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:33:53):
[inaudible 01:33:53] tomatoes?
Peter Shenk (01:33:55):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:33:55):
We don’t do any tomatoes in a tunnel or anything. We just do them out in the field, and it works for us. The clientele we have in Philadelphia, they’re not as picky. What we grow would be harder to sell around here where there’s… You couldn’t sell it here where there’s so many nice tomatoes. Yeah. We’re more just providing a wide variety of fresh produce. Not that our produce isn’t nice, but our tomatoes in particular aren’t going to compete with the quality out of high tunnels. But we grow a variety of heirlooms and cherries and just a lot for people to look at.
John Shenk (01:34:31):
They actually taste really good.
Peter Shenk (01:34:34):
Yes. They’re good tomatoes.
John Shenk (01:34:35):
Like at the produce auctions, they have really well graded nice tomatoes that we don’t really meet those standards.
Peter Shenk (01:34:50):
Yeah, people have gotten pretty good at it around here.
John Shenk (01:34:50):
There’s a lot.
Peter Shenk (01:34:52):
It’s competitive at the auction.
John Shenk (01:34:55):
A lot of high tunnels. Yeah. I don’t know if you saw any, but…
Andy Chamberlin (01:34:55):
I’ve seen quite a few around. Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:34:55):
Yeah.
John Shenk (01:35:03):
I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s a thousand in this county, but some of them will have like 5, 6, 7, 8 high tunnels. Getting a picture of my truck?
Andy Chamberlin (01:35:15):
That is awesome.
Peter Shenk (01:35:18):
This is a retirement row here. That was the farm truck for many years, probably from about…
John Shenk (01:35:28):
Maybe we should fix that, don’t you think?
Andy Chamberlin (01:35:30):
I think so.
John Shenk (01:35:31):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:35:33):
Man.
Peter Shenk (01:35:33):
Probably from about ’99 until maybe 2016 or so, that was the farm truck.
John Shenk (01:35:43):
That’s the kind of thing, maybe if I didn’t go to market, I would fix it up. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:35:49):
Oh, nice low bed height, easy to get in there.
Peter Shenk (01:35:52):
Well, that’s what mom really liked about it.
Andy Chamberlin (01:35:53):
That’s what I hate about almost all new trucks.
Peter Shenk (01:35:56):
They’re all so high.
Andy Chamberlin (01:35:57):
I can’t reach over the side of the bed.
Peter Shenk (01:35:58):
Exactly. Yep.
Andy Chamberlin (01:36:02):
I love my Gator, but even the Gator’s kind of high.
Peter Shenk (01:36:04):
Even the smallest trucks out there are high now.
Andy Chamberlin (01:36:08):
They’ve got high sides. I don’t know why they don’t make shorter trucks, because nobody uses them as a truck is why.
Peter Shenk (01:36:14):
I don’t know. I guess probably.
John Shenk (01:36:18):
Peter built this last year,
Andy Chamberlin (01:36:19):
The spray [inaudible 01:36:21]?
Peter Shenk (01:36:21):
Yeah. It’s still a little bit of a work in progress. There’s a few revisions to make this winter. I kind of had to just put it into service last year, because we needed to start spraying. But yeah, there’s probably a multitude of sprayer manufacturers in the county, but just kind of the right size for us and had a few features to it.
Andy Chamberlin (01:36:50):
So did you make it or customize it?
Peter Shenk (01:36:52):
Pretty much made it from scratch. Yeah. It’s mostly all scrap metal we had.
John Shenk (01:37:00):
Yeah, the boom goes out the side. That’s what I was saying about doing four rows, but then, it also goes up and down, like for sweet corn. So I can do sweet corn or tomatoes.
Andy Chamberlin (01:37:15):
I saw some of that style at the trade show. I was intrigued.
Peter Shenk (01:37:16):
Yeah, so it’s nothing novel. It’s just did it because we could, and the other thing that’s nice that we use quite a bit is this little cultivating tractor. It’s a Tuff-bilt tractor.
Andy Chamberlin (01:37:16):
Okay.
Peter Shenk (01:37:35):
It’s of the same form as a G, but hydrostatic. So we do all different things with that.
John Shenk (01:37:45):
Yeah, yeah. There’s some finger weeders. That’s part of some of the stuff we experiment with.
Peter Shenk (01:37:51):
We put a fertilizer hopper on it, so that does a good job for us. And then, we do a little bit of hay for the cows, mostly because we have parts that are too steep to do anything else with. We have a few cows, so then, you have to make the little hay for them. And that works out fine. It’s a good little rotation to have a couple hay fields.
Andy Chamberlin (01:38:12):
What do you use for spreading that? What’s that look like?
Peter Shenk (01:38:17):
It’s like a side discharge, where you put a round bale on, and it unrolls it. There’s a chain, a carrier chain underneath it, that keeps it turning. And then, as the slab kind of comes off, it has spinning rake teeth on the end that toss the straw. So it’s not a shredder. It just distributes. We’ve had mixed success with it over the years. It depends on the straw quality, what the consistency is like. If it’s a nice bale, it works pretty well. But since we’re making our own rye straw, some years, it’s got a little stringy on us.
John Shenk (01:38:57):
So as far as raspberries are concerned, these are black ones…
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:39:04]
John Shenk (01:39:00):
Yeah, these are black ones. I don’t know if you’re planning to grow black or red, but that other patch had already been pruned back. But now… I actually haven’t helped with this this year yet, but these will all be trimmed off. Well, it’s a little hard to show there, but this was last year’s fruiting cane. And then the ones that are more purple will be the fruiting canes for this year, like here. And so this will be cut off. They’ll be pruned back to about 10 inches from the main stalk, but then all this has to be pulled out.
Peter Shenk (01:39:45):
Now, one thing we’ve been having some trouble with is scale on the canes, and you can see all the weight, the blotchy white patches at the bottom there. And so that’s something that we’ve just started to work on here in the last year or two, is what can we do to help reduce that?
John Shenk (01:40:10):
Like a dormant oil is one of the things. And then there’s a product called Esteem, which is a insect growth regulator. I haven’t tried it yet. I’ve used the crop oil last year… Or the dormant oil.
Peter Shenk (01:40:23):
Yeah. But we were a little slow to pick up on that problem and work on it, because it wasn’t something we were familiar with. And it’s not something you get a lot of hits when you Google about scale on raspberries. There’s lots of scale on roses and other crops that would be…
John Shenk (01:40:39):
And fruit trees.
Peter Shenk (01:40:40):
And fruit trees.
John Shenk (01:40:42):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:40:42):
But roses would probably be the most similar thing to this. But there’s not a lot that we found quickly on raspberry scale.
John Shenk (01:40:51):
We didn’t have it as bad up in this corner last year, I don’t think.
Peter Shenk (01:40:56):
Yeah, I’m not sure.
John Shenk (01:40:57):
It was more in that part of the patch.
Andy Chamberlin (01:41:02):
How are you managing these? Are you using an herbicide, or just the mulch, or…?
Peter Shenk (01:41:05):
Both. So that’s where some of these wood chips end up, is we go and put the wood chips in there with the spreader, and then we will edge them with a herbicide, with a burndown in the spring. And then just mowing close is helpful.
Andy Chamberlin (01:41:31):
I mean, brambles are pretty aggressive anyways.
Peter Shenk (01:41:35):
Yeah. Once they get going there, they do all right at shading things out. But in the spring is when we have to keep after them a little bit.
John Shenk (01:41:45):
And we do get some thistle patches going.
Peter Shenk (01:41:51):
Yeah. Those are the weeds we’re most concerned about, is… Thistles has been a problem, and anything vining. We’ve had problems with bindweed, some morning glory… Those are the ones that are concerning. A lot of the stuff that we’re burning down in the spring is more just to clean it up, but we haven’t found a good solution for some of those other ones yet. Thistles, the best thing is make sure there are none around before you start your patch. Something that we call bindweed, I don’t know if that’s what it actually is, but that’s what’s getting us the most right now. Once that gets going, it’s very hard to do much about it in a raspberry patch, because you can’t go in with Roundup at any point in the season, so there’s limited options. And you can try burning it down in the spring, but it has such a root mass that you’re just working uphill. So yeah, that’s been a little problematic.
Andy Chamberlin (01:42:59):
Pretty good-looking patch to me, but…
Peter Shenk (01:43:02):
Yeah.
John Shenk (01:43:04):
They did well last year.
Peter Shenk (01:43:05):
Still got some life in it. Without looking at what’s written down, I’d say these are probably five, six years old, and we should be able to get much more than that out of them. There’s nothing that exactly… 10 would be nice. That would be…
John Shenk (01:43:23):
I think the annual weeds gets to be one of the biggest problems.
Peter Shenk (01:43:28):
And we don’t have a lot of room to rotate, so that’s one of the other challenges, is that anywhere we put them, they’re not that far away from ones we have. It’s easier for us to get… Another thing in the spring is orange rust is a thing, something we’ve been working on battling against, and so it’s not that hard to jump to our newer patches. And so that also limits how long we can keep them. If we didn’t have any raspberries and we started a patch, I think they would last longer. But yeah. And that’s the other thing that makes getting a field nice and clean, is we’re not always having a field that we have years ahead of time to prep. We’re like, “Well, we have a space here we could go into.”
John Shenk (01:44:09):
If you have hay and can keep things… If you can have a hayfield for a while, maybe even switch it to corn in between to clean up the sod, and then go to vegetables or berries, that would be nice.
Andy Chamberlin (01:44:27):
Yeah.
John Shenk (01:44:28):
Across the road we’ve been growing sorghum Sudangrass and stuff like that, getting ready for the strawberries.
Andy Chamberlin (01:44:40):
We just did two acres of Sudangrass, and I cut a maze.
John Shenk (01:44:44):
Oh yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:44:44):
Right, yeah.
John Shenk (01:44:46):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:44:47):
And a cover crop.
John Shenk (01:44:48):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:44:48):
But it kept the customers entertained.
John Shenk (01:44:52):
That’s a good cover crop.
Andy Chamberlin (01:44:53):
Yeah, a lot of biomass there. Yep.
Andy Chamberlin (01:44:56):
Can I see what you’re assembling in the…
Peter Shenk (01:45:00):
Sure. Just over here and then the upstairs of the barn. So nothing fancy about it, but yeah. So this is it. Down along the driveway is where we keep our frames, and then in the other barn is where we keep the pallets of the spider gangs themselves. But then up here is where I’ll bring a frame up, put it together, pack it, and keep all the other miscellaneous parts.
Andy Chamberlin (01:45:29):
I like all your farm signs on the wall.
Peter Shenk (01:45:31):
Well, yeah. We had a collection of random signs around, and it was either throw them out or find something to do with them. And if you hang them on the wall, it blocks a little bit of wind.
John Shenk (01:45:43):
Yeah. You notice it’s not heated or air-conditioned.
Andy Chamberlin (01:45:46):
And this is your winter activity.
Peter Shenk (01:45:48):
Yeah. So in that way it may be good we’re not any farther north, but…
Andy Chamberlin (01:45:55):
Right?
Peter Shenk (01:45:56):
Yeah. That’s something I learned traveling overseas, is that you put up signs and block the wind. One place I saw where they had a lot of beer advertisements around the house, they were good quality signs. They made a nice house wrap, keeping it warm. Yeah, so we’re ready for a new building. We just haven’t figured out where to put it exactly.
Andy Chamberlin (01:46:20):
Got to figure out if you’ll build one?
Peter Shenk (01:46:20):
Got to figure out what hill to put something on.
Andy Chamberlin (01:46:22):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:46:23):
Yeah. I don’t know that we’ll build a designated cultivator building exactly, but just even for equipment and things.
John Shenk (01:46:30):
Yeah. Too many things sitting outside.
Peter Shenk (01:46:34):
Everything’s competing against each other for roof space.
John Shenk (01:46:37):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:46:38):
You both live right here?
Peter Shenk (01:46:40):
My parents live here. My family’s like a mile and a half down the road.
Andy Chamberlin (01:46:44):
That’s not too far.
Peter Shenk (01:46:45):
No. I run home for lunch and things.
John Shenk (01:46:48):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:46:49):
It works out. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to get off the farm and come back again. There’s pros and cons to living on it and off it.
John Shenk (01:46:59):
Yeah. We’re going to have to… We’re trying to figure out how to readjust all these things.
Andy Chamberlin (01:47:08):
Trying to step back some and do other things, or no?
John Shenk (01:47:11):
There’s not really a lot of other things I want to do. I keep wanting to get better at growing strawberries.
Peter Shenk (01:47:19):
How far?
Andy Chamberlin (01:47:21):
Yeah.
John Shenk (01:47:22):
Well, some people go through a phase when they retire of traveling, but what I understand is that only lasts for a certain time, that folks get tired of it. And usually when I travel, I’m seeing other farms or things like that, that I’m interested in.
Peter Shenk (01:47:41):
Right. You’ve been doing that.
John Shenk (01:47:42):
Yeah, and that’s what interests me. And then pretty soon I’d want to be helping to do something there, so I might as well do it here. But I think we’ll try to see a few things yet, if we get time.
Andy Chamberlin (01:47:58):
Yep.
Peter Shenk (01:47:59):
One of the things about this barn was that it was moved here.
Andy Chamberlin (01:48:03):
Oh, really?
Peter Shenk (01:48:03):
So when dad started out, there was a barn fire in the original barn, which was on the other side of the driveway. And so him and some other people helped him, and they tore this down.
John Shenk (01:48:16):
My dad.
Peter Shenk (01:48:16):
His dad helped a lot. They tore this down. And so that’s why on all these beams, there’s always a lettering and some arrows and stuff as they disassembled it and brought it here and reassembled it.
John Shenk (01:48:26):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:48:28):
One thing I always like to ask is what advice would you give a beginning farmer now?
John Shenk (01:48:37):
Probably one of the first things is that a beginning farmer should work for somebody for a little bit, to see how things are done and kind of get a realistic idea of what to expect.
Peter Shenk (01:48:53):
Yeah.
John Shenk (01:48:53):
Nobody should start just from looking at pictures or something like that. That doesn’t give a very good idea.
(01:49:05):
I guess one of the other things that I always did was pretty much a pay-as-you-go kind of thing, not to invest too heavily thinking that you could project what the outcomes would be. And I never knew exactly how people write up business plans. It seems like writing up a business plan is something that has become more in vogue. And the thing is that, I just don’t know how you write up a business plan that really can accommodate all the variables that can happen, especially in farming now. I guess it gives a framework or a guideline to work towards, but to make projections that, “Well, I’m going to plant an acre of strawberries, and I’ve read that you can get 20,000 pounds to the acre and I’m going to sell them for $3 a pound, so that’s $60,000…” It probably isn’t going to work out that way.
(01:50:15):
And so, to me, it’s better to buy things a little more slowly. And I don’t quite understand it now, but it seems there’s a lot more funds available for starting farmers, low-interest loans and things like that. And I don’t know how that all works out, but that’s been my approach. But at the same time, I may have been a little too cautious at times. I don’t know.
(01:50:51):
I guess one of the other things is the organic movement, I think, has been a good corrective to some of the excesses in overuse of chemicals and things like that, which that originally came from. I think an idea that if we could sterilize the world, in terms of the “get rid of all the diseases and bugs and everything”, we could grow perfect crops. And that was the one extreme where the organic corrective was to recognize all the communities involved in agriculture, all the diversity and stuff like that.
(01:51:39):
But I think the better place is actually somewhere in the middle, that there’s a middle pathway that is better, and yet there’s no name for it. And so there’s not the marketability of something that doesn’t have a name, whereas organic is now a brand name for something, and people think that that’s the best thing. And I don’t think it is. But nobody’s really come out with a designation that’s recognizable for what might be the best farming practices that incorporate aspects of both.
Peter Shenk (01:52:28):
Basically anything outside the organic label is conventional, which covers a very wide spectrum of practices.
Andy Chamberlin (01:52:37):
Exactly.
Peter Shenk (01:52:39):
So there’s not a way to articulate all the different nuances within that broad category.
John Shenk (01:52:44):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:52:45):
That’s a good way to put that.
Peter Shenk (01:52:47):
In a marketing way, in a marketing sense.
Andy Chamberlin (01:52:49):
Correct.
Peter Shenk (01:52:50):
Because talking to each other, you can see the nuances, those nuances. But from a marketing perspective, it’s hard to clarify for your customer exactly what you’re trying to do.
Andy Chamberlin (01:53:00):
Yeah. Right. Because farmers are smart, they’re mindful, they’re making decisions based on what they know and what they observe.
Peter Shenk (01:53:11):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:53:12):
And it’s not just following a recipe.
Peter Shenk (01:53:16):
Yeah.
John Shenk (01:53:18):
So I sell cultivators and make cultivators, knowing that there are times when that’s a compromise to expose all that soil. And we also know that soil disturbance releases more carbon dioxide into the air, and also disturbs the colonies of fungus in the soil. But you’re balancing that with controlling weeds.
(01:53:46):
But there are times when a herbicide might actually be more environmentally friendly, because a no-till system has a lot of merits to it, and yet it’s difficult to accomplish with organic methods. So I think it’d be nice if more people starting in farming could do so from more of that middle-of-the-road perspective.
Peter Shenk (01:54:22):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:54:22):
The next question goes along with that. How do you describe sustainable farming and how do you think your farm has been sustainable? You’ve been farming for, like you said, over 40 years, so clearly it’s been working. Why do you think that is? What’s been sustainable for you?
John Shenk (01:54:48):
Well, first there was the generosity of the person that made it possible for us to have this farm. So it takes that, I think, up front. Around here anyway, it’d be really difficult to go and buy a farm at market value and start out. It’s just prohibitive. So that was the first thing.
(01:55:18):
And probably the second thing was figuring out how to make do with things as we went along until we could maybe upgrade or something like that. It really took a while to get traction in this.
(01:55:38):
And then from an environmental standpoint, the diversity of the crops and all that kind of thing. Working a lot with cover crops and composting, that kind of thing.
(01:55:57):
I think it also takes a little bit of discernment in terms of the products that are available and what people are selling, to know what’s really helpful, and “Oh, you’re an extension.” And I see the value of extension as to be able to be in a neutral position to evaluate products, maybe to do studies where you have these different types of additives or soil-enhancing products or things, and do an unbiased evaluation of them, because I think there’s a lot of things that are being sold that would have a hard time living up to the way they’re promoted.
(01:56:54):
And one of the things there, in terms of people being discerning, is if someone does a study taking their product to a field that’s in a low state of fertility or something, it’ll get a much better response out of a product than if it’s used on a place that already has a good soil fertility management with more simple kinds of fertilizers or things like that.
(01:57:31):
So yeah, here the compost really gives the basis for most of the nutrients, but adding nitrogen then allows us to get the response from that, which if we relied totally on compost, our phosphorus levels would be even worse than what they are now from just that. So that’s one of those things where a balance is important.
Andy Chamberlin (01:58:04):
Yeah, that’s a good example. Like you said, your baseline is compost, but you’re using conventional fertilizers to supplement and bring it up to where you need to be, but you’re not solely relying on that. You’re using the compost for biological activity and all of that.
John Shenk (01:58:18):
Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (01:58:19):
That’s good example of the middle ground.
John Shenk (01:58:21):
Yeah. Right.
Peter Shenk (01:58:23):
I was just going to add on there, broadening the sustainability to how it works for the people, too. Besides just the practices of is the land sustainable to produce? Are the people sustainable? Can you keep having a community that’s able to do that that has all the agricultural support businesses?
John Shenk (01:58:43):
Oh, yeah.
Peter Shenk (01:58:43):
Do you keep having people that know how to farm that are staying in the business? And from a broader perspective, is that funded? Does the extension and do the universities have the resources to do those kinds of trials to help people know, “Well, what would I do to be sustainable?” And that’s another component of it. Aside from just the practices themselves is, do you have the network, the infrastructure, and the resources to help people accomplish that?
John Shenk (01:59:16):
Well, originally, also, I would borrow equipment from my neighbors, and so relationships with people in the community is a really important thing. And one of the things I always try to do is make sure to take something back and at least as good a condition as what I got it in, rather than make it all dirty and take it back that way or break something, return it-
Andy Chamberlin (01:59:16):
Return it greased and clean. At least.
John Shenk (01:59:43):
Yeah, we function as part of a community.
Andy Chamberlin (01:59:51):
Yeah. Did you have an off-farm job when you got started?
John Shenk (01:59:57):
I would do winter jobs. I drove a heating oil truck for a number of years. I did a couple of years driving tractor trailer. Then I worked in a hardware store for three winters. Learned a lot that way, too, about all the different kinds of nuts and bolts and fittings and things like that. That was a very good learning experience.
Andy Chamberlin (02:00:27):
Anything else that you guys wanted to talk about or share? Covered a lot of ground.
John Shenk (02:00:33):
It’s probably not a good idea to make your kids work too hard when they’re…
Andy Chamberlin (02:00:43):
Don’t scare them away.
John Shenk (02:00:43):
That they don’t want to come back. I borderlined on that one. One of the things the kids bring back to memory is we tried to grow onions one time and the weeds got really tall, and so I think I would hide stuff in the weeds as a motivator that they would find, kind of like an Easter egg hunt.
Peter Shenk (02:01:09):
Yeah. Golf balls. Where are all the golf balls? They’re easy to lose around here.
John Shenk (02:01:15):
Yeah.
Peter Shenk (02:01:18):
Just always trying to navigate the next challenge. The one thing that I have observed is that nothing’s ever static. It’s always changing. So even though you might feel like you’re in the middle of something that’s working, you’re always having to think about what’s next? How’s this going to work in the coming years? And yeah, what worked for one generation is going to be different for the next generation, which is going to be different for the next one. Things change faster than they seem at the moment. Sometimes when you look in retrospect, you’re like, “Wow.” Because I’ve been here at the farm for most of my life a few years away, but it is really a totally different environment than what I grew up in. It might seem similar, but the factors around it are… It’s a different world now.
John Shenk (02:02:11):
And just as we said all that, I would’ve really been remiss not to mention my wife, Linda, that’s been through all this and stuck it out. We go to market together. She picks a lot of things. She’s not as involved in the cultivator business, but all the other… In the pick your own time, she manages the people in the field. We show people where to pick, and that’s been the part that she’s been very much in charge of. So yeah, that is part of sustainability, is family.
Andy Chamberlin (02:02:54):
Keeping a good wife.
Peter Shenk (02:02:56):
Yep. Got to keep the family going. Yeah.
John Shenk (02:03:01):
Yeah. I didn’t always do the best there either, but we made it this far. Yeah.
Andy Chamberlin (02:03:10):
Well, if people want to find and follow your farm business, how can they do that?
Peter Shenk (02:03:15):
We don’t do a lot that’s like real-time updates and things in terms of what we’re up to or what we’re thinking about. We don’t have a blog or anything like that. But yeah, mostly what comes out is just our website for the berry farm. When we’re in season, we’re posting daily updates to let people know what we’re doing, and we have a few things on there, but yeah. And then the Cultivator business has a website as well.
John Shenk (02:03:46):
The websites are Shenk Berry Farm and Hillsidecultivator.com.
Speaker 1 (02:04:02):
And that was the Farmer’s Share. I hope you enjoy this episode visiting with Peter and John Shenk. You can get updates during the berry season on their website, ShenkBerryFarm.com, S-H-E-N-K, or find info on their cultivators at Hillsidecultivator.com.
(02:04:22):
The Farmer’s Share is supported by a grant offered by the USDA Specialty Crop Block Program from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets. This funding helps to cover some of my time and travel in order to produce these podcasts for the next two and a half years. The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service supports projects that address the needs of US specialty crop growers and strengthens local and regional food systems. I have no doubt that this podcast will meet those needs and help educate growers to support the industry.
(02:04:55):
This show also is supported by the Ag Engineering Program of the University of Vermont Extension. If you enjoy the show and want to help support its programming, you can make a one-time or reoccurring donation on our website by visiting thefarmershare.com/support.
(02:05:10):
We also receive funding from the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association. The VVBGA is a non-profit organization funded in 1976 to promote the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of vegetable and berry farming in Vermont. Their membership includes over 400 farms across Vermont and beyond, as well as about 50 businesses and organizations that provide products and services of all types to their members. Benefits to members include access to the VVBGA Listserv to buy, sell plants and equipment, share farming information, and tap the vast experience of our growers. Access the community Accreditation for produce safety, also known as CAPS. This program is designed for growers by growers to help you easily meet market and regulatory food safety expectations. You can access the VVBGA’s Soil Health Platform where you can organize all the soil tests and create and store your Soil Amendment plans and records. Access to webinars for growers in the VVBGA Annual meeting, an email subscription to the Vermont, Vegetable and Berry newsletter, comradery, enhanced communication and fellowship among commercial growers.
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Memberships are on a per-farm per-calendar year basis, and annual dues this year are $80. These funds pay for the organization’s operating costs and support educational programs and research projects. These funds also support projects that address grower needs around ag engineering, eye tunnel production, pest management, pollinators, produce safety, and soil health. Become a member today to be a part of and further support the veg and berry industry. You can visit TheFarmerShare.com to listen to previous interviews or see photos, videos, or links discussed from the conversation. If you don’t want to miss the next episode, enter your email address on our website and you’ll get a note in your inbox when the next one comes out.
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The Farmer’s Share has a YouTube channel with videos from several of the farm visits. We’re also on Instagram, and that’s where you can be reminded about the latest episode or see photos from the visit.
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Lastly, if you’re enjoying the show, I’d love it if you could write a review. In Apple podcast. Just click on the show, scroll down to the bottom, and there you can leave five stars in a comment to help encourage new listeners to tune in. I’d also encourage you to share this episode with other grower friends or crew who you think would be inspiring for them. Thanks for listening.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [02:08:11]