Frog Pond: a tale of small farm success

Posted on | May 21, 2008 | Comments Off

Yesterday, I spent a bit of time writing about the skyrocketing price of food and about farming and stuff. Then I went off to do some shopping at Frog Pond Farm, where I bought four bags of fresh produce and spent less than $10 to do it.

Yes, you read that right: four bags of food for under $10.

This is Frog Pond Farm, where I buy my produce:

Frog Pond Farm, Bainbridge, NY

Here’s a very good description of the place from the website of Berry Hill Gardens, a nearby bed and breakfast:

“The Frog” is open April through October, a place where you can still sample the produce first. You will see a veritable feast of fruits, vegetables, flowers and plants, many of which are locally grown, plus an experience you will long remember. They also offer an intriguing selection of livestock, local farm eggs, cheese, honey, maple syrup and other locally produced items.

Parenthetically, I have never heard anybody call the place “The Frog.”

Now, besides the fact that the produce sold there is infinitely superior to anything I have ever been able to buy while living in a city — I have come to the conclusion that most city-dwellers who buy produce from supermarkets have no idea what fresh fruit and vegetables really taste like — it also costs less. Even now.

And that is because, generally speaking, most of it doesn’t travel very far.

Frog Pond grows a lot of what it sells right there on the farm. They also sell produce from other local farms on a contingency basis. They sell locally made specialties, too — all sorts of maple products, for example, like maple syrup, maple creme, maple candy (yum!) — and they augment that with stuff they get inexpensively from truckers’ excesses (or so I’ve heard). Whatever doesn’t sell gets fed to the farm animals, which helps keep feed costs down.

Now, I have never interviewed the intriguing fellow who runs the farm (he does not own a cash register but simply adds everything up aloud, an endearing trick made easier for him because all his prices are in multiples of 25 cents), so I don’t know what other revenue streams he may have. And, of course, I have no idea what he does for income during the six months of the year when the place is closed.

But what I can tell you is that the farm is definitely making money and I would be astonished to learn that they are not running in the black. And I have no doubt at all that he is able to sell the produce he does for the prices that he does (when was the last time you came across a 5 lb. bag of potatoes for $1?) because he keeps his transport costs to a minimum.

And I think that is probably the key to profitability for many, if not most, of the nation’s small family farms. Keep costs down with renewable energy produced from wind, water or sunlight, with smart farming techniques that don’t require a bucket of money, and a frugal operation.

Then, sell as much of your farm produce locally as possible, because the less distance there is between the farmer and the people who eat the food, the more money actually gets to the farmer.

Remember that bit about how every time a product changes hands, the price doubles? Even with supposedly ‘fresh’ produce, it is taken and treated and ‘washed’ and wrapped and by the time it gets trucked to a supermarket somewhere, it is no longer fresh.

And it costs a lot more.

The farmer can sell his produce in a farmers market or cooperative or something (picked just this morning or maybe yesterday, so it’s still fresh), charge even ten times as much as he’d get for that produce from a wholesaler and still undercut the wilting greens in the supermarket.

I suspect that the local supermarkets, in self defense, would have to start buying from the local farmers to stay competitive.

Let the giant family farms and the corporate farms grow crops for the processed foods manufacturers, and let the little guys supply the fresh stuff in regional markets where it’s still fresh when it gets there and it costs less because it doesn’t have to travel so far.

That is one thing that can be done to bring the cost of certain foods down. And it would have the added benefit of contributing to the solution to another vexing problem: those pesky health care costs.

More on that tomorrow.

[tags]food, farming, food prices, Frog Pond[/tags]


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Category: Rants and Ruminations, The Economy


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