by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Value-added items can boost the bottom line of your farm’s store or your booth at the farmers market. It’s never been a better time to make value-added items. Many more Americans have become discerning consumers about their food choices. They want to know their food’s source. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
For Bill and Jennifer LaPlant, 24 hours in one day just doesn’t seem enough. While Bill operates LaPlant’s Lawn & Property Maintenance — mowing, trimming, snow plowing and maintaining more than 100 commercial and residential properties — Jennifer runs the couple’s garden center and greenhouse business in Lyons, NY, where they sell numerous varieties of plants, hanging baskets, bark mulch, gifts, local products and garden supplies. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Staying diverse has helped Gro-Moore Farms in Rush, NY stay profitable and pass down the family farm to subsequent generations. Jack and Kathy Moore, Jacks’ brother George and his wife Brenda run the circa 1917, 800-acre operation. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Grossing $350,000 from 1.2 acres of growing space seems incredible to many operators. For Conor Crickmore, owner of Neversink Farm in Claryville, NY, it’s all a matter of achieving optimal efficiency without using tillage or tractors. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Age truly is a number for Patricia Rickard, 76, a Baldwinsville, NY resident whose contemporaries are mostly retired. She tried that once. She operated Korros, which taught performing arts to children with hearing impairment. But as her encore career, she founded PAR Horticulture Consulting Business. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Creating an agritourism destination isn’t all fun and games — though it’s certainly helpful to provide a huge variety of fun and games. Developing Long Acre Farms from a produce and crop farm to an agritourism site that draws visitors from hundreds of miles around has taken 25 years. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Barcodes can help vegetable plant breeders stay better organized and be more efficient. Michael Mazourek, the Calvin Knoyes Keeney associate professor of Plant Breeding for Cornell University, presented “Getting Started with Barcode-based Digital Data Collection for Vegetable Breeding”, a recent webinar hosted by eXtension, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and USDA. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
GENEVA, NY — “Variety is the spice of life” as the saying goes, and it’s the key to profitability in the apple growing business — if you develop and grow the right varieties. Susan Brown, professor horticulture section at Cornell University, presented “Adventures in Apple Breeding and Genetics” recently at Cornell in Ithaca, NY and via videoconference at Cornell’s Geneva Experiment Station in Geneva, NY. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Many farms have added another stream of revenue to their operations through farmers markets and agritourism. However, Ontario Orchards in Oswego, NY has created a robust online store selling locally-produced goods with limited retail distribution. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Most people think of a landscaping nursery as a place to find the plants and people to achieve a picture-perfect lawn, providing they use the right sprays on their stretches of grass. Jim Sollecito, owner of Sollecito Landscaping Nursery in Syracuse, NY takes a different approach. [Read more…]
