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- Vermont’s Crossroad Farm Profits from Diverse Products
- By Karen Gentry
Managing Editor
- Winters can be long and cold in the Northeast. By spring, chefs are clamoring for fresh produce, according to Tim Taylor, owner of the Crossroad Farm in east central Vermont in Thetford.
Taylor uses this to his advantage and concentrates on early lettuce and greens to get him in the door at upscale restaurants. This helps him sell his other produce, a diversity of 50 items, ranging from herbs, peas, baby carrots, red cabbage, peppers, spinach, yellow beans, sweet corn and cucumbers.
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Tim Taylor (hat, shorts) of Crossroad Farm in Vermont explains his cultivation techniques at a twilight meeting.
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- “As crops come in, they will buy these from you too,” said Taylor. For just one restaurant alone he does $38,000 worth of business.
Selling to six different restaurants is just one avenue for Taylor’s diverse, sustainable operation. He sells to three stores including the Hanover Lebanon Co-op, a large community store with millions of dollars in sales and a commitment to buying local. He also sells to summer camps for children.
“We like to stress diversity of what we do,” said Taylor.
All of their direct marketing makes up 45% of their sales. Fifty percent of their business comes from retailing at their farm stand and 5% from selling at a farmers’ market in Norwich, Vt.
Mike and his wife Janet had no agricultural background when they bought a house in 1978 that came with 12 acres. Taylor previously worked as a lawyer and quickly decided to jump into full-time farming. They learned all they could by talking with people and attending trade shows.
In 1980, the Taylors started growing a lot of brassicas and lettuces that were direct marketed to restaurants in Vermont and New Hampshire. Their farm is located 20 miles north of Hanover, N.H. where Dartmouth, an Ivy League college is located.
“We were able to get a premium for our product,” said Taylor. They developed close relationships with managers and chefs. The Taylors are able to get premium prices for their vegetables despite the fact that they are not in any major population center. They live in a town with 2,600 people that is bordered by even smaller towns, although the Hanover area has 30,000 people.
Because of Act 250, a land use law in Vermont that is known for not being friendly to big business, Taylor said he was able to buy another 20 acres next door to his property. The land was slated for development but if the acreage is suitable for farming and there’s other land available for development, agricultural uses take precedence, according to Taylor.
The developer sold him that land in 1984 which created a critical mass so the Taylors could farm at an acreage that was sustainable and economical, he said. They later bought an additional 20 acres in 1994. Fifty out of his 66 acres are in production with 10 acres of the 50 in some sort of cover crop that is left alone for three to five years, according to Taylor.
“During the eighties there was a push to earliness through the use of row covers and tunnels,” Taylor said. “We had to be very attentive to getting in the field (with crops) as soon as we can,” said Taylor. They’ve always made use of row covers, plugs, and greenhouse transplants and tunnels for vegetables for the early markets.
Taylor believes that sustainable agriculture with fewer sprays is a way to protect the land for future generations. Although he is not organic, 90% of his crops are not sprayed, which he said is his customers’ main concern. For every $1,000 he spends on chemical fertilizers, he spends $4,000 on manure. He uses a fairly large amount of animal manures, crop residue, green manure, and grows a lot of buckwheat, oats and winter rye while still growing cash crops. Taylor doesn’t use herbicides and very few pesticides, he said. He does use chemical fertilizers to some degree.
Taylor has relied on Vern Grubinger’s book “Sustainable Vegetable Production from Startup to Market,” a book that received SARE grant funding from the USDA. Grubinger is the director of the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Vermont.
Taylor said his light, sandy soils contained less than 2% organic matter and it is now up to 4% organic matter.
Tomatoes have become an important part of the mix at Crossroad Farm. They produce 25,000 pounds of tomatoes, most grown under plastic covers with heavily composted soil with 20% organic matter. Most of the tomatoes, are grown in greenhouses that have sides that roll up for better control of the growing environment. Taylor said diseases are not a problem if you can keep a cover on the tomatoes.
The very cool, moist wet nights in August in Vermont can promote early blight on tomatoes, according to Taylor. With the covers on it and the sides down at night they avoid that problem completely. They grow primarily the Big Beef variety of tomatoes as well as a Dutch variety called Grace and some heirloom varieties. At his stand Taylor maintains a price of $2.80 per pound for tomatoes throughout the season. They receive $2-$2.40 per pound for tomatoes that are sold wholesale.
Lettuce mixes with five to 15 types of lettuces sold together have become very popular, Taylor said. Last year they produced 6,000 pounds of the lettuce mixes, with 90% of that sold directly to restaurants. Taylor receives a premium price of $5-$6 a pound for his lettuce mixes.
With weekly plantings of lettuce and the use of row covers to extend the season, Taylor can provide his customers with lettuces and greens for 20 weeks. He noted that three types of cherry tomatoes sold by the pound is very popular at their market.
Fifteen years ago the Taylors had one greenhouse, today they have 14 greenhouses of varying sizes. Five to six years into the growing business, the Taylors started selling some of their own transplants.
Today greenhouse ornamentals have grown to be 20% of their business at Crossroad Farm. Janet growers hundreds of varieties of flowers now, mostly annuals and a lot of flower baskets.
“It’s an extremely important part of our farm and part of the diversity of what I like to see,” said Taylor about their greenhouse flowers. “It’s a very, very important part of our mix.”
One of their greenhouses, a 21 feet by 96 foot structure for bedding plants is also converted to tomato growing after the flowers are done. That one simple structure grosses $20,0000 to $30,000 per year, he reported.
The Taylors use their own boxes with their own label to make deliveries.
At Crossroad Farm Taylor likes to hire high school students starting at about age 15 and keep them as employees through college. After their fourth summer he pays them $10 an hour. Also one to two adults work at Crossroad Farm the entire season. He said some employees can make up to $15 an hour with benefits.
Crossroad Farm was the site this past summer for a cultivation workshop. More than 40 people turned out for the twilight meeting and came from as far away as New York, Maine and Connecticut.
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