Once in a Blue Moon: Experiences shared at Specialty Crop Conference

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Lorien Carsey has literally worked from the ground up at Blue Moon Farm.

She began as a farmhand at this 20-acre, certified organic farm in 1999. She left the farm to attend graduate school, returned in 2009 and is now transitioning toward full ownership along with Shea Belahi, former owner of Heirloominous Farm, Urbana.

Carsey shared her experiences at the annual Illinois Specialty Crop Conference as part of the event’s new educational tract focusing on beginning farmers.

Blue Moon Farm, Urbana, which focuses on vegetable production, was co-founded by Jon Cherniss and Michelle Wander in 1997.

The farm has 10 high tunnels, some heated, an insulated and heated pack shed, several walk-in coolers, outbuildings and a heated start house. It focuses on a diverse range of annual vegetable production year-round and has primary sales to Urbana’s farmers market, Community Supported Agriculture, Common Ground Food Coop, restaurants and some sales to Chicago.

Soil Health

Cover crops are a main source of fertility and one of the practices to promote soil health. Crop rotation is also a key component of long-term production.

“We are lucky because we have these awesome prairie soils that are forgiving and nutrient rich and we want to take care of that. So, we do a lot of cover cropping,” Carsey said.

“At any given point we have one-half acre in greenhouses, a couple of acres of other structures. We’ll have about seven to 10 acres in cash crop production and seven to 10 acres in cover crops.”

Markets

“Our primary sales are to the Urbana farmers market, which is amazing. It has an awesome farmers market. It has this 30-year history and everybody comes to it and it cares and supports farmers a lot. So, we don’t have to do multiple farmers markets, we have to do that farmers market,” Carsey explained.

“We also have an awesome food co-op in our town, and we do a lot of sales through that food co-op. It’s this gift that we have a co-op that actually cares about local sales and devotes a lot of time and attention to taking care of our farmers.

“We do some sales to Chicago, and we do some sales to restaurants, although we have kind of reduced our restaurant focus in the past couple of years.”

Carsey added they are trying to grow their CSA.

“While the Urbana farmers market is so amazing, we do find that farmers market sales are now becoming unpredictable, and we feel like we have to expand,” Casey noted.

“We used to have to rely so much on the farmers market, and we don’t trust it as much as we used to. Everything is changing in this world, and we’re trying to expand and be able to have strengths in multiple markets.

“We really don’t like to do wholesale because unless you’re able to have guaranteed volume that price point is very bad for us. Our margins are so tight and to have to drop our price for wholesale is a big problem. We really want direct-to-consumer sales. That’s where we’re really going to be able to sustain the farm in the future and how to do that really is our challenge.”

Labor Force

Three employees work there throughout the winter and the farm employs up to 10 workers at the height of the season.

“Annual vegetable crop is all about the labor. You’re constantly planting and weeding and cleaning and harvesting. Labor is a huge story. Managing our labor is huge part of how we survive,” Carsey said.

“It’s a mixed bag. We’re grateful everyday that people are willing to come to our farm and put up with us and do the things that we tell them. Labor costs can swing terribly high, so it’s something we have to pay a lot of attention to.”

Useful Tips

Casey provided the following points for beginning farmers:

• Get to know soils. “This is the key to production. You’re in a relationship with your soils all of the time. You have to know how they’re doing, what their moisture content is, what their earthworm content is. When you have to do anything in your fields — planting, cultivating, tilling, all those things — what is the state of that soil and how is it going to change,” Carsey said.

• Master the art of delegation. You don’t have to do everything perfectly. Invest in the plan versus the task.

• Write it down. Taking notes on season opportunities and challenges saves a lot of stress. Knowing how long jobs take makes staffing so much better. “For example, I don’t actually know how long it takes to hand transplant multiple beds of brassica and if I need to schedule a crew to come out I don’t know how long it’s going to take because I didn’t write it down when we had to do it three years ago. It makes such a huge difference to be able to say in these conditions this is what’s possible. I’m not going to over-hire a crew. I want to hire the right number of crew,” Carsey explained.

• Make decisions on numbers versus feelings.