by Deborah Wechsler (2003)

Ken Dawson
Maple Springs Gardens
9812 Allison Road
Cedar Grove, North Carolina 27231

dawsonkr@earthlink.net

Years in commercial operation: 20
Total acreage: 61
Acres in organic production: 3-1/2 acres crops, rotated through 10 acres
Soil type: Sandy loam
Climate zone: Border of 7 & 8

Crops: 40 vegetables, especially tomatoes; 40 flowers, especially tuberoses; blueberries (manages neighbor's 1-acre planting plus own recent planting of 300 bushes), strawberries (1/6 acre).

Equipment: Chisel plows, moldboard plow, harrows, cultivators, sprayers (tractor and backpack), tillers (58" tractor powered Moratori and 5hp front tine walk-behind), manure spreader, 40hp tractor, Kennco bedder/plastic layer, mower (6' rotary tractor powered), weed eater, post hole auger, hand tools, 2 pickup trucks, 15'enclosed box truck

On-farm facilities: Barn, used for storage, vegetable and flower prep; 8 x 8 AC cool room for tomatoes, 7 x14 cooler (an old refrigerated milk truck) for all else; 28 x 45 heated greenhouse for transplant production, 30 x 95 and 28 x 95 unheated hoophouses for in-ground production

Labor: Ken Dawson fulltime; his wife, Libby, works part-time off-farm and helps part-time with flower harvest and marketing. 3-4 hired seasonal paid workers: 1 full-time (40 hours/week) March-October, another full time May-October, a third full time June-August, possibly others 1-2 days/week or occasionally plus additional help at market Saturdays. Housing not provided. Total labor costs $20,000-30,000 annually.

Weeks/year in production: 52 Total weeks making sales: 38

Certification: QCS

Markets: Saturday farmers' market for 38 weeks, second Saturday market for 20 weeks; one mid-week market for 26 weeks, a second mid-week market for 12 weeks; two stores and a few restaurants, all within one half-hour's drive.

Value-added products: Washed and bagged salad mixes

Special expertise: Vegetable production; Construction; Marketing

Ken Dawson's early farming experiences were helping on his grandfather's tobacco farm in Virginia during the summers as a teenager and, as a young adult, working seasonally for 5 years on a local dairy farm. He entered market gardening by selling surplus from his organic garden in 1972, continuing to sporadically market produce for the next ten years while doing other work. By 1984 he was market gardening full-time on an 11-acre farm (with a 1-1/4 acre garden) 12 miles south of his present location. Ken and his wife bought 53 acres at their present location in 1990 and eight adjoining acres in 2000. For three years, he farmed both locations, and in 1994, moved his farming operation and his family to the new farm, which offered more land and water and better buffers from neighboring activities, as well as an easily worked, sandy soil that would dry out quickly and allow earlier spring crops.

For a number of years, he applied large quantities of composted manure (dairy, beef, horse, and poultry layer) to the badly depleted land, but now he uses very little except on the 2 acres of cropland on the recently purchased property. Poultry manure has been largely discontinued, due to elevated levels of calcium, phosphorous, and zinc shown on soil tests. Other manures have been reduced dramatically because the National Organic Program (NOP) rules on composting manure currently require management practices that are unworkable with this farm's cropping sequences, soil type, and materials available. Nutrient inputs are currently supplied by cover crops, feather meal, and sulfate of potash.

A typical rotation consists of 2-4 years in fescue and ladino clover followed by a season of summer fruiting vegetable crops, a season of cool season vegetables, and a season of flowers. During the cash crop years of the rotation market crops in the sequence are interspersed with cover crops such as millet, soybeans, buckwheat, sunflowers, sudangrass, rye, and crimson clover. Ken has used row covers extensively for years.

The majority crops are grown on plastic with drip irrigation, sourced from a well. For a few short-season, direct-seeded spring crops, where it's not worth putting out the drip tape, he uses overhead irrigation. Ken's bedder is set up so that he can put down either one or two drip tapes per bed. For the main summer crops set out after June 1, he uses white plastic rather than black. The plastic is not double-cropped and is pulled by hand at the end of the harvest season. Plastic is landfilled after use. Paths between beds are mulched with straw. The rotation is designed to minimize weed problems; the reality is far from as effective as he would like. For a small number of unmulched crops, such as potatoes, tuberoses and corn, Ken cultivates with a 2-row rolling cultivator. He also uses a wheel hoe and hand hoes, with hand weeding as a last resort.

Diversity of crops spreads risk and workload, encourages beneficial insects, and promotes a better balance in the overall farm ecosystem. Insect problems on most crops rarely warrant direct intervention. Rotenone is occasionally used for Colorado potato beetles or flea beetles, and generally only one application is necessary. Bt is used to control cabbageworms as needed and sprayed weekly on tomatoes for fruit worms. Copper, used as a fungicide on tomatoes for early blight, is sprayed in combination with the Bt. Strategies to prevent disease problems include variety selection, sanitation, spacing, and rotation.

From 1984 to 2001, Ken sold half his produce through the farmers' markets and half to locally owned grocery stores and restaurants. With the increasing availability of cheaper organically grown produce imported from much larger farms out-of-state and the sale of his primary wholesale outlet to Whole Foods, Inc., a national chain, the economics of growing for wholesale market became less favorable. Simultaneously, opportunities to sell in new and expanding farmers' markets increased. In 2002 sales were 85% farmers' market, and it was the first year he did not intentionally grow for wholesale, (except a few items for a small local co-op grocery) and instead only wholesaled surplus produce. Though the volume of his production is now actually less, 90% of his sales are now on Saturdays--he ended up buying two larger trucks in 2002 to handle this increased volume. While he has no intention of increasing his production during the main season, he is considering building a couple more greenhouses to expand production at the beginning and end of the season and using his workers for a longer period of time each year.

"We're now doing as much dollar volume in farmers' market sales as we were in total sales four or five years ago," he says. He estimates that 20% of income is from cut flowers, 20% from tomatoes, 10% from bedding plants and crops from unheated greenhouse production, 5-7% from strawberries and blueberries, the remainder from all other field grown crops. Gross sales are in excess of $90,000 annually. "With our markets, potential income from 3-4 acres is far more than I would have thought 10-15 years ago. I make more money farming than I could from anything else I know how to do at this stage of the game. Though I do not anticipate or desire an early retirement, our current income is more than enough to meet our needs, especially now that our kids are grown."