market gardening viability

[bkbartel]

I live on the East Coast and my husband dreams of doing what he loves best, farming, vegetable farming in particular. I don't know if a person can make a living doing that? I can see someone making the odd buck at it weekly at the farmers markets, but can a person feed a family of four, make the car payment as well as the farm mortgage? Our community is rather small and most people own a few acres and naturally grow abit of food, so is there any place for someone who wants to provide healthy food within their own local economy and not get big and commercial (feezing and processing)? If someone has any input to this I would greatly appreciate a comment.

[cowman]

Is there any reason you couldn't just start out small to test the water? Try it with a couple of acres and see how it goes? Don't quit your day job until you get a better picture of what your market might be?
The sucessful market gardeners I know stress the necessity of starting small. You need to gain experience in production and marketing. Always a good idea to not put all your eggs in one basket. If nothing else you can cut down on the food bill and know what you are eating. Nothing tastes better than the food you grow yourself?

[ncurry]

I concur with cowman's thoughts. You might
want to check out the Sat. markets in
Annapolis Royal and Wolfville. They are full of
organic producers and many folks happy to
pay a premium in order to get quality. You can
also get a specific order from most of these
farmers. I find the folks here are always willing
to talk about how they got to this marketplace.
And there is always a large Sat. market in the
old brewery buildings of downtown Halifax.
Here in SW Nova we have to rely on word-of-
mouth and a few independent grocers to pick
up our product.