Microfarming for Profit. Dave DeWitt
some terrible fatality.” Hawthorne was way ahead of his time in his portrayal of Dr. Rappaccini’s poisonous garden. There are now similar gardens around the world, including the Alnwick Poison Garden in Northumberland, England, the poison section of the Botanical Garden of Padua, the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, the Toxic Plant Garden within the Montreal Botanical Garden, the Medicinal Garden at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, and the W.C. Muenscher Poisonous Plants Garden at Cornell University. There are also drug plant gardens in various locations. The Maynard W. Quimby Medicinal Plant Garden at the University of Mississippi has what it calls the “correctly identified living plant collection” that grows about 1,500 species from all geographic regions of the world. Another drug garden is under development at the University of South Florida.
Poisonous plants like deadly nightshade (Datura wrightii) would be growing in the The Beautiful But Deadly Microfarm and Poison Museum.
NPS Photo by Neal Herbert.
Many people are unaware that some of the more beautiful ornamental landscaping plants are poisonous. Here are just a few examples of the plants in this microfarm.
—Datura or jimsonweed, with its large and beautiful flowers, has a long history of use both in South America and Europe and is known for causing delirious states and poisonings in uninformed users. Most parts of the plant contain atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine.
—Henbane is a biennial herb that grows up to one meter tall and produces spectacular veined yellow flowers and large quantities of seeds. It was historically used in combination with mandrake, deadly nightshade, and datura as an anesthetic potion, as well as for its psychoactive properties in “magic brews.”
—Oleander, a common landscaping plant with beautiful flowers of many colors, is extremely poisonous. Every part of the plant affects the heart, produces severe digestive upset, and has caused death.
—Deadly Nightshade, or belladonna, is a one- to two-meter tall perennial herb that produces small red to black berries from bright purple flowers. These berries contain atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine and have a long history of use as a medicinal, poisonous, and ceremonial herb.
Others include castor bean, lantana, lily of the valley, lupine, mistletoe, philodendron, azalea, Boston and English ivy, clematis, holly, hydrangea, sago palm, Virginia creeper, and wisteria. The microfarm would sell seeds, bedding plants, large specimen plants, books like Mark Mills’ The Savage Garden, Albert Hofmann and Richard Evans Schultes’ Plants of the Gods, and Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants. Special promotions could include seminars on protecting your pets and farm animals from poisonous houseplants, garden plants, and weeds, and talks on drug plants. I would imagine that Halloween with a witches’ brew of plants that cause spells would be a big hit. The possibilities for promotions on local, regional, and national media would generate a lot of traffic to this microfarm because people are fascinated by deadly things—and especially the ones that seem so innocent.
The Gourdgeous Garden and Squash Courts. Gourds might seem an unlikely crop for a microfarm, but I think a cucurbit enthusiast could make go of it with gourds and squashes because they are so versatile. Gourds can be your dinner or the serving bowl for it, the dipping spoon for your squash soup, your vegetable sponge, your birdhouses, your works of art, your vases, your fishing bobber, your herb planter, your weird wall hangings, and even your banjo, rattle, flute, marimbas, or drums. And when I write “squash courts,” I’m not kidding: both gourds and squashes will grow vertically, so theoretically, with the right structure and some netting, you could give the illusion of a squash or racquetball court. Google around for “chayote” and note that to save ground space, they usually hang from netting and trellises.
For promotions to attract customers, a gourd art show and competition would be a lot of fun. After all, some of the most gorgeous painted gourds are the jicaras from Mexico and Guatemala. And gourd carving is a celebrated art in Nigeria and New Zealand. What about a concert featuring the Berry Gourdy String Band, with all the musicians playing with gourd-only instruments? For value-added products, what about bottled winter squash pasta sauces? I’ve tried some splendid ones. You could even serve them over spaghetti squash. There are canned acorn or butternut squash soups, and squash flour is popular for baking in the Philippines.
Worried about squash bugs? Hint: keep chickens or guinea fowl for eggs or meat and give them access to the squash garden for an hour each day and soon you won’t have any bugs—or grasshoppers for that matter.
The Popcorn Crazy Farm and Family Fun Maze. This would fit into the category of agritainment. There are plenty of corn mazes around the country, but I’ve never heard of one tied into popcorn. There is some method to my madness because popcorn is a profitable value-added product, especially if you’re growing your own.
Corn mazes usually have some value-added entertainment in addition to the maze. These include hay rides, zip lines, live zombie scarecrows or other Halloween figures, corn cannons, which can shoot an ear of corn quite a ways, elaborate children’s playgrounds, a live pumpkin princess, and a you-pick pumpkin patch. Some have pig races, a petting zoo, play areas for children, and picnic areas. Some are open after dark for Flashlight Nights. Admission to all entertainment events is usually between $8.00 and $20.00.
The elaborately designed mazes used to be hacked out of a main field using machetes, and that was exhausting work. Now farmers have wised up and use spatial management computer software to fashion the designs. When the corn is about two feet tall, the maze design is transferred to the cornfield using global positioning technology. The corn is then mowed or tilled under, but some farmers use herbicides to kill the corn plants for paths wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and strollers.
A corn maze in Delinsdorf, Germany.
Photo by Karsten H. Eggert.
Maze operators develop yearly themes for their mazes, like Wild West, Egyptian, or political candidates, and they can tie quizzes into the themes. Of course the maze themes can only be viewed from the air, but customers are usually given a map so they can guide themselves around. There are usually Maze Masters to help people around the maze so we don’t read headlines like “Five South Korean Tourists Go Missing in Hilary Clinton Corn Maze; Helicopters Called In.” Think that’s just my imagination running rampant? Well, the Adventure Acres corn maze in Bellbrook, Ohio, just outside of Dayton, consists of sixty-two acres of corn maze with over eight miles of trails!
Value-added products for sale at the maze could include flavored popcorns (cheddar, caramel, chocolate, brown sugar and cinnamon, coconut, toffee, curry cashew, red chile—the list is very long), and custom popcorn boxes and bags with your microfarm name and logo on them. Since this microfarm will be both agritourism and agritainment, you should have the usual souvenirs for sale (they double as promotional items): popcorn maze postcards, aerial photos, stickers, coasters, caps, t-shirts, mugs, and whatever else crazy you can think up.
Brett Herbst is probably the king of corn mazes; he began designing them in 1996 and now has his own maze design and consultation business. “People don’t pay to walk through a corn maze,” he says. “People are paying for a memorable experience. No one ever comes to a corn maze alone.” When you’re with a group, “You have to make all these decisions together and you know that everybody is going to be wrong at some point in time going through the maze. That’s what relationships are built on—sharing ideas and thoughts and challenging one another.”
Of course, these are just fantasies until someone takes an idea and runs with it. I’ve written these with a bit of whimsy, but I think a microfarmer should have a good sense of humor. Perhaps one of these ideas will inspire a future microfarmer to come up with a truly imaginative—and profitable—farming operation. If you do that, you’d better learn how to sell what you produce.