2024 - Volume #48, Issue #2, Page #08
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Heirloom Bean Biz Thrives On Just One Acre
“I have a core of incredibly faithful customers, and they come first,” says Foreman. “I rotate through a stable of bean varieties that are customer favorites, but every year, I experiment with something new.”
What Foreman looks for in a new bean variety is taste and texture. “Beans can be beautiful, but if the description says nothing about flavor, it’s a non-starter,” she says. “If it doesn’t taste good, why bother.”
She compares her freshly harvested beans to supermarket offerings. “You don’t know how old they are,” she says. “They can take forever to cook and have a mealy texture. Mine are soft and creamy.”
Foreman prefers to buy seeds from small suppliers like Uprising Seeds, Adaptive Seeds, and Victory Seeds (Vol. 41, No. 2). “I save my own seeds for replanting, but when I try something new, I like small seed houses run by a handful of people,” she says. They’re do-it-yourself and hands-on.”
She appreciates that her regular customers are willing to try new things. The same factor plays a role in the farmers market where she takes her beans.
Nearly 20 years ago, Foreman took a chance and left her career to volunteer on a CSA farm, earning a weekly share of produce for her efforts. After 3 years, she decided to try market gardening for herself.
“I had no money, no land, and no experience, just a desire,” says Foreman. “When I came across heirloom dry beans in a Seed Savers Exchange catalog, I knew that was it.”
The CSA gave her access to 1/3 of an acre. The first crop was a learning experience. The second year went better. At the time, she was working as a baker in a restaurant noted for a chef/owner willing to experiment.
“When I told her what I was growing, she said she would buy everything I harvested,” says Foreman.
As her co-workers went on to other restaurants, her customer list grew. Her plot size also grew to a full acre, one of three she leases, allowing her to rotate beans to fresh ground each year.
Now in her 15th year on the leased land, 90 percent of her customer base has transitioned from restaurants to individual and farmers market customers. At harvest, she emails past customers about that year’s varieties.
So far, the largest crop on her acre has been 400 lbs. of saleable beans. She plants, cultivates, and harvests by hand, picking individual pods. “Harvesting by pods keeps the beans cleaner,” says Foreman. “I fill a 5-gal. bucket and thresh them using a threaded rod with a propeller-type attachment at its end. As it spins around in the bucket, it splits open the pods without breaking beans.”
She winnows them by pouring them into a box in front of a box fan. It blows away the lighter dry pods, and the heavier beans fall into a box.
Foreman has moved from wheel hoes to laying tarps between the rows for weed control. It has eliminated a lot of work, and she feels the bean plants are taller and stronger with more pods.
When Foreman started marketing her heirloom beans, pricing was a challenge. A veteran farmer advised her to charge a premium. She recognizes that marketing to customers in a large metropolitan area gives her an advantage.
“My average price for beans is $9 per pound, but my market is accustomed to higher prices,” says Foreman. “Those prices might not fly in another market.”
While she wouldn’t turn away new business, she does warn that existing customers are satisfied first. “I have loyal customers, some of whom have become friends, and between them and my farmers market customers, they take whatever I have,” says Foreman.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Encore Farm, Paula Foreman (encorebeans@gmail.com; www.encore-farm.com).
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