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An Interview with AOR Farm on Growing Kiwi Berries
Summary: Kendall Kunelius, Rebecca Dube, and AOR Farmers John and Erin discuss the benefits of diversifying farm enterprises for risk management, financial sustainability, and personal enjoyment. They emphasize the importance of choosing enterprises that fit the farm's operations and vision, rather than solely focusing on profits. The speakers share their experiences with enterprise diversification, highlighting the potential for alternative revenue streams and the importance of learning as they go. They also discuss the importance of soil quality and proper watering for growing Kiwi berries in New Hampshire, and emphasize the benefits of peer-to-peer learning in agriculture.
Show notes:
Gooseberry Regulations in NH: https://extension.unh.edu/blog/2024/05/can-i-legally-grow-currants-or-gooseberries-new-hampshire
Creators & Guests
Host
Kendall Kunelius
Kendall joined Extension as an Agriculture Business Management Field Specialist in 2022. She earned a BS in Equine Studies: Industry and Management from UNH and has a diverse background in the agriculture industry including horticulture, forestry, livestock, and agricultural business retail management.
Host
Rebecca Dube
What is Shared Soil?
A podcast by University of New Hampshire Extension dedicated to creating community, honoring challenges, and encouraging personal and professional growth for all women in agriculture. Hosts Kendall Kunelius and Rebecca Dube create a relatable and welcoming space to learn and celebrate, that aligns with UNH Extension's commitment to expanding access, strengthening connections, and enhancing well-being for all.
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The University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension is an equal opportunity educator and employer. UNH, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and New Hampshire counties cooperating. Direct inquiries to unh.civilrights@unh.edu.
Kendall Kunelius 0:09
Welcome to this episode of Shared Soil, a podcast dedicated to creating community, honoring challenges, and encouraging personal and professional growth for all people in agriculture. My name is Kendall Kunelius, and I'm an Extension Field Specialist in the area of agricultural business management.
Rebecca Dube 0:28
And I'm Rebecca Dube, providing technology and communication support to UNH Extension.
Kendall Kunelius 0:34
So today, Rebecca, we have an interesting topic. We've covered a lot of stuff. And I feel like I say that in every single episode, but it's true. And so today we're choosing a little bit of a different format too. We're gonna go out on a field trip! We've interviewed some farmers, but I like to set the scene. I'd like to give us a little context before we get out and and talk to John and Erin Maynard at AOR farmstead in Sutton, New Hampshire.
Rebecca Dube 1:01
Sure.
Kendall Kunelius 1:04
I think that, what I always talk about on these podcast episodes, whether it's equipment, its tractors, its chainsaws; but I don't always talk about what I actually do for Extension. I focus broadly in the area of agricultural business management. And for me, one of my big focus areas is risk management. So it's talking about things that we know, we don't know, and how do we help farmers manage risk on their farms. Specifically for me that comes in the area of financial risk management. And when we talk about that, I love to talk with farmers about Enterprise Diversification, which, you know, I've done all this talking, and that's the theme of the episode! So there we go. So what do I mean by enterprise diversification? I think the best way to illustrate this is the story you were telling me about Sustainable Harvest International.
Rebecca Dube 1:59
Sure, well, Sustainable Harvest International was started by a friend of mine 20 plus years ago, and they work with the farmers in Central America. And one of the issues they have is they were all farming corn and beans. So when they went to market to sell, everybody had corn and beans. So the price of corn and beans went way down, there was way too much supply for the demand. And they really weren't getting very much for their efforts. So they taught them diversification, or looking into niche crops. One particular farmer started growing hot peppers, and did that very successfully. And when brought to market, here was this new niche product, and he was able to get a good price because there wasn't an oversupply. And then he just grew the demand for that product. So diversification really helped their farm.
Kendall Kunelius 2:50
Yeah, and we think about that today, too, on a smaller scale in New Hampshire. We don't have the scale of farms that they may have in Central America, or even in the Midwest. But for us that could look like someone who, you know, maybe you have have high tunnels. So you tend to grow a lot of lettuces, or tomatoes or cucumbers - things that do really well in controlled environment agriculture, or things that do well in high tunnels. But you also have outside space, like maybe a pasture that you want to put goats or sheep in. So it's an alternative resource that you can use to either manage your property and you gain some revenue from that. But most importantly, the enterprise needs to fit what you're doing on your farm, but in a big scale. So we talk to John and Erin a lot about their idea of what they're doing on their farm and their vision. And then why does this new crop suddenly fit? So it's really interesting, because it's not quite what their initial vision was for their farm.
So speaking about choosing an enterprise for your farm and looking at your farm operations to figure out how that makes sense, I have a question for you, Rebecca. So if you were to have a farm of your own, what would you grow and produce and why would you want to produce it?
Rebecca Dube 4:10
Oh,well, I have thought about this. I think that everyone dreams a little bit about what their dream farm would be. And mine would actually be a fiber farm. I would utilize livestock that provides fiber mohair goats, and sheep, alpaca. Certainly all of those elements. I'm a knitter as well, so big appreciation of fiber. Maybe some rabbits as well, like the Angora rabbits. Angora rabbits,yes.
Kendall Kunelius 4:40
I mean, that's a double folds like benefit because then you can sit there and pet them! They're so soft.
Rebecca Dube 4:46
That's true! We could call it the tactile farm.
Kendall Kunelius 4:49
I love that! I do love helping farmers pick a good name. All right, so we got out of the studio today. Can you believe that? We're out from behind the Zoom machine! And we took a field trip to go to AOR Farmstead to interview John and Erin Maynard to chat with them about their experience of choosing a new enterprise for their farm and why it made sense to pick a crop that is currently being researched by UNH.
All right, so John, Erin, please take two seconds to introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about your background outside of farming, and then just kind of give us a little bit of details about your farm - how long you've been farming here and then what you farm here.
John Maynard 5:37
Okay, well, I am retired military. We moved here in 2020. After we moved here, I owned my own business, and then decided to close that down. And now I work as a retail operations manager.
Erin Maynard 5:54
Hi, I'm Erin, I probably do half the work on the farm. But before the farm, I was working in a bakery for a few years, until that didn't work out anymore, and it was necessary that somebody be on the farm full time. And before that, as a military housewife, and a mom and taking care of the business that needed to be attended to especially while John was away.
Kendall Kunelius 6:19
And so, I secretly know you guys outside of this podcast, right, outside of Extension. So I think that is just a little snippet into your very fascinating lives. So thank you for sharing that. And we'll we'll maybe get into that a little bit when we talk about how you chose to farm and make that transition. But I would like to hear a little bit about what your initial vision for the farm was when you moved here. And you were like, I want to do a million and a half things. How did you cope with those delusions of grandeur and cut it down and develop your vision?
John Maynard 6:48
Well, I did exactly what you're not supposed to do in farming. They tell you to stay on your property, don't do anything for a year or two and figure out how your land operates, how it works, where the water flows. I didn't do any of that. I had a big blank slate, and I really wanted to get sheep. So I bought sheep before I had a fence, before I had a structure, before I knew anything about sheep, really. So we kind of just dove right into it. Like just wanting to farm. Hard work is in my DNA. So I really wanted to get back to that. Just like any job in the military, when you reach a certain rank, and you move up so many years, you slowly get stuck behind a desk. So I was itching to get back out in the field, if you will, and start to sweat again, really.
Kendall Kunelius 7:48
And so Erin, what do you want to add to that, if anything? Your initial vision for the farm?
Erin Maynard 7:52
Well, my vision was whatever his vision was. But his vision grew very quickly. And the farm did as well. It did not slow down. We're thinking about even adding more animals to the farm. So did we cut it down from what our initial vision was? Absolutely not. It's far greater than what we had first come to set in the ground, literally. So it's not gonna slow down anytime soon.
John Maynard 8:25
I wouldn't say there was like a concrete, "I want to grow vegetables for a CSA, or I want to be a fruit farm, or I want to be a protein farm." There were certain aspects I knew I wanted. I wanted sheep. Coming here with a blank slate, I tried to jump into agriculture. So I met people, and then it was like, Oh, I can get some trees pretty cheaply through the county office. So we got a whole bunch of trees, and we planted them. And I knew nothing about trees, or how to plant them. We just did it. And you know, it's just kind of slowly keeps going. And you learn as you add these different enterprises to your farm of what you like, and what you don't like.
Kendall Kunelius 9:14
I'm glad you brought that point up, because that's the whole theme of this episode, right, is enterprise diversification and risk management. And you said sheep was your big thing, and then you added things on. What was your next logical step after the sheep that made sense at the time? And is there anything you wished you did, instead of adding that next step after the sheep?
John Maynard 9:33
I don't know if anything was logical to do right afterwards. I think like most new farmers who didn't grow up in agriculture, I think you do as much research as you can, you use the resources out there to figure out what to do next. Most people who were coming through at the time when we were learning about homesteading or farmsteading or whatever you wanted to call it, it was "use animals to to do certain things on the farm," like use pigs to cut down your forest, use goats to eat the bramble, pasture-raised chickens. I mean, we did Kune Kune pigs. So we've done a whole bunch of different things and found out that some of that is harder work, that does not have a great return on it. Not just monetarily, but labor-wise. For some of these animals it's a lot of work that you put into them. And then, as a farmer, you're looking to grow, you're looking for what's profitable, if you're going to go into that kind of market. So for us, it was not knowing anything jumping in these pools. It was "I don't know what to do next." So we found a customer, and they wanted pigs, and then we jumped into pigs.
Kendall Kunelius 10:55
So I got to ask about the geese, before I move on to the real question of the episode. Erin, your geese are just fantastic. Can you please tell me just a little bit about where they fit into your diversification?
Erin Maynard 11:09
Yes. Geese are still the very unknown to me. They have such personalities. I did not want geese. John wanted to include geese; he thought that they would be good grazers. And I ended up absolutely falling in love with them. And I hand raise them. And they're my constant companions. They help me weed, literally, sometimes things they shouldn't be weeding! But they are, they're wonderful grazers, we don't have to feed them at all, as soon as the grass starts growing. So yeah, so that is really where they fit into the picture. Honestly, better grazers than the sheep.
Rebecca Dube 11:51
Instead of the Geek Squad, you have the Geese Squad.
Kendall Kunelius 11:54
I kind of asked that question because you know, you're talking about - I know you'd be a very financially careful person with your money on your farm. And I think that's a very unique aspect for you guys, as farmers. Your spreadsheets - I can only imagine. Somebody could probably get lost in those for days and days, right? So I think the thing here is, it's not always about the money when you're adding diverse enterprises on your farm. Sometimes it has to be things you enjoy. Because you were talking about how it's hard work, it can get kind of daunting, it's laborious, it's sweat equity. But when you enjoy it, I think that adds another layer on to why you would want to put something else onto your farm or invest in something else.
Erin Maynard 12:33
Yeah, that is one thing about the geese is that they really don't require a whole lot. Give them a small kiddie pool, and a whole bunch of grass and they are just content as content can be.
Kendall Kunelius 12:47
I would say happy as a pig in mud, but you've got that, too. So I need I need a better anomaly or a better thing to say about that analogy. So let's get into the idea of enterprise diversification. We know that you're a heavily protein farm. That was initially your vision and always your goal. Listeners can't see it, but John's currently waving the geese away. Just as we've talked, they heard. They knew we were talking about them! The Geese Squad is back. Yeah. So the protein focus of your farm. And all of a sudden last year you kind of shifted gears a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about how you made that decision? What you shifted to and anything else about your kiwi berry project?
John Maynard 13:28
Yeah. So when we first moved, of course I jumped into sheep, and I didn't really have a plan, I just was kind of winging it. And then I started to learn certain aspects of farming that I should have looked at beforehand, like soil mapping and figuring out what your soils are actually good for. And I learned my property. If I wanted to start a stand pit, I could probably make a lot of money at that, because I have about 10 inches of soil and about 15 feet of sand underneath mine. So to do root vegetables, it's kind of out of the question. So it really narrowed my scope pretty quickly on what I thought I could be most productive at. But I love to eat. And part of the reason why we got into farming is our daughter. One of the things we used to do when we were overseas was we would buy unique fruits every time we went to the store. So we would try something new all the time. And at some point, we ran across kiwi berries.
Kendall Kunelius 14:19
Wait, so you've had kiwi berry before? Oh, I didn't know this. Oh, so you were aware of the thing. Oh, interesting. All right.
John Maynard 14:26
Of how good it tastes? Yeah. And you know, so we've always tried something new or something unique. Personally, I wanted to grow gooseberries when I got here, but there's laws against that in New Hampshire, or at least there's stipulations to that. So it was kind of like figuring out what else can we add? Maybe a pollinator plant - something else just to put around just the house, so you can have - it's nice to walk by and grab a strawberry, you know, versus. It's not a commercial project, it's just nice to have. And then I learned about the Durham project with Iago and the - I think it was 10 acres at the time when we first found out about it? And of course, I was emailing him. I'm like, "How do I get Kiwi berries? How do I grow them? I had them, I really enjoy them. From an enterprise aspect, nobody has kiwi berry farms around here. So again, in talking with everybody, I could in agriculture, I happened to meet a gentleman over in Sullivan county, Larry Shute. He was, I don't know if he still is at the time, he was the conservation district manager over there. And I lived in Sullivan county. And man, he just he loves agriculture. And he was throwing all kinds of stuff at me. One of the things he said was, but he called them hardy kiwi berries. And it threw me off. I didn't know what it was. But then, I saw the online with Iago and his project. And funny enough, he never answered my emails, even though I probably emailed them 1000 times, because you know, he's doing other things. He's in the educational sphere, and I'm just a guy annoying his email account with constant spam mail. But it paid off, because when this project came up, he actually emailed me and said if you're interested, this is what's coming. I still have to apply like everybody else. But it's just because I liked the fruit itself is why I decided to go into it. And it is pretty interesting in the fact that no one else has it. That's appealing to me. You can make this a commercial enterprise. And fortunately, the Kiwi berry does okay in my soil. It doesn't need 20 feet of good soil. It just needs the basic structure which I have. And its roots system loves to move, so the sand helps with that, lets the roots go out really quickly. But it also doesn't like wet feet, as they call it. So we can water and it the drains away. And my Kiwi berries should to grow just fine.
Rebecca Dube 16:54
So working with the land, with the sand helps.
John Maynard 16:58
Yes, yes. Finally,something that I could use other than blueberries.
Kendall Kunelius 17:02
Didn't you try growing peanuts at one point, too? If I remember correctly? I remember rolling up here one time and you had this thing growing and I was like, what is that?
John Maynard 17:14
Yeah, it was an utter failure.
Erin Maynard 17:17
Well, it seems that some animals enjoyed the peanuts and we were not able to take it any of them. They were dug up before they were allowed to grow very much.
John Maynard 17:31
Yeah, and the setup was a little bit different. There was no mulch in that area. It was a swale. And we put the peanuts in the swale thinking that, it would get a lot of water and it would drain away, because peanuts don't like to be wet. And it scorched that year, it was super hot. So this would have been a couple years ago. And they just, you know, the window for us to grow them, if you can grow them, is very small in New Hampshire from day one to the last day. You're, pushing it. So it was a cool little experiment, but yeah, it didn't pan out.
Erin Maynard 18:04
We love introducing people to new produce or meat. It's something especially that we love. We don't do it to gain monetarily, we truly love what we do. And we love to introduce people. And the kiwi berry is just something that nobody around here knows about. And we love it so much. I'm excited just to even give it to people to try, just so that they can try it. And so this is also another fun part of the experiment, is being able to open people's plate palette. Yeah, just to introduce new foods.
Rebecca Dube 18:40
Well, that brings me to another question that we had and that we hear tell that you have a background as a pastry chef. So what are some of the things you could use kiwi berry in, or how did you have it in the past that you enjoyed it so much?
Erin Maynard 18:53
So honestly, really the best way to have it is fresh. Kiwi berries do not last long on the shelf. They might have a week, absolute tops, which is one reason why it's so hard to make them a commercial product because you can't ship them. They're just too fragile. So if you grow them, you're going to want to sell them within a day or two of picking. So fresh is definitely the way to go. I would love to see them in a fresh fruit tart. I think they would be absolutely phenomenal. And certainly one way to preserve them is definitely a jam just like most any other berry. It really catches their sweetness very well. You don't need to add too much more sugar to them because they are such a lovely sweet berry.
Kendall Kunelius 19:39
That's kind of a cool crossover because I know Sean at the Ed Center is doing a lot right now with preservation - so canning and how to preserve foods. That would be a neat little crossover between experimenting with making kiwi berry jam and Ed center stuff.
Rebecca Dube 19:54
I think we're gonna have to come back here to root up a crop to do some experiments!
Kendall Kunelius 19:59
It's a date. A year from now we're gonna be coming back.
Erin Maynard 20:02
I would love to have you over for the first harvest and make you something with them.
Kendall Kunelius 20:06
And on a personal note, I can tell you, Erin is a phenomenal baker. And I say that because I can't have gluten, I can't have dairy and your daughter has celiac [disease], correct? So I have had just the best array of delicious treats from Erin's kitchen. All of gluten free is - it's no longer disgusting and cardboard. She is a magician in the kitchen with everything without gluten. So I'm sure those tarts I can only imagine.
John Maynard 20:38
So the kiwi berry though, if people know what it looks like; it's about on average, it's about the size of a grape. And when you cut it in half, it looks like the kiwi fruit most people would know. Right? It's green, it's got the little black, the little seeds. So it's were it gets its name from, but the sugar content is twice as much. So they're really sweet. So you could use them to make wines. Definitely a cool ice cream would be awesome, because I like ice cream.
Rebecca Dube 21:09
Could it be a compote on an ice cream?
John Maynard 21:11
Oh, yeah.
Erin Maynard 21:13
Yes, that would be delicious.
Rebecca Dube 21:15
I wanted to ask you another thing, too. You mentioned the project you're working on. What are the benefits that working with UNH provide for your farm, or at least for this particular project on your farm?
John Maynard 21:26
I don't have to think all that much about what to do next. If you really have someone it's like having, the guy who's known for raising whatever animal or growing a certain product, and then him coming and teaching you what to do next. So you don't have to spend 20 hours online trying to figure out how exactly do I do this? What is that supposed to look like? Is this correct? I don't know what bug is this? It's kind of figured out for you. You just have to ask the question. If there's something outside the ordinary or you do have a question, they created a website for us that we can go on and we can communicate with all the other farmers involved in the project. And we have meetings at least once a month, I think, sometimes it's twice a month now. They call them office hours, where we have time with Iago. So if something's going on, like, when we first came into the project, there was a delay in shipment of the plant. So he kind of talked about it, when you got them what what to do. You know, you still had to harden them off, how to care for them, when to get them in the ground, the best time, by this date, get them in. If you don't get them in by this day in July, you're gonna have a growth problem. You don't have to figure it out. You just got to ask questions and listen, and they walk you through the whole process. So it's very appealing.
Kendall Kunelius 22:50
So that's kind of cool, though, that you get to talk with other farmers. Through Extension we know that those peer to peer groups are really powerful, right? So it's not just in agriculture, we've seen this with other cohort groups and other areas. What would you say is the most benefit that you've gotten out of being able to talk with those farmers? Is it the connection, the community, or just the technical support for growing?
Erin Maynard 23:15
I think what's been most helpful for us and for me, in particular, is knowing that there are other people that have the same questions. And honestly, it's such a welcoming group. You don't feel afraid to have to ask a question. You don't feel stupid, like you should already know something, because you're all in the same boat. Somebody can chime in and say, this worked for me or this didn't work for me, but here are some options. Especially for those farmers that have been growing kiwi berries and do know this crop much better than probably most of us on that forum. And also having Iago there to moderate everything. He is so quick to respond, generally speaking, to everybody. Sometimes he is very, very busy, and it takes him a couple of days and he might miss something, but he's always so very sorry and answers it right away, and certainly adds in even more information.
Rebecca Dube 24:07
Can you tell our listeners a little bit about - who is Iago? A little bit more about that and the project?
John Maynard 24:13
I don't know Iago's full backstory, to be honest. I know he's been doing research at the University of New Hampshire, Durham for at least the last 10 years. So he, what I know in this project, he has been working with the kiwi berry to get it to work and be used commercially. I don't remember his exact area of expertise of what he does, but basically what he started doing was planting kiwi berries, and then genetically mapping them. So with kiwi berries, one of the big problems is when you graft them to regrow them, you don't know whether you're getting male or female. And most of the time you get a lot of females. So, we have 12 plants out out there, and for every two plants, there's one male. So the problem with just random selection is you're going to plant and you're not going to know what you have. So it flowers, and you could be two or three years down the road, and you have just spent all this effort to put in these plants, and you have nothing but females, you won't get fruit. You have to have the male. So what he's done is he's actually genetically mapped by taking the leaf portion and using genetics to identify before you have a lot of effort into it to say, this is a male, that's a female, we don't need all these, that one's going to trash and we grow these. I don't know if it's the most cost effective way to do it, but I appreciate it. So he's been able to map out all these different species, and then I know he's done some crossing, because we have some plants that aren't available to the average person. They're actually only within our group and on the experimentation that they have. So that's pretty cool. So the object of this is to see what species have been created or commercially viable. So, we may have a couple plants out there that just, they just don't produce, they just don't do well. It could be our zone, it could be just the species overall doesn't do well in New England without a lot of intensive care. And that's not the point in a commercial growing, right? We tried to do this as efficiently as possible. I don't know what else he does in the university. I'm sure he teaches and does a whole bunch of other stuff. But for us, he's just a wealth of knowledge and encouragement when you have a problem, and you're trying to make this succeed. Because at the end of the day, we're just a part of the project. He's the one who put in the project, and put it forth to get funding. And he's doing all the data collection. We just do the work and put them in and hopefully we can make it a commercially viable enterprise and go from there.
Rebecca Dube 26:55
And we'll include a link to that project in the show notes as well.
Kendall Kunelius 26:59
Sure. I guess the last question I would want to ask is, what question haven't we asked you that you would have liked us to ask you that would have helped you talk anymore about your farming operations, diversification of your enterprises or the kiwi berry stuff?
John Maynard 27:15
I don't know if I have any questions or anything I would add. I think at the end of the day, you can start anywhere is what I would tell people. If you don't have a garden now, just put in a garden. You're not going to know whether or not you like doing this unless you start. So a four-foot-by-eight-foot bed, just start with what you like to eat. If you like cucumbers, grow abcucumber. Go small, cause otherwise you're gonna have enough summer squash to feed the neighborhood.
Kendall Kunelius 27:47
I think we definitely covered the crazy zucchini people, who just leave zucchinis on people's windshields, because they just have them coming out of their ears.
John Maynard 27:57
Don't be afraid to jump in and try something. You never know what's going to work. And the more and more we do research on things, the more and more we find that there's symbiotic relationships across the spectrum, right? So initially, I don't think you would think livestock would have anything to do with plants, other than the grass that they eat. But there's so much more to it: how there's value add for trees to livestock, there's value add from bushes to geese. Then vice versa, there's value add to having animals in order to produce more fruit, or just expand your garden or do something weird like peanuts. You got to start somewhere. And there's only so much YouTube videos you can watch. And there's only so much reading. So only so much advice you can take before you actually have to take the first step and dig a hole.
Erin Maynard 28:55
And everybody's microclimate is different. So don't be afraid to jump in. And if it's not working, try something else.
Rebecca Dube 29:01
Which plays into the whole diversification concept that we were talking about this episode and how important that is for any farm.
Kendall Kunelius 29:07
Yeah, the only other thing I would add to that is to say you're in a town with good ag laws. Make sure before you diversify your enterprises, you check with your town to see what your zoning is to see what you can or can't have to just make sure where your well is if you're putting in livestock. There's a lot of other site and soil considerations before adding things in. But all that again, what you were talking about John, with your research, you can do all that research, but then you really have to take that step. As long as you know you can take it. That's true. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you guys so very much for joining us today. Well, well wait, no thank you for letting us join you today because we're on site!
Rebecca Dube 29:43
Here on the farm. You've all heard the Geese Squad in the background during this.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai