The Legendary Tuttle Farm For Sale

The Legendary Tuttle Farm For Sale

The bad economy has led to the oldest family farm in the country to be put up for sale.

A 240-acre farm, known for it’s legendary sweet corn, that had survived for nearly 400 years is now being sold by the Tuttle family near Dover, N.H.  The original settler, John Tuttle, who survived a shipwreck off the Maine coast and arrived in Dover with his wife and four-year-old daughter, founded this farm and business enterprise in 1635.

For most, 1635 is beyond comprehension of what life was like in America,  There may have been as many as 10,000 colonists in all of American and only a few hundred in New Hampshire. More then 140 years before the Declaration of Independence. Most land beyond the Mississippi was not even “discovered” yet.

It is said that due to the Government subsidizing the large industrious farms the smaller family farms just cannot survive. Though the 240-acre farm grows vegetables and strawberries the Tuttle have opened their farm up to other activities and a retail shop, but they say have now exhausted their resources and are forced to put up a for sale sign with an asking price of $3.35 million.

The Current owners of the Tuttle Farm, 11th generation and direct descendants of John Tuttle himself have greatly discouraged the next generation from getting involved in the farm due to its failing economic status and the fear that it might not recover.

The Family Farm: Alive, Profitable, and Dominating Agriculture.

The Family Farm

by Stu Ellis

Is the family farm alive and well? That depends on who is talking. If the authority is USDA’s Economics Research Service the family farm is doing quite well, thank you. The ERS analysis of family farms, based on the 2007 Ag Census was recently released, and it does not give agriculture’s critics much ammunition when it comes to the dominance of the family farm.

While corporate organizations have succession planning to ensure continuity, it turns out that many family farms have secondary operators in case something happens to the primary operator. For the farms with sales of $250,000 and up, 42% of the medium sales farms, 52% of the large family farms, and 61% of the very large family farms all have a secondary principle operator, including spouses. In fact, spouses are secondary operators on more than 70% of the smaller farms, says the ERS report on Family Farms.

The USDA economists report, “The share of family farms with two or more operators peaks at 55 percent on very large farms, 15 percentage points higher than the share for all U.S. farms.” And they add that 16% of all multiple operator farms are multiple-generation farms with at least 20 years’ difference between the oldest and the youngest operators. One of the issues faced by family farms is the aging of the principle operator, since 28% of farm operators are 65 years and older. From the residential/lifestyle farms all the way to the very large family farms, the mean age is between 52 and 59. For all farms, 5% are operated by someone under 35, 12% are in the 35 to 44 age range, 24% are in the 45 to 54 age range and 31% are in the 55 to 64 year age range. ERS says, “Improved health and advances in farm equipment have also allowed farmers to farm later in life than in previous generations.”

This Article Courtesy of the farm gate

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Dale Peterson Alabama – Get Away From That

Dale Peterson Alabama – Get Away From That
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Dale Peterson, the world’s most famous candidate for Alabama Ag Commissioner, makes his endorsement! DalePeterson2010.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Dale Peterson Alabama – We are Better than That!!!!!

Dale Peterson Alabama – We are Better than That!!!!!

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www.dalepeterson2010.com Dale Peterson, Alabama Agriculture Commission, ICAUCUS endorsed candidate fighting the fight to save our country. Some people recognize the enemies from within & without. We need fighters today, people that are not afraid to stand & tell the Government NO!!! Help Dale Stand & Defend our Country, it starts 1 state at a time. www.dalepeterson2010.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Santa Fe is turning 400 years old this Year!!

Santa Fe is turning 400 years old this Year!!

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The Santa Fe 400th Anniversary will commemorate 400 years of culture from the establishment of the city as a “villa” in 1610 by the Spanish, through today. Proudly, that makes us the Oldest Capital City in the United States!

A number of cultures played key roles in Santa Fe’s development.

Native Americans who settled long before 1610, Hispanic, European and African Americans of diverse backgrounds. These lives and stories have created a cross-cultural tapestry of interdependence that over time has made Santa Fe one of the most diverse and rich cultural communities in the world.

The commemoration will honor all of our cultures, heritage, legacies and lasting contributions, connecting the founding past with the promise of tomorrow.

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For Complete details please visit the website Santa Fe’s 400th Anniversary

Baxter Black – An American Cowboy

Baxter Black – An American Cowboy

Emmy Award winning profile of Cowboy Poet Baxter Black. He’s a poet, a novelist, an entertainer and has a regular gig on NPR. He says he can’t make up stories that are more outrageous than what really happens. You be the judge. 2008 Rocky Mountain Emmy Award winner: Arts & Entertainment Feature Segment. Writer/Producer – Jennifer McKinney, Photographer/Editor – Dan Sheffer
Video Rating: 5 / 5

HandCrafted Log Home Ideas

HandCrafted Log Home Ideas

Does Community Branding Matter?

Does Branding Matter?

Mr. Madville Times himself, Cory Heidelberger, kicked up a storm a couple days ago in a blog post by claiming that communities are wasting their time — and more importantly their money – by redeveloping their brand.  It caused me to do a double-take because earlier that same day, I had plugged the importance of establishing a strong community brand in a presentation I made to some folks down in Kansas and Nebraska.

So who’s right?  Does branding matter?

At the center of the controversy was the community of Brookings, SD’s and their recent rebranding efforts.  The community felt they needed to refresh their brand because various community organizations were marketing the community in different ways.  To help everyone get on the same page, they hired a Nashville, TN community branding entity.

Cory’s objections seem to rest on the following arguments.

• Brookings has done well without a unified branding effort, so why change what’s working?
• Spending $84,000 to hire a branding specialist is a lot of money, especially when community leaders admit that they’ll have to do it again in a few years to keep a ‘fresh’ image.
• It’s impossible to find one thing that defines a community, so don’t try. It’s better to celebrate the community’s diversity, and allow your community to be many things to many people.
• A brand is useless if community members don’t have any actual performance to show for it.

Bottom line, Cory doesn’t think branding works for communities.  Some of the commenters to his post agreed, some didn’t.  I appreciated that they made me rethink my thoughts on the subject.

The bottom line for me is if we want people to choose our rural communities as places to call home, we need to pay attention to our branding.   Our brand is our collective identity, expressed in many ways when people encounter our community.

Too often our small rural communities are known for the last basketball championship.  Or worse yet, for being places that time forgot.  But changing that identity doesn’t mean we have to rush out and hire a branding company for $80,000.

Start by getting together as a community:  talk about what you want your community to be known for, make sure it connects to your vision for the future (if it does, it will help you achieve that vision.), and figure out how you are going to communicate it to others.

Visual elements like a logo and tag line are important, but actions are more important.  You have to be able to live up to your community brand.  If you want to be known as a friendly community, you’d better make sure residents (especially those who deal with newcomers like cashiers, waitresses, and elected officials) embody friendliness.  If you want to be known for supporting entrepreneurs, make sure you celebrate their accomplishments (like posting interviews with them on YouTube).

So, the big question is, does your community’s brand reflect who you really are?  If not, people will see right through it.

Tags: branding, Madison SD, marketing rural communities

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Simple Garden Solutions

by Saxon Holt from Gardening Gone Wild

I love green peas. Big fat English shelling peas. Unfortunately the birds love the young sprouts and I have tried all sorts of tricks to keep them off my little crop.

This year I finally listened to my father’s advice and built a scarecrow.

Thomas Jefferson had a contest every year with his gardening buddies to see who could bring in the first peas of the season. With that in mind, I began planting my first peas in mid February, planning a new row as soon as the previous row sprouted. I would see how early I could get my own peas. Secretly storing my results, I would then be able to challenge my own buddies in future years.

I had some great fresh compost, good seeds, and warm weather. As I buried the seeds in the rich soil I could almost taste those fat spring peas, deep green, lightly steamed with a drop of real butter, a wee bit of salt, and a dash of dill. I covered the rows with wire mesh knowing the birds would peck out the young green shoots.

Things began well. The seeds began sprouting in about nine days. The next row went in. Suddenly the little plants began to vanish. I checked every morning for some evidence of slugs or snails. No slime trails anywhere. My earwig traps of rolled up newspaper had nothing. Cutworms maybe ? No signs, no telltale pellets of poop. The second row is now sprouting while the first row disappears.

Meanwhile, my father is following my adventures through our weekly telephone conversation. He is 95 and talking gardening is our number one mutual pleasure. He wants to know about every vegetable I can grow in California, knowing it will never match the flavor of what he could have grown in Virginia “in his day”. And in truth no corn, no melon, and certainly no tomato I have grown in California comes close to those I remember in my father’s garden. But he could never grow peas.

He had heard me lament about the birds pecking out previous crops of lettuces or peas and wondered: “Son, why don’t you try a scarecrow ?” Too much trouble for something that is not likely to work, so I just cover my crops with mesh. And no, Pop, don’t wonder about rabbits. We don’t have rabbits and they couldn’t get through the mesh either

This year I had the mesh out early so the birds (or rabbits) couldn’t be the problem, yet something was getting to my peas before they could even put up their first tendril. I planted my third crop along the gaps of the first. There were still some living shoots but headless, trying to regenerate new leaves

Then I noticed. The dag gone birds were sitting on the mesh poking their beaks down to the buffet line. In broad daylight. I had been providing them convenient seating. “Son, why don’t you put up a scarecrow ?” my father asked again the next Sunday. “All you need is a couple of old boards, three nails, and an old shirt

OK, OK. I will humor him and he will enjoy the birds victory despite the wasted effort. And if he thinks it is so simple – I will make it simple. Two old 2×4s from the woodpile under the deck, three mis-matched and bent nails from the bottom of my tool chest; and I plant the crossed boards by the shortest bed in my vegetable garden.

It took me all of 15 minutes, and I had to sacrifice my favorite shirt. It is just as old and beat up as the ones my father always wore in his own garden, and I haven’t seen a bird in the garden for two weeks.

The peas are finally climbing up the trellis, now two months from first planting. I won’t have any to bring my father when I visit in May, but Jefferson never had peas in May either.

I’m gonna ask my Dad for one of his old shirts when I see him.

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