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137: Shawn Kuhn of Vitruvian Farms on Growing Salad Greens, Selling to Restaurants, and Expanding into Retail Sales

9/21/2017

3 Comments

 
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Shawn Kuhn of Vitruvian Farms raises about five acres of vegetables with his business partner, Tommy Stauffer, in McFarland, Wisconsin, just outside of Madison.

Vitruvian Farms raises a little bit of everything, and a lot of salad greens, so we dig into the ins and outs producing 1,200 pounds of salad greens a week, from bed shaping and weed control through harvest and delivery. Shawn shares the ways they have – and have not – mechanized their salad production, and how they make this intensive level of production work on a small scale. We also look at the key success factors for their other main crops, oyster mushrooms, tomatoes, and microgreens.
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Most of Vitruvian Farms’ produce is sold through 45 restaurants in Madison, and Shawn shares how they got started in that marketplace and how they maintain those relationships. We dig into what quality really means when selling to restaurants, and how Vitruvian Farms gets top-notch produce to demanding chefs in a crowded marketplace.

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Quotes from the Show

We wanted to do something that felt right and had some meaning behind it. I think you could argue organic farming can be that.

[Starting the business with a focus on restaurant sales] pushed our quality to a really high level because we always thought we had to have the best stuff because we were sending it to these fancy restaurants and these chefs.

I learned that when you show up, as long as it’s not during rush hours, with a bunch of free samples, the chef is normally happy to see you.


I take it upon myself to say, if something’s repeatedly not being done correctly, how can we design a better system or give better directions or create a better work culture so that those things happen.

Show Links

Vitruvian Farms uses a bed shaper from Buckeye Tractor to make raised beds for salad greens.

The Six-Row Seeder from Johnny’s Selected Seeds lets Vitruvian Farms seed the solid beds of greens that set them up for mechanical salad greens harvest.

Vitruvian Farms started the mechanization of their salad harvester with the Quick Cut Harvester from Farmer’s Friend.


The HarvestStar baby leaf harvester from Sutton Ag allows Shawn to harvest salad greens from an upright position.


Vitruvian Farms uses Entrust for flea beetle control.


​Sustane 5-2-4
provides an organic slow-release nitrogen fertilizer that Vitruvian Farms uses to keep their salad beds humming along.

Transcript

The transcript for this episode is brought to you byEarth Tools, offering the most complete selection of walk-behind farming equipment and high-quality garden tools in North America; and byRock Dust Local, the first company in North America specializing in local sourcing and delivery of the BEST rock dusts and biochar for organic farming. And byLocal Food Marketplace, providing an integrated, scalable solution for farms and food hubs to process customer orders – including online ordering, harvesting, packing, delivery, invoicing and payment processing. Additional funding for transcripts provided byNorth Central SARE, providing grants and education to advance innovations in Sustainable Agriculture.

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3 Comments
Chris Stoye
9/23/2017 09:35:59 am

Very professional, very informative. They don't teach this in Culinary School and with the demands of a professional kitchen, well, let's just say there's no time. Thanks for the podcast!

Reply
Timothy Robe link
9/25/2017 03:53:16 pm

Great interview! I was curious if there was any more information regarding the custom salad greens washer this farm uses? I would be interested in seeing a link to the equipment, and/or reasons why it is better then some other commercially available salad greens washers on the market. Thank you!

Reply
Shawn Kuhn link
9/29/2017 01:07:07 pm

Timothy,

I wouldn't say the equipment is per se "better" than other salad greens washers on the market. It would be more accurate to say that at this size there really aren't a lot of salad washers at all. The 1,000 - 3,000 pound per week greens operations are a little small compared to the large salad operations out west, that cut on the order of thousands of pounds per hour. Most of the equipment that I've seen is geared towards that larger size. Now there are some washers on the market that I have seen, we actually purchased one once, but it completely destroyed the greens.

So in our case we liked the idea of custom fabricating a washer because a friend of ours had a business that could make one for us a lot cheaper than buying something not really suited to washing salad greens from someone else. Hope this helps!

Reply



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