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0:14hi my name is John Dysinger and this is my wife Pam and we're here at Bountiful blessings Farm in Middle

0:24Tennessee Bountiful blessings Farm is a 2 Acre Farm located in Middle Tennessee

0:30approximately an hour Southwest of Nashville and we sell through a spring

0:37summer and fall winter CSA two farmers markets in Nashville uh two small groceries and a food

0:47Hub we've been farming here since the fall of 1998 and the farm has evolved a lot

0:55since then we started out as a upic strawberry farm and now we're just a very diverse mixed

1:04vegetable small fruit operation and we can't think of a better place to have raised our family and now

1:11we get to see our grandkids here enjoying it we're so bountifully

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1:21blessed John and I started our careers in Africa actually teaching we just really felt called to do something

1:29different that would be to bring our family together my parents had bought this 192

1:36Acre Farm in their retirement and we actually moved here with teaching job

1:44nearby when we realized that the teaching was not the best fit for our

1:50family I turned in my resignation so when we felt finally that

1:58uh agriculture was our calling we started out with strawberries for 5 years a upic Strawberry

2:06Farm after 5 years we had the devastating spring rains and we made so

2:15many mistakes we didn't know what we were doing we thought we were going to have to throw in the towel on farming it

2:22was that

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2:25bad it's a painful memory even now but it it was at that point that God really impressed us to Branch out into winter

2:34production and then in 2010 we started actually going year

2:40round and that continues to this day one of the unique things about our

2:51farm is that we don't have many paid employees it's largely intern

2:58run the main main thing they're here for is to learn about farming and we try to involve them in every aspect of that

3:06from seeding to harvest to Farmers Market and everything in between we do try to include a lot of

3:16extracurricular things farm tours weekend activities we play together we

3:23worship together and we eat together every lunch couple of the things that

3:30are going really well here on the farm is our yearr round salad

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3:37production being in the South summer lettuce has always been a challenge but thanks to a lot of the pioneering work

3:46of Ray Tyler we're now producing lettuce year round and that's by far our biggest money

3:53crop and then of course strawberries we've got more experience with that than anything else people love strawberries

4:01and ours are the best on the planet they tell us we've actually kind of developed a

4:09hybrid system here where we've got our intense handworked beds where we do most

4:16of our high value crops and then we also have pads that we use for lower value

4:24crops that we use the tractor on and we're growing all those crops that Market gardeners really aren't supposed

4:32to grow because they don't make enough money but we feel like by using the tractor and using methods that don't

4:40take much labor that we can actually make money even on those crops here at Bountiful blessings Farm

4:49we have three main outlets for our sales that is a CSA we have about 140 CSA

4:56members the second Outlet is our farmers markets we do two farmers markets and then the third Outlet is

5:05wholesale because the call from God was to serve we really have focused on the CSA we're building relationships with

5:13real people and some of them have been with us since 2003 so because our Focus has been on

5:20serving our customers they in turn have been a great blessing to

5:27us the farm is a great hub for many businesses and one that I never planned

5:34to have is a gluten-free bakery and we sell bread at our farmers markets and we

5:41ship Nationwide mixes and shelf stable items in our Bakery we're focused on

5:50nutrition and trying to bring to people who are gluten-free a really nutritious option for

5:57bread one of the great things things about Farm life is it provided a springboard for our children to do different entrepreneurial

6:07things I started doing chickens in 2012 I've ranged from 150 chickens to over

6:14400 I've also really tried to streamline the chicken CS in having clean eggs and so I have roll out nesting boxes and

6:24some automated stuff in there that has helped streamline it a lot of times I move them in the even and Kelly and Amber will come out and

6:32we'll move them together collecting eggs is nice to do it as a family so I do micro greens business I

6:41do about 80 to 100 trays a week so I grow the micro Greens in a little bit of a unique way I grow them in a greenhouse

6:49with fully natural light and in soil it actually produces a much higher quality with much bigger cadens and overall

6:57better flavor and color I have a custom built Harvester that is kind of based off of the farmers friend quick cut screens Harvester it is amazing it cuts

7:06trays at about a tray every 4 seconds so you can get a lot of trays through

7:13there so in addition to the micr greens and the other Farm tasks I do I also Focus quite a bit on infrastructure and building lean improvements into our farm

7:22systems one of the quality of life improvements I've done is gotten a one wheeel and I've put about 2600 mil on it which is to saved me a lot of time

7:30walking around and it's a lot of fun to ride my earliest memories are growing up on the farm helping my parents every day

7:39run the operation and I quickly and early on learned that there was a lot of ways we could improve the operation by

7:47coming up with different tools and methods for doing things more efficiently and that turned into Farmer's friend in 2012 with the launch

7:55of the quick cut greens Harvester and that oper a started here on the farm in a shop building just down the road and

8:04it's grown a lot from there we use the greens Harvester twice a week for arugula and baby

8:13kale we would take a whole lot longer harvesting without it we found a really great way to use

8:23the caterpillar tunnels and that is to move them over berries and so we found by moving them twice a year we can add a

8:32lot of additional protection without the expense of permanent tunnels we are really loving the quick plant Fabric in

8:41fact it's really Transforming Our Farm we find that it makes a cleaner

8:49product and we seem to have less disease growing on the quick

8:55plant we are using it for all of our lettuce but we're also using it for a

9:02lot of less traditional crops we've used it on garlic this year brasa's okra

9:10sweet corn last year we experimented with a little piece of quick plant fabric on part of a row and the corn on

9:20the quick plant grew so much healthier and taller that everybody thought it was a different

9:27variety what we're finding is it just eliminates weeding it's a way as I see

9:35it to do no till without the challenge of

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9:44weeds I think that smallscale farming is the biggest hope for the future of our

9:51planet it's very satisfying to know that we're doing our little part to make the world a better place

10:00I think what really keeps us motivated is the response that we get from our customers and working with the interns

10:08is also very satisfying to see young people changing their world

10:15viw and realizing that they can actually enjoy hard work and it's very satisfying to be able

10:25to work with my sons and to build a future together here farming for us has been about

10:34building our faith and building our family and it's been a really good life you know there's there's hard days

10:42that come on the farm where you're kind of asking yourself why am I doing this but the reality is whenever I ask that I

10:52start thinking about well what would I rather be doing and I can't think of anything that I'd rather be doing than

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