Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Urban Farming Buy "Fruit Bonds" To Fund a New Pick-Your-Own Orchard Inside Nashville
Posted by Nicki Wood on Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 8:21 AM
- Photo from the Stewart Orchard blog
Mind you, it's just an experiment, what with all the "ifs," but if the "fruit bonds" being sold to fund Stewart Orchard sell well and nature cooperates, then in a couple of years, Nashvillians could be picking berries and tree fruit in Davidson County.
It's an idea that has a lot of people pretty enthusiastic, none more so than grower Tatum Stewart, who sells his Ashland City-grown fruit at the West Nashville Farmers Market. Stewart hopes interested Nashvillians will buy a "fruit bond" to fund a new orchard in Bells' Bend. Using an intensive new technique, he's planting almost 700 peach trees and 150 apple trees this winter on 20 acres offered by a Bells' Bend landowner. The technique involves trellising and irrigation, and the payoff is that the first crops should be ready for picking in two years.
Obviously the expenses are front-end intensive, and that's where the fruit bond funding comes in. Buy a $30, $60 or $100 five-year bond, and your money goes to creating an orchard for Davidson County.
In return, you get an annual "dividend" of fruit for five years, including blackberries, apples and/or peaches, the kind and amount depending on which bond you buy. Details after the jump.
Thirty dollars will buy you two quarts of berries, five pounds of peaches, or a peck of apples each year, for a total of 10 quarts of berries, 25 pounds of peaches or five pecks (about 55 pounds) of apples over five years. A $60 bond gets two fruits a year, so 10 quarts of berries and 25 pounds of peaches or 55 pounds of apples in five years. A $100 bond gets all three, plus a bonus.
"You can split [your dividend} up in time — you don't have to have all five pounds at once. You can wait a few weeks until there's another variety. And the bond is fully transferable. The fruit goes with the bond, not the person," says Stewart.
Stewart currently grows on a farm in Ashland City, and his Arkansas Black apples were sensational. The plan is for the Bells Bend property to be a pick-your-own orchard. Peach trees grown by the intensive method should be bearing in two years, and berries, which will be planted next year, should bear right away. Eventually Stewart aims for cherry and pear trees at the Bell's Bend farm.
For more information on the bond, including ways to buy one, go to the farm's blog link above, or email stewartorchard11(at)gmail(dot)com.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
My name is Ricky Agnew I live in northern new York I would like more info on your fruit bonds if you could give me a phone number were I could speak with someone about buying these or contact me at 518-594-6017 I am interested hope to here from you soon my email is rickyagnew43@yahoo.com
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General comment to those whom we used to call 'webmasters' - whatever gizmos and widgets and gadgets and flash-promo video bombs have been added to this site over the last several weeks, they have succeeded in freezing another would-be reader out, joining the list of other equally useless sites that will not allow navigation after supposedly loading. The only way to see the Bites items now, as with others of similar choke-levels, is to somehow navigate to a specific article and then scroll backward or forward. And even then, typing in the box is impossible, every other letter disappearing into its own flash mob. Is there any way to get back to normal ?
Wow, that's the first complaint we've heard along those lines. I have a hard time even picturing what you're describing. Has anyone else experienced this?
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I simply cannot wrap my mind around this and the slow money concepts (schemes). In lieu of the farmer / tenant doing a straight sales + profit offering tangible goods, you are invited to participate in a plan that like all investments can turn on a dime by way of crop failure, sloth, or worse, fraud. Your results may vary (insert fine print here).
@Lawn Shark, there are more details at the blog, including what happens in case of crop failure (contract extended a year). I just wanted to give people the basics here. As for sloth and fraud, a lot of Bites readers have been buying Stewart apples this year, so the product is a known quantity, and you can see the new orchard property pretty much from the road. There are other reasons, too, to support the orchard--more farming in Bells Bend is one of them.
Simple question: why can't they just grow apples and sell them at the farmers market? Since these folks only offer apples and berries I am going have to start buying bonds for lettuce, herbs, tomatoes from other similar farmers I suppose. If my portfolio of food bonds gets big enough I'll need a financial planner to monitor all of my investments. This is like a "green" ponzi scheme. Sort of a Wall Street with a red clay halo.
Well, I appreciate the interest, even if it is a bit skeptical. We have been growing fruit in Ashland City for five or six years, so we are not a ponzi skeme. I agree that I can make more money by selling the fruit out-right, but we are trying to develop this orchard quickly. Inital cost are in the line of 12k to 18k an acre. We are cash flowing as much as we can, but it would be quite slow. We were approached by members of the Bells Bend community who wanted to help get the project going. Fruit Bonds were what we came up with. However, we are likely going to limit the number of bonds issued, mainly to ensure that our farmers market customers will still be able to purchase fruit from us as they have in the past. Please visit our blog or call us if you have any questions. Tatum Stewart, Stewart Orchard
So excited about this. I bought my share a couple months back when they were at the West Nashville Farmers Market. Bring on the fruit!
I would assume the skeptics are those who've never met the Stewarts and bought from them. Also, I wonder if they think that the dividends won't be coming in until the new orchard is producing, because that's not the way I'm reading it. Essentially, this seems to me to be just buying in advance to support growth, not unlike a CSA.
Shorter version: I think this is a great idea to further support the Stewarts and guarantee my share of the fruit!
