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Green Gazette

The Muse of independence may not visit the statehouse very often, yet that's exactly where Lynn Byczynski found the inspiration that led her to publish the country's best market-gardening newsletter.

A reporter for the Kansas City Star, Lynn was covering the Kansas House of Representatives. "I thought, 'if I have to listen to one more pompous legislator, I will just burst,"' she says. She longed to be growing vegetables and flowers in the fields of the farm her family had just bought.

Then she opened a desk drawer in the statehouse press gallery. Inside, previous
legislative scribes had signed their names 20 to mark their passage. "One of the names was Cass Peterson. I knew of her through New Farm and Harrowsmith z. magazines. She and her partner (Ward Sinclair) had a lot of stature as reporters for The Washington Post, yet they had over those incredible careers to become pioneers in modem market gardening. It was so encouraging!"

Although Lynn and husband Daniel Nagengast had just become parents for the first time, they soon quit their jobs and started farming - and writing about farming. There was no good source of information for small farmers, she says. "New Farm (magazine) was ... more for row crop farmers. Gardening magazines were not particularly relevant, so I took it upon myself to start what I hoped would become a forum for market gardeners to share experiences," Lynn says.

So began the monthly newsletter Growing For Market.

GFM is s30 for 12 issues per year.
To Subscribe, contact:

Growing for Market
P.O. Box 3747
Lawrence, KS 66046
(800) 307-8949
Fax: (785) 748-0609
growing4market@earthlink.net
www.growingformarket.com

"GFM provides a wonderful forum for the exchange of practical information between growers that is the key to improving our skills and surviving economically," says Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower.

Coleman is not the only one who feels that way. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Growing For Market has a paid circulation of 3,500.

You can get a taste of Lynn's perspective on "Selling Organic," on Page 37.

- George DeVault

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