SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. – For many years Mark Murphy’s livelihood involved guitars; as a rock and roll guitar player and owner of a guitar shop in Nashville. But, eight years ago he took an abrupt turn, buying a 200-acre piece of ground on Bottle Hollow Road in Flat Creek.

“I was a rock guy,” he said. “Quite a different world from what I’m into now.”

What he’s into now is running a certified organic gardening business – Bottle Hollow Farm – selling produce at area farmers markets.

Murphy is a master gardener, a certification earned after taking classes through the county extension service. Tennessee’s master gardener program was developed by the Plant Sciences Department at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture in Knoxville.

As an organic farmer, Murphy does not use any chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. Building soil is what Murphy spends most of his time doing. “It takes time. It takes constant management, keeping the organic matter up, building the soil,” he said.

Murphy is passionate about organic farming. “I’ve always gardened organically for myself. It’s what I prefer,” he said. “One good thing about organic is I can come out here and just snack anytime. I don’t have to worry about pesticides.”

Murphy explained that for organic farming to be successful you have to cooperate with nature. “I’ve always been kind of a naturalist. I try to do everything in the easiest, most low impact way. When you’re working with the soil you’re doing things nature wouldn’t do on its own but if you work with the natural systems as much as possible it’s a lot less effort than fighting with the natural world.”

It was early October when Murphy showed me around his farm. The farmer’s market season was slowing for the year. Most of them close by the end of October in Middle Tennessee. Murphy’s thoughts at this time of year are focused on soil building – on compost – and planting some of next year’s crops, like strawberries, that will overwinter undercover, and garlic bulbs whose leaves will emerge above ground when the soil warms in the spring.

“You can never have too much compost,” is Murphy’s rule of thumb. “Winter is my big compost making time,” he said. Throughout the winter he collects leaves and all sorts of vegetation debris and stacks it in huge piles that will break down into compost to work into his soil.

In past years, Murphy regularly had his soil tested by the county extension service but now, with his master gardener education and some years of experience, he said he can pretty well evaluate his soil from its color and consistency. “As you learn,” he said, “you know what to look for. You can tell a lot about your organic levels by just looking at it – the structure of the soil and the color of it. It gets a lot looser and darker in color as you get higher organic levels in it.”

As we toured through his gardens, we stop periodically to look at the crops, some of which are still producing even as November approaches. The tomatoes and cucumbers are finished for the season but the purple green beans are ready for another round of picking. The kale is nearly ready for harvest. The ochre – burgundy and green varieties – are nearing time for harvest. In his little greenhouse, a fresh crop of lettuce is nearly ready to harvest. In another bed, the peppers are producing. He’s got Jalapeños with no heat (Felicity), Poblanos, with mild heat, that can be harvested either green or red, and Shishitos, a Japanese variety popular for use in stir fry.

Now at the end of his third season of market gardening, Murphy said, one of challenges of growing to sell directly to consumers was “figuring out what people want and how much of it they want. That was a big learning curve for me,” he said.

“The big sellers are tomatoes, cucumber or peppers,” he said. Especially “if you come early to market. If you can be one of the first guys to have them, everybody’s hot to get that stuff,” he said. To be one of the ones with early crops, Murphy now has a high tunnel, a clear plastic covered hoop structure, shaped like a quonset hut. With the high tunnel, Murphy says, he’s able to extend the growing season into autumn and get a jump on early production of spring crops.

Sales last year, despite COVID-19, were “good, real good,” Murphy said. “Early in the season we did some stuff with online ordering, delivery and pickups. It was pretty successful early but once the markets opened we got busy with that and online went to the side.

“I saw more people coming out to the farmer’s markets because of COVID. They want local stuff, fresher,” he said. But the coronavirus also had its downsides, he said. One of his best markets is an inside farmer’s market at the AG Extension Center in Murfreesboro but some customers were not happy when masks were mandated.

“They required everybody, vendors and customers, to wear masks,” he said. “Some people out there are so anti-mask they won’t come to the Murfreesboro market. We had a few regular customers from the year before that refused to wear masks. When I saw them the first week of the market they said ‘I’m not coming back because I have to wear a mask in here.’ That caught me off guard but people are people and you can’t argue with it.”

Murphy saidu the future is bright for people who want to get into market gardening. “It seems like more and more people want locally grown food,” he said, “sometimes organic, sometimes not.” He describes the increasing demand for locally produced food as the “local food movement.”

“A lot of young people want to get into the market gardening thing,” he said. “It’s something you can do on a smaller scale and get income from it. You can make money at it but you’re not going to get rich doing it.”

During the farmers market season, Murphy sells at the Rutherford County Farmers Market, the Bedford County Farmers Market and sometimes at the Tullahoma Farmers Market. For information on these markets go online to Pick Tennessee Products - PickTNProducts.org

“I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of growing stuff. It’s a never-ending opportunity to learn something new. I enjoy that part of it,” he said. “I’ll keep at it ’til I can’t do it no more.”