Hello from the desert of Nevada!

**CGM** · 11-23-2009 02:00 PM

Hi everyone, new guy here.

Nice forum set up here, seems like a reasonable sized community of like minded individuals. I think this website will come in handy as time goes on.

The name is Curtis, I am the business manager of a large organic orchard in Nevada where we grow figs, apricots, plums, pecans, a wide assortment of garden vegetables but our main cash crop is Pomegranates. It's a 20 acre orchard, fully irrigated and we have expanded dramatically by planting over 200 more Pomegranate trees this fall, with plans to (hopefully) plant another 700-1000 come early Spring. Each tree produces on average about 400~ fruit, when sold in upscale Health Food stores, each individual fruit goes for $3+. And thats just one crop. Right now we have about 12-14,000 Pomegranates per year, and we're bringing that number up to at least 400,000 in the next three to four years. And this does not include the figs, apricots, plums, pecans, etc that are all of great quality and value.

I started this business in April of this year, and things have been great so far. We have made business contacts and now have an outlet in 5 area Whole Foods stores, but we are expanding and trying to cut out the middle man by shipping directly to customers ourselves via a web ordering system also ran and maintained by yours truly

Its a very mind boggling process to have gotten to this point, but once the kinks get ironed out we will have a fully functional fruit shipping business with the stock to meet any demand. No middle man, customer pays shipping and products get shipped quickly.

Right now I am trying to contact government agencies (USDA, FDA, etc) to find out what exactly is required of us to ship fruit within the United States, and it seems like everyone is on lunch! After 20 minutes of phone calls and dialing new numbers and trying new menu options at the FDA and USDA, not a single real person has spoken to me. Persistence will be the key to this one.

Anyhow, glad I found this place for when I have questions regarding paperwork and legal issues. Just wanted to stop in and say hello and introduce myself in some sort of formal manner.

Aside from working and dealing with orchard / business related issues I Also like to kick back and enjoy being your typical 21 year old dude. Ride bmx bikes, shoot photography, enjoy just kicking back and relaxing.