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author here : ) happy to answer questions if you have any. We also have a twitter account here if you want to follow along: https://x.com/vidaliaonions https://
by eightturn 9mo ago
author here : ) happy to answer questions if you have any. We also have a twitter account here if you want to follow along: https://x.com/vidaliaonions https://x.com/vidaliaonions
- eightturn 9mo agowe also film a lot of the growing process here: https://www.youtube.com/@vidaliaonion https://www.youtube.com/@vidaliaonion
- busymom0 9mo agoIs your website accessible over the onion network by Tor?
- kfk 9mo agoHow would you market such a business in 2026? I am from an Italian region where farmer grow many special coltures, and I was always a bit surprised why they don’t try selling on the internet. I ended up convincing myself it is not a viable business model.
- eightturn 9mo agoI'd still lean into a great .com domain, as it still gives you instant credibility. Also leverage Facebook, as my typical buyer hangs out there a good bit. YouTube has been helpful as well, as we try to share "behind the curtain" what life is like as a Vidalia farmer.
- Jolter 9mo agoI live in Sweden, and almost every year I discover someone I work with or have friends in common with, who has a friend or relative in Italy, or Greece who farms oranges/olives/cheese or what have you. And this friend in Sweden is selling their produce by word of mouth. So once a year at harvest, the relative has someone drives a truck full of olive oil 2000 kilometers north, and dozens of Swedes turn up at an appointed time on a Tuesday afternoon in a parking lot to pick up their order of six bottles of oil. The prices are no better than in the supermarket, but ostensibly you’d get a high quality product. It’s a funny way to do business in 2025, completely without Internet infrastructure. Somehow, I don’t think it would work as a web shop.
- brightbeige 9mo agoThere is a lot of “paperwork” to do it as a web shop, if you know what I mean.
- Jolter 9mo agoI’m sure taxes are part of it, but keep in mind it’s a toll free union after all. They could easily do this above board and just declare the Italian VAT as they do selling to locals.
- brightbeige 9mo agoI think for food products there are more considerations, like labeling and traceability.
- 9mo ago
- edm0nd 9mo agoIs anyone really getting into trouble growing Vidalia onions not in Georgia? Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do? Seems kinda weird they have a government granted monopoly on them.
- steveklabnik 9mo agoIt's a brand name, like any other. Usage of it requires fulfilling the brand requirements. It's like how you can't say a burger from Burger King if it's actually from McDonalds, even if it's a very similar hamburger. But even then, this isn't uncommon for food and beverages. You can't call it "whisky" unless you follow certain requirements about the mash bill, barrel, etc. (My dad, before his death, had started growing "Pennsylvania Simply Sweet" onions. Because you can't call them Vidalia.)
- criddell 9mo agoIt’s more than a brand name (civil matter), it’s a federally protected designation (criminal matter): https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-IX/part-955 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-IX/p...
- steveklabnik 9mo agoI didn’t know this until this thread! Thanks for the citation.
- Aurornis 9mo agoThere are a lot of food and drink items with official legal definitions that include the region of origin. The most famous one is champagne, which can only be called champagne if it comes from a specific region. You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety. So if someone made a sparkling wine in a different region and sold it as champagne then they would be committing fraud. > Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do? At your farmer’s market? Probably nothing. But if you came across a particularly grumpy person with time and money to burn on lawyers they would have a case against you. Not actually going to happen at that scale. But if you owned vidaliaonions.com and started selling fraudulent vidalia onions at scale, the farmers would likely get together and pursue legal action to protect their prices. It’s almost like a brand. You can sell LEGO-style bricks but you can’t call them LEGO because they didn’t come from the LEGO company.
- phl 9mo agojust came here to say that this has been one of my favorite pieces of writing i came across on hn ever (i read it back in 19)
- eightturn 9mo agoappreciate that, phl.
- jmkd 9mo agoI live in a mountain valley in Mallorca where hundreds of tons of perfect Canoneta oranges fall to the floor and rot each year because the cost of picking them outweighs their market value. The valley became wealthy from this fruit in the 19th century but the economics no longer add up. [0] At the same time the price of orange juice (elsewhere) has skyrocketed [1], yet this rural community seems unable to take advantage. What would you do? [0] https://ruralhotelsmallorca.com/guides/The-History-of-Soller%E2%80%99s-Famous-Oranges https://ruralhotelsmallorca.com/guides/The-History-of-Soller... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c397n3jl3z8o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c397n3jl3z8o
- cpursley 9mo agoI was shocked by this in rural Spain as well. Just tons of high citrus and olives rotting on trees because their harvest can't be done mechanically.
- ninalanyon 9mo agoI'm sure I've seen video of oranges being harvested mechanically. I'm sure it can be done but probably not economically everywhere especially if the terrain is difficult. For mechanical olive harvesting see: https://ilcircolo.eu/olive-harvesting-by-hand-or-with-machines/ https://ilcircolo.eu/olive-harvesting-by-hand-or-with-machin...
- pixl97 9mo agoOrange farms are on flat land and all the trees are on a grid and trimmed to exact sizes
- jmkd 9mo agoThat may be true of modern farms elsewhere but is not the case for historical groves here. They are sometimes spaced appropriately but that's about it. Usually on vehicular-inaccessible mountainside terraces.
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- mattmaroon 9mo agoI guess my question is: why is this better for me the customer than just buying them at my local supermarket? The shipping must make them very expensive, relative to my store. Are they that much better onions?
- eightturn 9mo agomost grocers don't carry Vidalias. If they do, they sometimes mislabel them, so you don't know whether you're receiving an authentic Vidalia. Also, grocers often charge more than we do - we had a customer from California one year mention that they found some out there for $8-$10 a pound (our 10# box is $50, and that includes shipping to lower 48 usa).
- mattmaroon 9mo agoInteresting. Maybe I’m just lucky, I’m in northeast Ohio and we have them regularly. But $5/lb including shipping is not bad at all for something from the internet.
- ex-aws-dude 9mo agoJust curious do you make a living primarily from this or is it more just a side income?
- eightturn 9mo agoI run a few projects that support me; this is one of them. This project did allow us to buy another neat domain, though: onions.com (used profit from one season to purchase)
- Breza 9mo agoHuge fan here! I read the article when it was new and was enamored with the story. I ordered a small box. The onions were terrific. So I order a large box every year.