Who went into farming?

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 703

Who went into farming, without being a farmer and without experience or little experience? What experiences did you make? Do you sell produce or do you have another source of income? Most of us won't be able to pay a farm without mortgage.
Is the farm close to a town and how do you think you will make your transport?

skyemoor · Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 6:53 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?

I have one foot in both worlds; I work at a high tech firm during the day and farm at the end of the day. We have a 10 acre sheep farm with 45 fruit and nut trees, along with a large garden and minor plots of grains.

I studied sheep farming before we bought the property, and found out that one continues to learn about farming. Sheep farming is not rocket science, but one needs to keep on track with scheduled activities and continually monitor the health of the flock, at least early in the learning process.

Gardening with raised beds and companion planting is very interesting and surprisingly easy (if one mulches and does a minimum amount of upkeep). Start small, then grow.

Fruit and nut trees require investigation to see what grows in one's area, which cultivars are most disease resistant and what their care requirements are, what pests are endemic, and how the fruits/nuts are harvested and stored.
After that, it's a matter keeping them watered and pruned the first few years. Different places have different pest management requirements. Everyone should at least grow some nut trees, if not too far north.

So while not a full time farmer, I find it rewarding to raise a portion of my food, send livestock off to market, and literally enjoy the fruits of my labor.
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Ludi · Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 7:32 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?

I have a very small farm, which at this point is more of a "hobby farm" in that it does not provide income, just products for our own consumption. I run a home business working for the entertainment industry for my income.

20 acres, a couple dozen fruit trees (not bearing much yet), smallish vegetable garden, sheep, turkeys, chickens.

3 miles from the nearest town, 10 miles from the nearest town large enough to have a gas station.
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kpeavey · Expert Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 1131

I grew up raising 25 acres of blueberries in downeast Maine. It was my great grandmother's field, but I was involved in every aspect of the operation until she passed away at 98 and I went on to college. For the next couple of decades, I kinda got away from the land. I saved my pennies, finally bought me a house with a fine yard.

In the past few years, I've developed most of my yard, 1/4 acre in town, into an experimental organic garden, added some chickens, built a greenhouse, put together a solar heating and hot water system using off the shelf parts that is effective most of the year.

I've learned everything there is to know about compost. I've developed a transplanting system that is extremely effective. This very morning I worked on the greenhouse, adding a solid north wall and a shelf over the solar thermal storage tank. I also spent some time gathering compost material, starting a new heap. I started some peas, kale, herbs, brocolli, radish, and transplanted onions, carrots, turnip, and rutabaga. Today the hens laid 5 handsome eggs. For dinner I made some whole wheat fettucini, from scratch, topped with tomato sauce I made from the garden in June. I also threw some hamburger in. If the world went on business as usual, I'd have a fine urban farm in little time at all.

This yard is not the plan. What I want is at least 5 acres of organic farm. Produce, hens, pigs, that sort of thing. In a slow crash scenario, I think it offers tremendous value for self-sufficiency as well as excellent income potential. In a fast crash, it does not really matter what I do.

I"ve been able to start marketing my goods. I have a local restaurant, owned by a friend of mine, that buys my herbs:dill, rosemary, tarragon, thyme, and parsley. Its only a couple of bucks, but its a start. In the past the owner has tried some squash, green beans, green tomatoes, onions, cauliflower and zukes. When the brocolli and kale come in, He'll be trying some of that. He pays market price-wholesale. It's not so much the money at this point, it's the contacts I'm making. I'd be further ahead than I am now in sales if my full time job did not keep me running all over the southeast US for weeks at a time. I'm fortunate to have a neighbor to feed the hens while I'm away, but tending the garden is too much for her old bones, so it is not unusual for the entire garden to go to seeds and weeds for months at a time.

Part of the organic farm will be housing for hired help. I get labor, the get a room and all you can eat. I have a couple of people already lined up, I'll find out how serious they are when I finally get the land in the next year. In the long run, this is the seeds of an intentional community.

Marketing the product can be done in a wide variety of methods. Word of mouth seems to be the best, just can't beat it. I'll have around 10-15 buyers for their families one I get established. Not much, but its a start. One particular avenue to pursue is school lunch programs. There is a growing movement around here to buy local. I'll see how serious they are about that as well. To have a government contract...the stuff of small business owners dreams!

The job pays handsomely, even though some of the places I find my self in, I think maybe its not enough. I've run spreadsheets using production from my garden as the basis for projections, comparing my results with the stuff at the store, farmers markets, organic stores, and I am sure I can be not only competitive but likely blow the doors off what many people are paying for what they are getting, and do it with far less effort than many would expect. Permaculture works. Organic biointensive systems work. The systems I have put together work. It's all coming together, I just need the time. One more smooth year would be good, 2 would be better. Once the operation is working, I suspect I may be unemployable within a year.

Sometimes when I'm crawling through a tiny opening barely big enough for me to fit, into an empty tank of 98% sulfuric acid, while wearing rubber from top to bottom, in the summer heat, with my air brought in through a hose, I think about dirt and seeds, flowers and greens, tomatoes and squash. Is it a dream or is it motivation?

I see what men can build and how they can rip resources from the earth in an endless quest for production. I look at the cities, the highways, the machines. I see the vast numbers of the population. I see how little undeveloped land remains. Modern industrial civilization is not sustainable. There is another way. If it can be done, I fully intend to be a part of it.
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I_Like_Plants · Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?

So far the closest I am is taking 2 indoor pepper plants (an anaheim and a bell) and getting them from a few leaves and maybe one pepper on each, to lots of leaves and 12-15 peppers on each. I also brought one that's almost dead, a Serrano I think, inside and hopefully it will live and thrive.

I'd like to get a greenhouse built and grow stuff, it's the way to go around here. I'd also like to get some chickens going like the neighbor does, but I'm really only a guest here even if welcome here indefinately and things have to be taken slowly.

I'd like to be able to be really radical, as in raising guinea pigs or pigeons for food, harvesting local food sources from nuts and seeds to types of insects that might be really good.

Let's not forget Euell Gibbons was a child of the last Depression.

Future Farmers of America is very active here, to give you an idea of what kind of place this is..... I'm probably too old to join being in my mid-40s but there's a lot to learn around here.

Heineken · Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:32 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?

I hesitate to call myself a farmer, but I am very closely tied to the land and spend most of my time fiddling with it.

I own 25 acres in central Virginia (I live on that plot) and 50 acres in south-central Virginia (I visit that place every two weeks or so). I wish I owned more, and one day I probably will.

A few vignettes and thoughts:

I bought my first piece of land (part of the 25 acres) in 1983 and knew absolutely nothing. I didn't even know how to start a chainsaw, much less operate it safely and maintain it. All I knew was that I wanted a place where I could get away from Washington, DC, where I worked as a copy editor for a fairly famous magazine.

The tract was completely forested, and I decided I wanted a small field (so I could "see some sky"), so I started clearing vegetation (and learning about the implements for doing so as I went along). I did finally end up with a little field, although it was darn lumpy and darn stumpy. I also nearly burned the whole place down one day when the flames from a pile of brush I was burning got away from me. I ran around like an ant in a frying pan, stamping the ground madly with my Red Wing boots.

Come to think of it, I haven't burned a pile of brush in many many years. It would never occur to me to do so now. Pile it up neatly and leave it to rot, leave it for the birds to hide in. Burning piles of brush and leaves is idiocy, unless you simply don't have the room.

In those early years, I mowed the field with a hand-held brush knife (which I called a "swing thing"). My right shoulder has never fully recovered.

Another dumb thing I did in those early times was build a barbed-wire fence along the property line, through the woods. Don't do that. Falling trees and falling limbs will knock your fence to hell. To compound my idiocy, I cut my fence posts from shortleaf pine, then painted them with a very toxic preservative containing arsenic (I think the product was called Cuprinol; now banned). To further compound my idiocy, I used some fine living trees along the property line as fence posts, driving my staples right into them. Don't do that either. The trees will grow around the wire and be ruined.

I didn't know a red oak from a white oak. I didn't know nothin'.

I started building what is now a beautiful trail system. I took to that art less clumsily.

Somehow or other I ended up building a house on the property (along with my dad, who had recently completed a program in construction), and buying some neighboring lots as the years passed, and planting a menagerie of perennial food plants and trees, and raising chickens and mushrooms and tomatoes and so forth and so on. The aggy projects have a way of proliferating.

I've also done a lot of timber-stand improvement work, in atonement for those trees I damaged or wasted in my early years.

The 50-acre tract, which I bought this year, is a loblolly pine plantation, among other things. I'm off to a much better start managing and improving that place. I guess I've learned a few things in the quarter century since I bought my first small lot, although the holes in my knowledge and skills seem more numerous and more gaping than ever (and physical limitations are starting to appear as I get into my 50s).

All the land and buildings are paid for. I have no debts of any kind. I have a pension and an annuity and some other assets, and I still juggle some part-time editorial work (out of my house).

I did it by living below my means for decades in a place I hated (Washington), and saving the pennies that my imposed penury rained down on me. Also got some significant help from my parents.

We are about 1 mile from a town with a population of 500. I don't mind walking back and forth from there, and have done so.

I've never made a living off the land, which is why I hesitate to call myself a farmer. But the land is about all I care about.
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yooper · Coal Joined: May 19, 2005 Posts: 3 Location: Michigan

In 1999 I found out about Peak Oil and in 2000 I quit my job as a captain at Comair. I now own a 300 acre sugarbush where I tap 20,000 taps and make maple syrup. Best move I ever made.

SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 844

The farm that I live on has been in my family for 5 generations. My grandfather and father had some animals but no crops except hay and they never expanded the farm and basically left it in a primitive state and in disrepair. I don't blame them really because I didn't show any signs of wanting to farm while struggling through adolesence and early life. I spent 6 years in post-secondary education studying elecronics, aircraft maintenence and robotics learning in the end that I'm really not interested in high tech but actually interested in low tech. These days my dream is to rebuild the farm into a draft horse farm and a farm that is independent from industrial ag as much as possible.

The farm is 150 acres, of which, 40 acres is Carolinian forest, wetland and wild areas and the rest in small fields. The spring creek which I named the farm after, dries up every year in the summer but shows signs of having been something a lot bigger many millenia ago judging by the deep creek bed that it follows. The land is a hard unforgiving clay which makes excellent land for grass and hay but poor for any kind of gardening endeavour.

In the early days I remember we raised pigs, chickens, beef cattle, some horses but more on a subsistence level and not profit oriented. Everybody had jobs and the farming happened after work and on weekends. I guess the last real farmer on this land would have been my great-grandfather who died in 1925. No one had a clue about gardening and our gardens always ended up a mess of weeds that no one really cared about. Probably because of the clay soil I'm sure. It's a bitch!!!

I got away from the farm in my twenties and returned to it in my thirties. As I start my journey into my 40's I feel as if I've accomplished much here rebuilding it and experimenting with things on a small-scale while digging myself out of debt as fast as I could. Like Heineken, I am debt free, and more able to take on the financial burden of becoming independent.

I've had to learn nearly everything on my own by trial and error and through reading extensively. I also attend local old tyme events like steam shows and horse shows. The old timers are more than happy to engage in a conversation on how something was done in the old days. My antecendents further back may have known more about farming but my parents and grandparents had lost that knowledge. The most important lesson I learned from them was that you should not go the way of the industrial farmer.

I look forward to raising my son ( 1 yr ) and helping to raise my grandson ( yup you read that right, he's also 1yr, in fact, 10 days younger than uncle Eli ) to know the land, independence and how to appreciate how blessed we are.

I'm dreaming but maybe they'll be kind enough to keep me when I get old.

kjmclark · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 09, 2005 Posts: 306

Specop_007 · Expert Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 6102

Grew up on the farm. Roughly 1500 acres give or take. Down to about 500 now.

Kinda funny, I spent hours goin round and round in the dirt on a tractor wishin for something "better".

Went to college, chased the dream and caught it. Watching it fall through my hands like so much sand. That "dream" is a bullshit lie of long hours at work, bills, and stress. They sure sell it well though. Lots of money, big house, nice cars. The whole 9 yards. Looks good on the TV. Doesnt quite pan out in practice though for a great many of us.

I sure miss goin round and round in that dirt.
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topcat · Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 3:28 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?

I went into farming eleven years ago. Only prior experience was working a few summers (during high school) thinning peaches and picking tree fruit. This was 26+ years ago.

Got fed up with DC and the DoD, had a mid-life crisis, and later married for the first time. This was/is the first home I ever bought/mortgaged.

Have learned a lot, forgot some, much much more to learn. Most help, if not all, came from others farmers. I can honestly say that I have only met one farmer I did not like; and after I got to talking to him, I liked him! As a class/type/occupation, farmers are great bunch of people (IMO).

Just this year, another market-owner sold me/us peaches (out of his needed stock) so we would have some to sell over the Labor Day weekend. Remember, this year there was a devistating freeze arouund Easter. Without those bushels of peaches, which we sold only in small quantities (quarts), I would have just as well closed up and throwned down all my other produce.

Peaches, apples, apricots and grapes were here. Some remain, others have died/pulled out and replanted.

Learned that I like growing/selling/eating tomatoes. You can sell tomatoes for the same price as peaches. You lose a tomato plant, oh well. You lose a peach tree, that's four years or so until you see any money.

Have a small roadside market on a state road that is a summer tourist travel route. Have wholesaled very little, mostly apples as nobody cans anymore and when the apples come on, most tourists are gone. Made a few sales to restaurants over the years and at the end of every year I say 'I should have taken the time to go out and peddle produce to the restaurants.'

Several years, I was lucky enough to find winter work building houses. I am not as keen now to walk trusses carrying plywood as I was ten years ago. My wife is an RN, so she makes the mortgage and provides health coverage. I try to keep up with the property, building, and equipment when not actively farming.

There is a small town within 10 miles, and a larger one 20 or so but I don't see going there to sell. Depending on the situation/scenario, we would expand the variety of what we grow and reduce the volume so as to feed us and those nearby, maybe we would have buyers come here, maybe someone would create a central market-type point, who knows. The small town's folks would probably have enough of their own produce, or other larger farmers would fill their needs. I certainly would not want to go the bigger city in a SHTF scenario.

Hope all this doesn't muddy the water too much.

TC
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alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 703

really impressive! I didn't think that so many people without farming experience made the step and move to the land!
And all of you stayed. It seems nobodys missing his old life.

topcat · Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?

Well, I/we are here for now! Awhile back, we put up a for sale sign. The inevitable question always came up...'How much can I make?' My pat answer...'If it was easy, and you made lots of money, everybody would be doing it!'

I am sure that animals require much more knowledge, and making mistakes with them is not just like going out and planting another couple tomato plants.

But hey, my cubicle is now over 7,000 times bigger!!!
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Heineken · Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 9:55 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?

Heineken · Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 10:02 pm Post subject: Re: Who went into farming?