How much to pay for help?

[piglady]

How much do you think I would have to pay a week for a full time farm hand in rural southern Texas? We would provide a house to live in (small but clean and well kept) and all the meat and milk a family woul need and a plot for a garden. His duties would include feeding, birthing, tagging, pasture rotation, fence building, mowing, milking a small dairy herd of cows, gardening and just about anything that needs to be done on a sustainable pasture base farm with dairy cows, pigs, poultry, and horses. We would handle all the marketing and dealing with the public sales.

[fantasymaker]

Whats the local kid at Micky Ds make? Add $100 a week.

[farmergirl]

Wow. That sounds like my dream job! I do all those things at home on the farm, but have to go out to make a living in the city just to afford the lifestyle. I would figure out how much per hour you think is a fair, living wage and then subtract from that for the housing and food you will provide them. It sounds like the perfect opportunity for the right person. Good luck!

[Riverdale]

With what you desribed, a salary of $250/week in addition to the 'room and board' would be in the ball park. That is if the rent for a house like this is about$500/mo and there is a family.

[piglady]

Thank you Riverdale. That's exactly what I was thinking but had no idea what the going rate was. With a home and food for his family, he wouldn't need a lot more and if his wife wanted to work, they should make it just fine.

[fin29]

That's $13k per year, and the person would probably have to claim the value of the lodging, meat, milk, etc. as payment in kind on their taxes, so in reality, that would be a pretty tough pill to swallow..Then add his insurances, his vehicle (or are you providing that for all the chores he's doing?), etc. I wouldn't do it for that.

[anniew]

and health insurance...

[Riverdale]

Originally Posted by piglady

Thank you Riverdale. That's exactly what I was thinking but had no idea what the going rate was. With a home and food for his family, he wouldn't need a lot more and if his wife wanted to work, they should make it just fine.

Just remember tho, you get what you pay for

[piglady]

I was going to share a percent of the profit at the end of the year. The better the farm does, the better he does. If we lose money, I carry all the expense and risk and he can walk any time he finds a better deal. As for tax law, if you are required to live on the site for work purposes (and he is), it's not included in the income. sort of like merchant marines live on the tow boat/ship while working but don't have to report their room and board.

[highlands]

Originally Posted by Riverdale

Just remember tho, you get what you pay for

Sadly, I have found that saying to be true only about 10% of the time. That is why I stopped having employees. Far better to do it myself.

To the original poster, I wish you the best of good fortune in your search. Perhaps you will be lucky. Finding good help is very hard.

[ErinP]

Keep in mind, that is basically the type of job my husband, and many of our friends and neighbors do.
No one would work for that little. Especially if there's milking involved.

House&utilities(gas/electric/water), work vehicle, and wages are typical. Meat is not as common, but it's not uncommon, either.

the "worst" job we ever had was 12 years ago: House, utilities, work pickup, meat and $1000 per month.
$2000 per month seems to be the ballpark these days. (in addition to house/utilties/pickup) The worst I've seen lately is about $1500...

Profit sharing is nice. But I woudn't offer it straight out of the gate. Nor would I hire on for it.

WRT profit sharing: I want to expand on that a bit so you don't misunderstand. Working for wages tends to be a pretty thankless job. It's hard to have your boss and landlord be not only the same person, but also your nearest neighbor.
We all know that ag. work is long hours in usually less-than-ideal working conditions. When it's your own place, it's often worth it. When it's not, wages and benefits needs to make up the difference.
There's also a lot of risk involved. Again, such is the nature of the job. But when it's your place, it's your risk. And it's worth it.
When it's someone else's place, it's usually not worth the risk of whether you're going to make $12K this year, or $24K. Does this make sense?
There's no ownership to make it worthwhile...

Why would I want to work for a maybe-profit in November, when I know that one good argument can leave me both homeless and jobless in September?

[piglady]

I agree totally. The only reason we are doing this is because Ken is now disabled and I can't do it all myslef. I guess we'll just sell out and move to town. Anyone got a bullet for this gun!

[||Downhome||]

whats a job like that pay on average. what would you rent the house for. if sold what would you sell the meat and milk for. Id take the average for the job subtract the value
of the other two (housing and food). theres the pay fair and basic or give him the option
on the food maybe he would prefer to go to the grocery? Maybe instead of all that you
could rent the house out and hire the work between a couple part time hands and pay
hourly. Two sets of able hands can make the work go very fast as opposed to one man trying to do it alone.
I myself was in a situation like this I orig started renting the apartment then took a job
with the landlord the apartment was above the buisness. lets just say I would never do that again. It turned in to a bad situation very fast.

[Jennifer L.]

Last year the Guatemalan milkers on the farms around here were getting housing, milk, meat and $600 a week.

Don't know if they were legal or not.

Jennifer

[All country]

Would there be someone else to share duties with? At first glance this might sound great, but being married full time to a job gets old quick. Could this person expect to have any planned days off?

The way you've written this it sounds as it this person would have to assume all of the labor responsibilities. Do you have any ideas of the actual hours involved?
Son-in-law was doing something like this, only milking a small herd of around 50. Even with 2 part time employees, with all his other responsibilities he ended up working 70+ hours a week. It didn't take long to figure out that his *great* job wasn't great when he took into consideration the number of hours he was working for his salary & benefits.

I would suggest you set down and figure the expected hours to do the job. Then add the value of rent, utilities, meat, & milk (the garden plot while nice cannot be figured into the pay). Use this figure when deciding the actual salary you plan to pay. Personally I wouldn't go low dollar on this. Whenever we've hired work done, we pay very well for the job, as a result we seldom have a hard time hiring good help when we need it.

[RonM]

Pay them $12. an hr to start plus the house and milk...After a few months if it works out got to $15.. an hour.....