What do you do for income?

My main income is this sharpening, and power tool repair shop, but I am spending every nickle I can scrape up to build my maple syrup operation up so I can make enough from that so I can reduce my paycheck at the shop, and pay someone els to be here 70 hours per week.

I want to get back into farming full time

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http://lownfamilymaplesyrup.com/ max@lownfamilymaplesyrup.com
Professional Tool. 1220 Woodmere Ave,Traverse City, MI. 49686. 231-941-8003. http://professionaltool.com/

It should be noted that Eliot Coleman has several significant cash streams besides the market garden. When he wrote his 1st book he was a hand tool consutant for Smith & Hawken. He has written at least 2 very good selling books and designs tools which are sold through Johnnys' seed catalog. Note that his books have significant portions devoted to tools--tools he sells. He has enough money to pay several people to work 1 1/2 acres with hand tools he designed. My guess is that the money from his tool sales and books is far better than his farm.

In my copy of his 1st book (he may have updated the numbers) he was pushing a model of a small farmer grossing $5k/acre so $25k gross sales for a 5 acre farm.

I am a self-employed professional land surveyor with no employees in a fairly rural area but with modern equipment am able to measure a lot of land, reconcile record descriptions and draw maps each week.

There is more demand for my services than I care for but maybe I can earn enough to retire in just a few more years and garden even more than I now do.

OH YEAH...nice point! There's a bunch of back to the land folks who'll be glad to tell ya how they make a living solely on their farm...for $25 a book, please. Not that their advice isn't valuable and worthy, but that just a bit disingenuous, don't you think?

For example, I love Joel Salatin and I think he has some things worth saying, but c'mon, without the books and lecture fees and seminars and etc., could he really make a living off his farm? His one book says in the preface a man and a woman can indeed gross $25,000 a year raising chickens by working 50 hours a week. I think yer great, Joel, but there are some mathematical processes you left out of that sentence. 2 times 50 = 100 hours a week. That's 5,200 hours a year, so based on your gross intake, that is $4.81 an hour...BEFORE expenses. LOL.

You know, if it is so possible -- as these gurus say -- to make such money on rural land without an outside job, why are so many of my country friends and neighbors poorer than city folks? It's not cuz they are dumber, and it isn't cuz they just don't know what they are doing. Hmmm...must be another reason...

I submit that it's cuz agriculture is the lowest return on investment endeavor in the country (which it is). 1-2% ROI per annum is considered knockout good! To get that, you need to work like the dickens, all the time, and have a sharp pencil and an even sharper mind about how to be a least-cost producer. Plus you have to be content with an lower overall standard of living than your city kinfolks. It's possible to do it, heck I have done it for 16 years or so, but it is not for the weak-kneed.

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

As I recall, Salatin and his both wife worked full time while living in his parents upstairs, and raised most of their food on the farm, in order to afford the start-up costs.

Doable? Yes, if you AND your spouse have the endurance, and your parents are willing to have you live upstairs!

You can make a very nice living off of a small farm. I have been making all of my money strictly on farm for 18 years. It isn't easy and you have to do everthing Jim S. said.

The key is direct marketing and sales of your products. It is pretty easy for me to generate $10-15k/acre/year with minimal help. I'm farming 18 acres and have a nice cash flow. I personally know several farmers doing over $1miilion in sales annually on 80 acres or less. So it is possible, and I am not selling a book or anything else.

What kills most farmers including my neighbors is growing a commodity crop that is then sold to a processor or sold through a broker. The farmers' price for their crops is out of their control and has little bearing on their actual production costs-they get what the market is paying on the day they sell. A friend had to sell of the family farm because he had 2 years when onions cost him 4 cents/lb to produce and the brokers were only paying 2 cents/lb. The only thing he had making money was sugar beets. They closed the sugar factory, which he owned 25k shares in and he was out of luck. The next closest factory was a 50 mile drive instead of 25 miles. He is trying to work out a deal to get back into farming but on a smaller scale and growing specialty products that he sells and markets himself. Unfortunately, it is hard to convince someone whose family has been growing commodities for generations that there is another way to farm.

I'm driving a 20 year old f250 not a Benz, but it is paid for. As I said in an earlier post, I am not currently drawing a salary but my mortgage and living expenses are covered by renting the farm to my business and by payments I receive every month to repay money I loaned the business for equipment and operating costs. All of the money comes from the production and sale of fresh veg. What would be my salary is reinvested in equipment and perrenial crops such as rhubarb, asparagus, rosemary, fruit etc. I am investing heavily in equipment eliminate labor wherever possible.

Besides my full time job...Sell snakes.

Don't forget that we have more expenses than they do. I gave up and told my sis-in-law (who lives in a trailer with a 8' x 10' yard and a BIG SCREEN TV) that if I HAD the THOUSANDS she expects me to spend on her family for cheap plastic crap every Christmas I'd BUY A BARN!!!! City people don't have to worry about the cost of building fence or how much you loose when livestock gets killed or sick and die. They simply do not have those expenses to tend with. Sure I could afford a big screen TV if my family lived in an apartment, but I believe we have a richer life. I guess it just depends on how everyone individually defines a "better" standard of living.

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Joy Alba
Oak Hill Ranch
since 1834
Bedias, Texas