If you had 80 free acres and some start-up money...what would you do?

If I was offered an opportunity like this here is what I would do...I would start out with Laying hens, then progress to Pasture raised broilers..Eventually adding pastyred raised Pork and Beef...All of this done using the Salatin method as a guide....Also Berries and a large garden plot to sell at farmers market...And a 5 acre melon feild..Watermelons always sell well...I would slowly work my way into a CSA type vegetable farm with the animals as a side.....Unless the barn meets modern dairy standards it will take a goodly chunk of money to get a dairy license....Once that is reached I would add milk and artisian cheeses to the package..........LostNeurope

All the ideas sound really good but I have ONE piece of advice for you. Start SMALL and SLOWLY build. Test the market before planting acres of anything by having a small "test plot" and see what the market pay you for it.. keep one half of ALL produce to donate/CSA to the poor to keep the owner happy. Get a few laying hens and broilers. Raise them together until the broilers are ready to butcher and then keep the layers in that coop and collect eggs for sale/donation in a few months. Learn what breeds work best for you, etc.

Start ANY new-to-you one at a time. At least in my experience, it can get overwhelming to suddenly learn about oodles of new things about each and every species (what they eat, best way to house/fence them, herbal wormers, etc). Start with YOUR favorite (or if at a loss, the owner's).

That all being said, I think it is a fantastic opportunity.... and if you have ANY thought to buying some day, try to hammer out a "first option to buy" clause at a set price.. perhaps some of the sweat equity can be used as a "down payment". We are living on a very inexpensively rented acreage with a handshake agreement that we get first option to buy.. unfortunately, the owner has built a HUGE garage out here to store his antique cars (his toys) to the tune of 50K and we had no set price at the time we moved here 8 years ago... the price of land has sky rocketed and we will probably never be able to afford what he would ask for it NOW... so if possible, get a set price NOW or one that would be adjusted for inflation at a set level (so much per year?) and have it in WRITING.

I also agree that eventually you will want to be as diversified as possible. You are homeschooling two young children? Eventually they will be a great help with chores... if they are too young right now, they will be more a hinderance than a help <G>...

Good luck and keep us updated!!! Sounds like a SUPER opportunity and I wish you huge success!!!

Terri

so my wife was just telling me that one of the programs in green bay is giving cooking lessons, showing people how to use staple foods and move away from more expensive pre packaged foods

CSA would be great offer lots of worker shares for the locals give to the food pantry you may get some of the pantry people to come out for pick your own times and show them how to can maybe even set up a small canning kitchen 10 acers will do a lot of csa gardens graze beef ,pork ,meat sheep and goats add some apple orchards

you can feed a lot of people on 80a


we were out to visit one of our local csa farms they have 7 acers of garden and about 6 more with the rest of their goats and sheep the goats are milked and it is used to make soap

they charge 380 for farm pickup csa and do some worker shares but the majority of thier csa is going to chicago 2 hours away for 500 a share

if i were you take a go at it make it profitable keep the money in the bank if you ever find yourself not living here you will have the $ in the back to buy your own place
remember to traet it as a bussines with a space foryou to live than your home
let the bussines buy whatever is needed rather than you using personal stuff.

or it makes seperating what is yours from what is bussines, should it ever be disolved or you move or terms change ,much easier.

i would plant whatever fruit trees you could as soon as possible since it takes a few years for them to become established and produce fruit.
Blueberries, pears, and apples are wonderful maybe a few nut trees like almond, hazel or pecan as well.
Get those in the ground first and then worry about the rest.

A market dominated by one single huge producer is one thats begging for a small, lean, and flexible competitor. Think of all the customers that are having one need not met by that producer. Find the main thing their customers complain about, fix it, and boom, instant market. The big guy has already penetrated. All of their marketing dollars work in your favor.

check out this page for some interesting ideas regarding farm festivals and such.... http://rareseeds.com/shows/

Since you want that vacation, having animals is pretty much out of the question, which does limit your choices.

You might consider a rural bed and breakfast or retreat for city folks to "get away from it all" (be sure to cosider the price of liability insurance on that one).

If you are near a small rural community, there are grants available through various sources if you provide employment and development opportunities to the community. So, if you start up a business that employs several folks from the community you might check into the possibility of getting grant money.

You can develop it into an "authentic old tyme village" type tourist attraction (google "missouri town 1855 for some ideas.) But something like that is a huge commitment and again, insurance would be astronomical.

There are just a zillion ideas out there. Personally, I would put up a big fence and just let the world go by. But that's me. LOL

donsgal

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Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

Permaculture.

Community (but not consensus based). You need a lot of folks to do all of this. During the warm season, you can stock up on "interns".

Do everything: all crops, aquaculture, beef, dairy, goats, pigs, chickens .... dont' forget a livestock guardian dog or two.

Full farm eco system. Systems feed systems. The offal from the pig harvest feeds the chickens, the fish and the dogs.

Before selling or giving stuff away, first get to the point that 90% or more of your own food needs are coming from the farm.

Create an eco village.

Agro forestry: Four times fewer trees produce just as much wood as a thick forest, and sun gets to the ground.

Food forests. A hundred different species growing together and supporting each other - near zero input, but lots of food coming out.

Demonstration for big ag to give up petrochemicals. Have monocrop lanes between bands of permaculture diversity. Note higher yield per acre without having to buy fertilizers.

More ponds.

Keylining.

Now, back to the community: arrange to have within four year, 20 adults that live there year round - that this is their permanent home. This gets into something about long term living situations that would take me hours to convey. Prepare for 30 interns to live there throughout the warm season. And then prepare for 50 more people at any given time to stay on the land for workshops and the like.

What are your energy generation options there?

Electric tractor. Electric vehicles. Everything electric. No petrol.

The first year will be a focus on some simple plantings, planning for the future crops, and for getting some structures built to house people. You then need to start rounding up people. For the first two years you will need to pay almost everybody. With the right kind of people, you can then get lots of interns and the like to not only show up, but to be productive.

Get the three sepp holzer videos. Watch them each at least three times.

When you have more than five people, start preparing three meals a day for everybody. Set a schedule. Breakfast at 7am sharp. Circle up at 8 sharp: everybody spends 30 to 90 seconds talking about what they did yesterday and 30 to 90 seconds talking about what they are going to do today.

Start making lists of everything. Especially a todo list. And each item on the todo list might be broken down to other todo lists. Use a computer so you can cut and paste items on the list to re-prioritize. Some list items will need to have dates on them ("spring 2009", "early september 2007").

Don't forget art! Facilitating a few guest artists each year will pay off in spades in so many ways.

There must be one person that is ultimately in charge of everything. And then there are responsibilities that are delegated to others. You will be tempted to give everybody equal say and do things with consensus. DON'T DO IT! The consensus advocates are right, consensus does work: slowly and for very small groups. It has it's beauty and it's up sides. And it really slows down somebody with vision.

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....................At this point in time You really can't discern his Ulterior motives for the 80 acres as too whether , or NOT , he will surrender ownership too you after you have negotiated a contract that contains , a Purchase Price and a method of Payment and any additional caveats he may want to include as part of the payment . Without a contract in hand you are just an indentured servant with NO legal standing working the land , albeit with good intentions and should you have a falling out He will prevail and all your work will be for naught . , fordy...

I would open it to school tours (of a working farm). Possibly offer a room or two to
someone wanting to learn how to homestead. (that would help with the maintance of
the farm and look after it when you take the month off. How about a u-pick farm
apples, strawberries, asparagus, etc. What a great opportunity, I hope it all works out for you.

You bring that many people into the mix and you are BEGGING for seventeen kinds of hell. The OP would be well-advised not to give over ONE IOTA of control or management of this land to anyone, or they will be regretting it for the rest of their natural life.

Have you done any of this yourself, Paul, or are you just theorizing here? If you have actually done this and found good people who have not tried to steal you blind, and "take over" I would be completely amazed. My personal experience would indicate that the LESS you have to do with other people having any control or say in your life the better off you are.

YMMV

donsgal

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Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

Excellent point Fordy.

Protecting your investment and interests should be the number one priority. Get it in writing and have a lawyer look it over before you do anything.

donsgal

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Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

Eggs from pastuered chickens are worth a good bit because of superior quality and consumers who want to be ethical as possible in their purchases. The last issue of mother earth news had a long article on this.

Just wondering what type of farming/homesteading you do now??

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I live in a house right now with eight people. Things are quite smooth.

Last September it was hell. I tried to use consensus.

But now, I'm in charge. My philosophy is that I get to make all the decisions, but if I don't hear everybody out, then I'll be here all by myself and I don't want that. Everybody who is here now is cool with that.

But this isn't a farm. This is a house in the city. I'm here trying to harvest money so I can buy land and get back on the farm.

I had 80 acres a few years ago. Sounded like a really similar property. Couldn't be seen from the county road; surrounded on three sides by thousands of acres of forest. You can see some pics here. I had just terraced the land, built some more ponds, put in a couple of swales and planted a few hundred trees when I decided to get divorced. At that time I was gearing up to move people onto the land. To do something great, you need people. And not just a few hired hands. Lots of people that are living on the farm and want to live on the farm the rest of their lives. All working toward a common vision.

Now that I'm in the city for the sole purpose of getting back on the farm, I spend all of my spare time preparing for the farm again. Research, research, research. And the biggest issue, make no mistake, is people. You need people to make a full farm ecosystem work. And communities are riddled with problems that slow progress. I would guess that 75% of my research since I left the farm has been in communities. Classes, books, conferences, workshops, visiting communities, interviewing people that are entering and leaving communities, and don't forget the mighty google! The house I'm in is a big experiment for me.

While you point out that it can be a big headache, you forget the upsides. Many hands make light work. Lots of these folks can bring experience, knowledge and fun that is not currently on the land. The trick out of all this is to enhance the upsides and mitigate the downsides.

I think the thing to do is to model something like this after a corporation, or a retirement center rather than a commune. Communes (now called intentional communities) work provided that everybody is naturally productive and everybody is getting along. As soon as any two people are not getting along, everything mysteriously stops until their stuff can be resolved. Some groups can still get some stuff done, but that is more the exception than the rule. The premier book on IC says that 90% of the IC's fail. And of those remaining 10%, things are not exactly smooth as silk. The farms that I know of where things are working really well have somebody that is in charge (consensus might be used in some aspects, but the real productivity happens where there is one person in charge).

Advocates of IC would say that people cannot live together long term without equality between everybody. I think that is a pile of horse potatoes. For every viable IC, there are probably hundreds of retirement homes. And what about apartment complexes? The military?

This does wander into the territory that has plagued several of the longer lasting ICs that have a lot of turnover: when people reach a certain age, they need a certain level of ownership - for long term safety; to be able to plant a tree and harvest the fruit years later; to pass something on to their children; etc. With a private entity, I think this sort of thing can be managed. It won't be quite as good as owning your own property, but it will be close. And for a lot of people, living in this sort of community has a huge plus when compared to living alone.

Please, allow me to paint a picture: Imagine a few years down the road, a very large house with a huge common room for the meals and for visiting. And off to the side somewhere is a huge media room. Imagine that there are things scheduled every day for work and for entertainment. Most of the people work on the farm, but a few work off of the farm. Some people have large private spaces, and some people share private space with several other people. Rent includes meals and the cleaning of the common space. Rent is high. And people that work on the farm get paid well. The people that cook get paid well. The people that clean get paid well. Somebody sharing a small private space could probably pay for all of their expenses and have money left to spend by working a humble 20 hours per week on the lowest paying job on the farm - let's call this person an intern. Somebody with a lot of experience in some aspect gets paid more per hour, but they have a larger private space. Somebody else "works from home" and the farm is their home. They feel the higher rent is well worth it for the community and the fact that the farm philosophies align with their own.

The OP asked, in the subject line "If you had 80 free acres and some start-up money...what would you do?" - Well, I know exactly what I would do. I've been polishing up my answer for that for ten years.

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[raising chickens] [diatomaceous earth] [permaculture] [rocket mass heater] [lawn care]

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...................Everytime another person (other than family , as in wife and kids) , is added too the mix the probability for disagreements increases by about 10 factorial , LOL and things get messy . One 60 horse tractor with 4x4 , frontend loader , and box blade as well as posthole digger can do the work of 40 illegal aliens with or without green cards . Just a thought !! , fordy...

I think that this can be true. Especially when things are less than organized.

I remember working on several farms when I was younger. I don't remember conflict. You were given a task and you did it.

More recently, I have visited several farms where things run like clockwork. People have their jobs and they do them. If they don't their job gets given to somebody else.

And that's the way companies work. If the company is less than organized, it has the disagreements problem too. If the company is well organized, it thrives.

Apartment buildings, retirement homes, condos are all quite similar.

I was thinking of having both. Only the tractor would be electric and the people would be Americans.

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[raising chickens] [diatomaceous earth] [permaculture] [rocket mass heater] [lawn care]

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All I want to know is..is this guy married? LOL..

hey man go for it... you asked, I answered. More power to you. I wish you the best.


Just remember it's a lot easier to take your french frier with you than your new turkey coop, farm store or fencing...

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i second or third it, get it in writing and signed by both party's then register it at the court house to make it a legal document

We're back Well, let me first say, Paul.....I can see that you have done an extensive amount of research on this...but a commune is not going to happen. I DO agree about someone having to be in charge....and yes, people are essential...but that(communal type living) is just not even a part of this equation.
So. That being said. We really appreciate the suggestions! There are just so many possibilities...we just need to look at all of them and figure out which ones to start with....what to plan for in the future...and what to write up in our proposal.
There is a market for local beef, Pastured chickens, maybe pastured pork.
WE are mostly into growing organic vegetables and fruits..but diversity is key.

Currently we are on 5 acres. Yep, it's quite a step....but we of course would begin slowly and work on up from there. We have been on this acreage for a short time, and have 3/4 of it in production...so hard work is just a part of who we are.

I, personally wanted to get away from dealing w/ lots of animal for the simple fact the they take up lots of time and energy...and you can't leave...come home late etc. I think we will have several pastured animals, though. They are just nessasary.
For the "going away" part--I just meant that IF we ever have the money...I'd like to be able to take the kids away for several days in the winter...when things are not in the ground. That is a luxury that we may never be able to have...I'm just dreaming, perhaps. I guess that I want to make sure that our "family time" doesn't take back seat here. It is easy to get caught up in careers and forget WHY you wanted that life in the first place. That why starting slowly is important, I guess. Now I'm just rambling.
We are going to work on a few proposals and will post to let everyone pick on them Hopefully we'll have them in a week or so.

So we're mulling on u picks, CSA, festival, berries....and so many others......whew.
thanks!