The business of small-scale farming

<furiously cutting and pasting to a Word doc, which is value added because I'm not scribbling with a crayon onto paper>

These are great ideas! Bill, great thread!

Keep 'em comin', folks!

Pony!

No kidding, Pony; I've got so many ideas now it's making my head spin!

bill and walter- would those numbers be for 1 pig sized pen, how many square feet per pig? How large shelter for 2 pigs? Spacing for electric wire? Walter, I know you know, and I value your advise. We would like 2 pigs(don't want them getting lonely and would have one to sell) Does anyone have a feed recipe for piggies. I would want naturally grown grains, and I currently get a mix for chickens, but I know the feed needs to be different. We have access to alot of excess whey and feed fish meal supplementally already. What else do I need and any tips about wintering a pig in Maine? I do love this thread!!!

Mark

We have a USDA butcher about 3 miles from here, and I got the costs from them. Too bad they don't do chickens, that would make my life easier.

mark

Mark, I'm going to defer to Walter or someone else on this mainly because I grow my porkers out during the spring/summer/fall and have little experience with over-wintering pigs. They do, however handle cold temps fine as long as they have a place to escape wet/windy conditions.

Mark, we don't pen rise. Our pigs are all out on pasture. There is a book, Small Scale Pig Raising, which is good and I believe covers these sorts of questions. It's only about $10 and covers a tremendous range of small scale pig raising issues.

Having said that, if I were pen raising the pigs, I would have a minimum of several hundred square feet per pig. The shelter does not need to be large as they just need cover frm the rain and blocking of the prevailing wind. Pigs like to snuggle tight.

Consider doing it in your new garden areas to improve the soil. Move them about just like with in tensive rotational grazing to avoid soil compactin. Follow them with chickens to weed and smooth the soil.

Spacing of electric wires is low nose and high nose positions. Generally about 6" 8" 12" 18" depending on the size of the pig. They need to be trained to the electric so have a good physical barrier outside it initially - even chicken wire will do.

For feed, pigs are extremely flexible. You can go the commercial pig chow route or feed them grass, pasture, hay, garden gleanings, waste milk, whey, waste bread, brewers spent grain, cheese trim, old eggs, etc. You spend as much as you want on feed.

For winter, the key is protection from the wind and plenty of bedding hay. An open shelter works great. Adding extra calories helps as they burn some energy to keep warm. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/01...l-housing.html
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2005/11...-pig-dens.html
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/01...g-ideas-1.html

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Walter,
Do you clip the teeth on your piglets?

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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
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Enforced tolerance is oppression

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Cornhusker, no, we don't clip teeth, tails or castrate (unless a customer asks and pays extra). We do very little in the way of interventions. I haven't found any of that to be necessary with our pigs on pasture. My understanding is the interventions primarily developed with the confinement industry. See this post for what we don't and do with piglets: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2007/02...rventions.html

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Not specifically, but lately I have had Mexicans stopping almost every week for eggs & chickens. Sometimes they will buy them live to butcher themself & others will buy them already butchered. The ones that have stopped here have come from about 55 miles away. They spread the word amooung themselves & that's the way they find out about me. Other than the language barrier, I have not had any trouble.

I raise 2-4 hogs each year. Keep at least 1 for us & sell the others. I have connections & get my bags of feed for $5 a bag versus $12 from the local mill. I feed any spare milk & scraps I have.

I raise each year. They also get commercial feed, but I do have them in tractors so they have access to fresh grass & bugs.

I have laying hens. I sell the eggs for $1.50 a dozen, but think I will raise it to $2 a dozen. Pigs get extra eggs to eat when they don't sell.

I plan to expand my berry patch & I also put in some fruit trees. Most of this is for our own use, but I will sell whatever extra we have.

I have dairy goats & make soap with the milk. I also make soy candles. I do several craft shows throughout the year.

I recently bought a couple of sheep & plan to start raising those for our own freezer & to sell.

I am working on getting a Dexter cow. For milk for our own use & once we get our herd established, meat for the freezer & to sell.

I have rabbits for meat. I also want to start selling rabbit poop to people in town. Great fertilizer for those that do not have a supplier of manure available. I also want to start some worm bins again.

Our county does fall farm tours. I did not get in on it this year, but plan to do it next year. It is 2 weekends where they advertise your place & people visit your farm. It has been very successful in our area & will be a great way to bring in potential customers. I just am not quite set up the way I'd like to be for this to happen.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

Practically anyone can small scale farm. All it takes is matching your available resources, manpower capabilities to discovered niche markets and exploiting those facets to your advantages.

With advances in BISF and hydroponics acreage is of minimal concern provided the right niche market is discovered.

www.squarefootgardening.com and www.cityfarmer.org both show excellent techniques on small scale gardening which can easily be increased into low overhead BISF applications.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

Do you sell many live birds like this relative to processed birds?

I've been considering giving this a try myself, but haven't made much effort along this line just yet.

.....Alan.

To Mexicans, yes. They buy live birds more than butchered ones.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

Very interesting, a fellow stopped by today becuase he saw we had dairy cattle. He buys bull calves and was looking for a new source. Anyways, Mark told him we will have some feeder pigs soon. After talking with this fellow we learned that he used to farrow out over 100 sows. His biggest buyers for butcher hogs were Mexicans who wanted to do the butchering themselves. They would come out to his farm, he would shoot the pig, and they would do the rest. The only thing he would tell them beforehand was that they need to clean up their mess. If they didn't they were not welcome to buy anymore pigs. He said it was good buisness. He would get around $300 a pig. No hauling or dealing with processor and no dealing with butchering yourself. Mmmm

Heather

Thanks for everyone who has replied to this thread! It has been some great reading and given me some good ideas to ponder. I am not on the farm yet, but my dad and I are researching and beginning to build some farm based enterprises on his 160 acres. It is great to hear other people from around the country doing some of the things that I am interested in.

If you want, you can check out my BLOG to read some of our ideas and what we have happening. Like I said, not a lot is going on, but we are adding a cow and a steer tomorrow, we do have some backyard chickens, our garden, and this falll we will be transplanting some berries in order to have better access for picking during berry season (less multiflora rose and ticks). We are also researching hogs and are trying to find some people raising heritage breeds on pasture in our area so that we can talk to them.

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There's a swine operation in an adjacent county that does this. I'm not sure that there's an ethnic population involved, but he did tell me that he sold about a fourth of his market pigs this way...

I knew nothing about ferns I just knew we had a bunch growing wild.
My asian friend told me I have three kind. Two in large numbers.
1 is bracken as you mentioned, one is sensitive fern, and the one I have in small amount is cinnamon fern.
she eats the bracken and sensitive fiddle heads. I dont have enough cinnamon for her to pick so she leaves them. She cooks them in a wok with butter and soy sauce. she also eats them raw in the field as she picks them.
I sell them in ziploc bags and weigh them at 3 ounces for 10 dollars and cant pick or grow enough to supply the asian market here. I guess if I had workers come out and pick when the fiddle heads are coming up mostly in the spring I could pick and package more. I dont label them or do anything other than the store I sell to has a freezer refridge unit that keeps my ziploc bags of fiddle heads and has something written in chinese on the box they store them in. Im guessing it says fiddle heads LOL

This is an amazing thread. Thank you to everyone who posted such valuable information!

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Impacting The Earth Little, My Children Much
My blog: Http://yourimpactmatters.com

I raise a few turkeys for home use, but this year I had alot of people ask if I had any extra I'd like to sell. This thread is giving me some ideas about next year and maybe raising some extra ones for sale. We plan to retire early and are looking for ideas to bring in some extra cash and keep us busy. I love raising turkeys.

Chin up it can be done. I'm in my twenties and am getting near being on the farm 5 days a week. The other two i will manage my business. The farm will provide 100% of all living expenses plus expansion capital. The business will then be putting money towards other items. Like Buying a bigger place. It can be done. I use the working for me strategy. The seeds work for me, the chickens, pigs, trees, all of them work for me. Time management is huge as is scale. An earlier post explained how many chickens, pigs it would take to bring in 10k. I try and raise feed for my critters because i pay $XX.00 per bag for feed if i grow it i can sell it to the chickens for the same money. The time management is huge if i can spend alittle extra time in order to set up so that it runs without much babysitting from myself i can use that time to work elsewhere.

Mine was more about the young mom with three kids who wanted to not daycare them while husband worked in the big city. Goats worked for me with my horse and cattle background. I was an avid old Countryside Magazine and Back to Basic reader, knew Nubians was the way to go, and just jumped in feet first. Milking started right away on contract to a candy maker. Showing which is where I got my export, winning which then meant breeding stock sales.

Location was huge, being under 2 hours from all parts of Houston is a large customer base. I have old die hard customers from 21 years ago, who still come, but most customers are new organic raw milk folks. We have no mortgage, we have no debt, husband now owns his own construction company after years working for others in Houston.

Farming is a really nice income for one person, but it is a whole lot of work. I make a good income, but I only pay for major medical and perscriptions, I do top out my 401 K each year, but I also don't pay a mortgage. Being diversified is huge, milk, meat, semen, breeding stock, registered stock, showing, soap and tolietries, honey, eggs, and garden produce, it's a whole package.

Not that I have never brought someone their milk when I was on the way past them, but delievery? When would you have time? Do you pay your children for their labor, and yourself? Profit is not salary, if you dont' pay yourselffirst you will never succeed. Your salary should be the first, not the last debit. It's bad enough having customers interupting you every single day...and these are yuppie customers who would faint at the site of a placenta even on clean shavings. Chores in the morning is not just about milking, it's about clean and tidy, picking up any dog poop, and you leave the barn knowing that not one thing is out of place. You will simply loose customers to cleaner farms if you have a trasy place.

Having a place outside your home for customers to pick up their milk is key.

Thankfully soap sales are so brisk that I will be able to pare down my milk customers. Being a beck and call girl for anyone who calls at any time, even Sundays is a pain after awhile. Now 21 years later, I can say no, I have Sunday and Mondays off, even from shipping soap. Most will be pared down as I raise my price per gallon others will be sent to the new dairy where I hope to lease my does during milk, leaving me with just 12 to milk for soap and small sales. A gallon of milk sells for $4 profit here, made into cheese it's $8, but a gallon of milk makes over $100 profit in soap. Vicki

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Vicki McGaugh
Nubian Soaps
North of Houston TX
www.etsy.com/shop/nubiansoaps

A 3 decade dairy goat farm homestead that is now a retail/wholesale soap company and construction business.