Buying land and starting a farm

The OP asked: "How does anyone begin a farm in this type of situation? It's not feasible to try to save up $50,000 for a down payment but I don't see any reasonable alternatives so far. Any help?"

I presented a few options.

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http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

I've spoken with several of Joel Salatin's former and then current apprentices. They all felt like they got way more than they gave and several of them have bought/rent farms near JS so that they can continue the relationship.

I second this. From what I hear, the people were beyond pleased. The experience and wisdom these apprentices receive is truly invaluable.

Find a farm where the owner will do owner financing, and do the deal that way.

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-Northern NYS

I see people sometimes fall into this little mind-trap; they earn $40/hour at a wage-slave job. So they get to thinking that all of their time is 'worth' $40/hour cash. [or more]

My time is 'cash-worth' X/hour, so it is not worth my time to cook my own meals. There are others who earn minimum-wage, who can cook my meals, serve it to me, and clean up the mess afterward.



Now I sit here on my homestead. I buy trees, I plant trees, I water trees, and some of them die. My cash and my time went into those trees. But only some of them survive. Do I place a value on those trees equal to my hourly-rate?

What if it will take 10 years for that tree to finally mature and produce fruit?

What about our livestock? Livestock can take a lot of my time, sometimes they breed and I get more livestock. Sometimes they get injured, sometimes they die. Do I place a value on our livestock equal to my hourly-rate?

If so, if my time is worth $40/hour, then every egg I produce is worth $100.

Every rack of pork ribs is then worth $1,000.

Can I market eggs for $100 each? Can I market ribs for $1,000? No.



There is an appropriate time for weighing things in terms of the 'cash worth' of your time. That is an appropriate mind-set for a wage-slave. A person who does a task for a set hourly wage. A master-slave, or employer-employee relationship, where one pays the other cash for doing a task.



A farm is a business. A farmer is paying property taxes, fuel bills, tractor payments, and a lot more. I am not aware of any small-scale organic food-producers who are clearing much more than minimum-wage for themselves.

But they are not wage-slaves. They are not doing it for an hourly wage. They can not value their time in terms of 'cash-worth'.

There is no money to pay an apprentice $10/hour for his/her labour.

If you seek to be a paid a decent cash-worth for your time, then go seek elsewhere.

If you seek to be a farmer. You do not need credit. You do not need cash up front. You do not have to go into debt. You can do those things, but you do not 'have' to do those things. There are other options.



Good luck

__________________
http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

That is a valid decision under a narrow set of circumstances. Can you get paid the $40/hour for every waking hour of your day? Probably not. If you can earn another hours pay by not taking timeout to cook your own meal, then keep working and order takeout. But if you are sitting at home in front of the TV, that time is worth about $0.00 / hour so get up and go cook dinner.

When I was working in an office, I rarely went out to eat. I packed a lunch and usually ate at my desk. I saved money and kept working. I have almost always been all or part owner of where i work and I do consider my time too valuable to go out to eat and I my money too hard won to waste on meals out.

ET1SS. As to your last sentence/ WHATEVER YOU THINK. Im 65, and ive never seen any other way to get into farming than to have money by the trainload. Now, If I had waited to save up all the money I needed, and started at age 19 when I started farming, Id be around my age now before I had all the money saved id need. Beyone other bills, ect. I can tell ya that farming, after doing it 1/2 a lifetime is hard/ To start out at this age is ignorant, idiotic, and short lived.

I bought my first 40 acres with my enlistment bonus in 1979. I havent taken a banknote to buy land or equipment since. Although I have taken a note to buy livestock in the past.

So yes you can do it you just have to be prepared to not have alot of frills or 2 acres worth of equipment setting around, buy what you need and be prepared to work on it a little.

I started out at 8 with 6 ewe lambs my parents bought me to chase around to strenthen my legs after polio, at 12 I left home and rented 14 acres. I had 60 sheep, 20 cows, a Farmall B and full line of farm equipment. At 14 I had 60 acres in wheat. At 16 I had a 4020 JD tractor and was farming 600 acres, 200 that I was buying on time, owner financed. Married at 18 to a very special girl, that loved farm life, canned everything we could scrounge up. At 20 we were farming 1000 acres, 400 paid for and another 200 financed by owner. At 24 we owned all 2200 acres and had 600 sheep and 100 cows and raised wheat, grass seed and peppermint. At 27 I had a bad polio relapse and decided we needed to cut back. We cut back to the best 1000 acres, just wheat and peppermint, sold the livestock and 1/2 the land and equipment. It can be done even today. We lived very cheaply in a small cabin, ate from the garden, meat, goats milk and gleanning the woods around us. Health problems and several bad accidents put us out of farming at 37 in 1991. A good job in town, good times and careful savings and we retired in 2010. We are enjoyng a simple, easy retired life now....James

Your experience is a lot like my father's. I understand.

My father worked fulltime to support his farming hobby. 200 acres, plus share-cropping. He ran cattle on half of his land and almond orchards on half. Plus all his sharecropped land was in almonds. I grew up doing that.

He tried to get my sons to takeover his operation. Before he passed away, during his 60 years of farming. I don't think a year passed that his farm was ever self-supporting. He had to work fulltime to support that money-pit.

Buy high, sell low, and make it up in volume.



I agree completely.

If you needed $500k to start a farm, and if you tried to nestegg that sum first, before you got into farming; then you would be an old old man before you ever stepped foot onto land.

You are entirely correct.





On the other hand, today I know a handful of people who have each started by share-cropping, 3 to 5 acres of land. With no more than a shovel, hoe, buckets and the shirt on their backs. These people are able to support themselves, growing organic veggies.

One man I know at market, does nothing but kohlrobi. He will never be wealthy. But he owns his little 4 acres, and he supports a family.

Another group of friends, have a partnership CSA. I am a vendor at one of their Farmer's Markets. They have four box vans, somedays only one van goes to market, other days all four vans are at market. Five adults farming on 10 acres. They are each putting enough cash in their pockets, that soon each of them will be able to buy their own farms. Cash money no bank, no loans.

__________________
http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

You don't have to start with Farm Credit. Try a small town Bank. It's mch more "normal" to purchase a home with land,without them makeing a fuss about many farm issues,the same goes for getting Insurance for that "farm".

Just be careful with insurance. I just got quotes this week and one was half the cost of the other. There are tons of inclusions and exclusions, read the fine print to make sure you have the protection you think you are buying.

This thread brings back some of my childhood memories, especially some of the cautionary comments. My father was older when I was born and actually nearly saw active combat in WWI. He grew up in Kentucky, his father a lawyer, judge, and for a few years a reformist warden of the state prison; I imagine his family had active gardens like most a century ago, certainly they looked from photos to have been rural but not subsistence farmers. He eventually worked two wage jobs during the Depression and pre-WWII, saved money, moving to Florida with my mother after his father had also relocated there with some other scattered relatives. He'd saved a decent nest egg and from the point I was born when he was 50, all I recall is him buying and improving then reselling the residences where we lived several years with other funds invested in second mortgages, mostly, which he bought directly from banks at discounts and that paid 8-10% interest on the equity. (He was very cautious about these and remained proud all his life that he *never* had to foreclose on anyone.)

Anyway, with that context, he had always wanted to own a small farm in Kentucky. That was his lifetime dream, at least after he'd saved money up. However, he'd never learned to do *anything* much for himself. He never did carpentry or plumbing or wiring, couldn't even change the oil on a car, much less plugs and tuneups. One day when I was around 3 years old, he came home and announced he'd pulled his assets together and bought a 100-acre farm near Lebanon, Kentucky, and we were moving back there immediately, which we did. We lived there about a year. I have vague memories and a few photos of a 2-story farmhouse on a hill, chickens, a hog being slaughtered, cattle guards through fences on muddy roads, some minor snowfall. Apparently dad was dependent on a tenant farmer to keep things running and maybe had hoped there'd be enough cash flow from a small "tobacco allotment" attached to the property, along with my college-educated mother's ability to work as a teacher or tutor, to make ends meet. Sounds like it was a stupid idea given his lack of hands-on background, but in any event we were back in Florida into various suburban houses in time for kindergarten through high school for me.

Like I think most here would know in their guts and from experience, you *must* be able to do a wide range of work yourself, competently, to be a "farmer." You probably have to start small to get that experience, or at least invest time learning various relevant skills for apprentice pay, hopefully to have a cash income on the side in addition to being able to maintain and improve an initial smaller residence and land being worked. All I can really think to add to other advice here is to suggest looking for a startup situation in a general area where either additional smallish acreage ideally adjoining your land is available for future purchase, or larger operations with residences, or both mixed, so you have flexibility. I'd stay far away from areas mostly taken over by corporate factory farms or having rapid suburban development expansions. I'd bet you're much better off doing the initial start where you'd develop the contacts allowing expansion, but, of course, YMMV.

ETI SS My post was not a personal attack on you.. it was simply my opinion about what I see as exploitation.

Bruce, out of all the apprentice situations out there, there are no doubt some people with bad, exploitation experiences. The exploitation might be intentional or just because the farm owner doesn't know how to teach or doesn't know how to run a profitable business. But I object to the blanket characterization that apprenticeships are exploitative slave labor.

HT is full of people who claim that you can't make money homesteading, or that farming can't be profitable unless you run a kajillion acre megafarm. I think the problem might be that folks who love the small scale farming life might be really good at a few very necessary skills, like keeping the equipment running, raising fat critters, or growing perfect tomatoes, but they don't know all the skills needed to run a profitable business, like accounting, sales, marketing, personnel mgmt, etc.

Salatin's apprenticeship program is the only one I know anything about, so I can't speak about others. By their own words, his interns say they learn how to run a business, not just how to dig ditches and move cows. Their cash income during the apprenticeship might be low, but many of them have learned lots about themselves, what they want to do and can do well, and have created what will probably be lifelong relationships. I've heard some of his former interns say they would have done it for free or even paid for the privilege to learn. That doesn't sound like exploitation.

People pay big money to go to college.

An apprenticeship that doesn't cost an Arm and a leg sounds a lot cheaper to me, don't understand the exploitation comments at all.

Just me.....

Paul