Uh-oh! Market already flooded with "pasturing" farmers?

Did you mean "can't" hardly give eggs away?? I sell my eggs for $4.00 a dozen and I have a waiting list. $1 chicks, every year at Rural King, you just have to wait a week or so, not buy them the first day they put them out.

Are you stuck on MO?

The reason I'm asking is that my DH is changing careers and we will likely be moving. We live about an hour north and east of St. Louis. We have 4.75 acres, but the old lady who owned this before us has acres that she would likely sell to bring it to a total of a tidge over 10 acres. We have a 5 bedroom hour with 2 full baths. We're technically 'in town' but the town has been rather relaxed on their side. We have sewer service, but get our water from 2 wells. The one out by the barns has been left on all night and was still running strong 8 hours later. Oh, and there's two large barns, a longer storage shed, garage and a feed store. (Yes, you can sell your goods right from the farm! There's even a bell system that we left alone where you can put a hose across the driveway and when someone drives over it the bell rings in the house-no need to be 'at the store' all the time!) There's also a large driveway where the delivery trucks can turn around in. I haven't used any pesticides or chemicals on it in the past 5 years. Also, I talked to the last owner and he had goats here for 15 years before I moved here and I have had goats here for 5 years-no reported cases of CL or CLA. We have a great school system. I have a special ed kid and have been very happy with how he has been treated. We do have a school next door, but they are closing it down this year and turning it into a community center where the kids will have a place to play in the guy, a workout area, office space to rent and the township and village will have offices there. Oh, and we're putting in a new downstairs bathroom-buy now and you can design it!

We'll be asking $180,000 for it all. However, if someone from HT buys it I'd knock $5K off.

PM me any questions or if you want more details.

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I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.

I also believe that workers need Unions as much as gun owners need the NRA.

I was selling my extra ones for $2.50 a dozen and couldn't keep it in stock! I was just selling to friends. I do have a "Fresh eggs for sale" sign that my Dad made that's rather cute that I'd throw in if you bought the house! If you hurry up I could even get you 5 goats, 2 chickens and 2 Peking ducks (They're male and have some 'we own this place' 'tude about them!)

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I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.

I also believe that workers need Unions as much as gun owners need the NRA.

Use to be when I was growing up we mainly milked cows, we raised all our feed but we also had Hogs and sold our extra grain.

Back then people started spraying timber and dozing off every hill, planting it all in Fescue. Everyone was changing over to Beef cattle less work.

I bought 100 acres, my Father in Law told me there was no way I could make a living off the land. He was going by what I would be taxed on. And he had a fit when I considered everything off the land as income. I had no Food cost, no heat cost and no rent. No I did not make much Taxable Income but looking at the Big Picture I made money.

Me and my wife Homesteaded 20 acres of brush. My mistake there was feeding my animals too well off bought feed. We didn't make a bunch and at the time I was only one around raising Meat Goats. Funny when I got out of them everyone in the country side had them.

I have found in these hard times if someone comes up with a way to make a dollar everyone gets into it. Like there is a Produce Auction 30 miles from here. Me and my wife thought about buying there and selling at a small stand local. We went couple times to the auction, first time got what we wanted reasonable. Next time everything went for outrageous price. We had no idea what happen until we talked to a lady with a small stand. She said she was doing the same thing we was thinking of but people from the city 50 miles away came in with trailers, buying all they could taking it back to the city selling it at a high price calling it Organic, Amish Grown. Which none of it was. It was mostly raised by Old Order, Horse and Buggy Mennonites which use chemicals.

If you can find something different to make money, do it for awhile don't tell anyone. Just like me I'm kicking around a few ideas but keeping it to myself. Don't look to make much but if I make some so be it. If I can cut my food cost, I'm happy.

big rockpile

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I love being married.Its so great to find that one person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.



If I need a Shelter
If I need a Friend
I go to the Rock!

Ive seen several of your posts about observing sabbath and hiring help. It was my understanding that feeding the animals and caring for an animal in distress was "kosher" for orthodox on the sabbath? A friend who is observant will schedule chores (mucking etc) for other days but feeds, waters, and checks on his livestock on sabbath.

Yes, we absolutely care for our animals on the Sabbath! But my husband prefers to worship within our religious community on the Sabbath, which is in Saint Louis . From Friday afternoon until a couple hours after sundown on Saturday we won't be out there. It is really a difficult situation. I feel like I am stuck in an episode of Green Acres! I want to go out to a homestead and never come back. My husband gets such energy from being around people, he is very social, and not as happy about this as the kids and I are about homesteading. The compromise was that we would come back every week for Sabbath. Should I just give up the dream of homesteading and stay in the city? But every time I try to make myself change my heart, I cry for three straight days and I can't. religious women out there, should I put my husbands needs before me and the kids?

I can so understand your tears! There MUST be a compromise - can't think of one just now but there must be!

Your DH should take care of you, however homesteading without his help and support is going to be hard. It will take money and some things are simply two person jobs, or take much less time with two people. Can you find a place in the suburbs where you could have a large garden and some small livestock and both be happy?

I do think your plans are very ambitious for someone with little experience and a large family. BTDT, except I had My DH's support, and only 4 kids, and most of ours were older than yours.

Sounds like the whole idea is YOUR dream, not his. Buy something smaller and closer to town. The ongoing anxiety of living far away and gone every weekend is a dream killer or a marriage killer.

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Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

My hubby and I still live in So. CA and it will be months before we are able to finally move to about 12 acres in N. Idaho, where we hope to raise our own chickens and have an orchard and veggie garden. In the meantime, I have spent years searching for our food sources.


I am speaking from a consumer point of view here, but this is my experience in searching for Organic (or at least the farm practices organic principles), pastured meat, eggs and dairy (raw only).

It took me a long time to find my source for our meat and then even longer before I found raw goat or cow milk and raw cheese (all pastured).
We live in Southern CA. and the best searching tool I have found is localharvest.com

At first glance there are a lot options here in CA. But, as I scoured through them, I found they were not able to supply the demand, so product was not available, or they would not ship (even though a farm may be 60 miles from us, we work too many hours to spend time to make the trip, shipping was a must), or there was some other reason their farm was not an option for us (ethical treatment is a main concern for us, and we prefer a farm that takes orders and then slaughters the animal to fill the orders), vs. a larger operation that has "stock on hand".

Anyway, my point is that when it is all said and done, we get our meat, eggs and raw goat milk from a farm 60 miles away, our raw cheese from the other side of the country and there were not a lot of other options I could find.

Even though there are 50+ small farms, maybe they are still not meeting all the demand in your area and there may be some markets you can reach via shipping. Our local raw goat milk farmer ships to many customers, not just us; and they offer farm pick up.

Some think we are crazy to have milk, meat and eggs shipped to us. We pay a lot for these products when you factor in shipping, but in the end, we just eat a little less meat etc.... but we eat better food and that is what counts. And, we cut out most processed food and eating out; so our food costs are actually lower. I rarely go to a grocery store; it has been months. I do have a veggie and berry garden.

I agree with those that suggest you start farming to feed your own family, and see where that takes you. Rely on your husbands income to pay the bills. hope you can realize your dream. We need more small family farms.
Janna

ps. you might contact Xenia at Rainbow Ranch Farms here in CA. She is very active in the small farm community nationwide and is a wonderful woman who helps others with their small farms. I would bet she has some great insight for marketing your operation.
www.rainbowranchfarms.com

While this is indeed quite true they still need to bear in mind that many people here have been there/done that. Success has many measures. For a couple that has little or no previous farming experience their best success would be growing and processing food for their family. Growing children need good food, often something that cannot be purchased at the grocery store. Involving them in growing and preparing their food would be the absolute best learning experience in their earthly lives. The knowledge and experience will help them be confident that they will be able to provide something for themselves as long as they have a little land to plant in. Once the basics are provided then they can look toward making money from any surplus.

This has been an interesting read with many thoughtful responses. Lots of good things to consider.

All the farm/homesteading/business advice pales when you consider your husband.

If he is not fully on-board and excited about this endeavor it is not likely to work. It is hard enough to make a small farm work when you are fully on board. Some days/years are just flat difficult and things go wrong. Your love for it will carry you through...but it doesn't sound like it will carry HIM through. And what will that do to him? Will he be miserable in that lifestyle that is your dream but not his? Will he resent being trapped in a lifestyle that is simply not his dream? When he has time off his regular job and you need him to help with farm stuff how is that going to impact him and impact your relationship?

As for the kids - their likes and dislikes may change over time. They might love the idea of this now - but maybe not so much later on when they are older and want to be doing other things.

And what about when the kids are grown and gone? Is your husband going to be happy retiring in a rural setting and homesteading? If you don't have the kids there as a reason for wanting a homestead lifestyle - and your health is getting worse - what will happen then?

These are hard questions and only you and your husband can answer them. Don't try and make him feel guilty for not being on board with your dream. You may be in tears thinking of NOT homesteading, but there are lots of avenues to meet some of your needs and some of the needs that your kids have.

One thing I found raising my own son and working with kids is that they often like the IDEA of something a lot more than they like the reality of it. So they may think they like the idea of raising goats for fun and profit...but two years down the road they may think differently.

Many non-farm children have unrealistic expectations of farm life. They think about cuddling lambs and puppies, but not mucking out stinky stalls. They think about cute baby chicks, but not about the rooster that wakes them at 5 am and tries to spur them every time they collect eggs. Butchering is a fact of life - even though they know that "Sir Loin" has a reservation at Camp Westinghouse they may not be emotionally up to the sight of the little white packages coming home from the butcher. "Fresh Milk" is a great idea until you are out there at 6 am, in the dark, with snow and ice on the ground, milking a goat that for some reason thinks her foot needs a milk bath. Those wonderful fresh vegetables always seem to need stuff done when it is 120F with 95% humidity. For these reasons you should not be thinking of relying on the children for anything more than the most perfunctory help. If they work out, that is great. But don't be relying on it.

I have two grown children. One could not wait to get into Town. He left home when he was 17. We have a great relationship, but there is nothing on Earth that could tempt him back to farm life. The closest he gets is telling the butcher how to cut up the lamb he gets as a Christmas gift. The other has a small homestead. She has two daughters - "City Girl", ike her uncle, left home the second it was possible. "Farm Girl" is still happy on the farm, but even she sometimes wishes she could stay in bed a bit longer on the weekend, that she could pop on out to the theater instead of having to drive an hour each way, that her friends were closer and so on.

Mary

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In politics the truth is just the lie you believe most - unknown

If your husband is not TOTALLY on board...you have a problem. I have that problem and where as the ole Poot SAYS he does not mind my animals it is usually up to ME to take care of them. HE has made it clear he does not want to be a farmer....and since he has the right to be happy I made the decision that it would be me doing most of the work. This works for us...but does cause some stress in our marriage at times. Consider this in your decision....

True...

We avoided this by not having stalls or barns.

We ate him, and the other few like him. The remaining roosters are the nice ones. I have a firm policy: I eat mean people. Saves arguments.

I've heard of this issue but in our case our kids never had a problem with this. My daughter asked if she could help kill when she was three years old and is very avid about butchering and cooking. All of them help and all of them are good cooks which is really great.

Dang glad we don't live there. It never gets above 86°F here. That is a geographic / climatic choice I made very consciously. On the other hand it regularly gets to -20°F and windy here in our winters and sometimes to -45°F. Trade offs. Personally we prefer deep cold to high heat. Pick your poisons.

I could not disagree with you more. Our kids are a fantastic help on the farm. They grew up into the job. They love working on the farm. Sure, there are hard times, and there are some things we like better than others but they love it overall and wouldn't trade it. Truth is, farming is a lot more interesting than the mucking out stalls and such. A huge part of that is designing the farm and life to be good.

As you say, it's not for everyone but that's good because we need some bakers and candle stick makers too.

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

There is something wrong with HT software. It won't let me like this post 37 times over.

It's great that your kids enjoy farming. I can't imagine a better life - but as you say, they grew up in it. The OPs children have not. Even though mine more-or-less did, it only worked out 50%. I would still say that until you are sure you will have their whole hearted help and support she should plan as if she would be working alone.

Mary

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In politics the truth is just the lie you believe most - unknown

Agreed. Just saying it can work.

Yes and no. Our farmstead is a business. It supports us. This is how we not only live and raise our own food but how we earn the money to pay for taxes, mortgage and luxuries like Internet & chocolate†.

How many of us choose to be here on the farm has an effect both on how much we need to earn to support our families and also how much labor and brains we have available to do things.

That is to say, if only some of the kids choose to stay on the farm that means we do not need to earn as high an income. If I was all alone I would do less. I enjoy working with my family though, very much.

Working together we have an amplifying effect. The five of us together can get done 50x as much work. Or something like that. Likewise our working dogs, who are our coworkers, also amplify our abilities. This is synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Cheers,

-Walter


†Life with out chocolate, asks the bard, would it be so sweet, not a rose, not a tweet of feathered Friend by facebleck. (We all have our vices... )

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

We had the pleasure of spending 4 hours alone with Joel Salatin back in 2006. His situation is unique due his location, and long history in the Shenandoah Valley. It will not work for everyone. His adult married son has been running all the farm operations for over 10 years. Joel is also a very cheap, frugal man, and his wife is excruciatingly more cheap. Legendary cheap from what he says.

In Cali, pasturing chickens doesn't work, because there is no "pasture" from May to October due to lack of rain to grow grasses to be "pasture", same for livestock of any other kind. To get top dollar one has to be legally organic. In some regions not having the legal organic label is a deal breaker for buyers.

We've done this stuff, and sold our goods in the Bay Area farmers markets, where you get top dollar. Eggs sell like wildfire, if they are organic, pastured and brown. However, Cali is not really small farm freindly; when the dogcatcher is sent out to trespass with foreign germs on his boots to check on your chickens in a bio-secure facililty, and admits he knows nothing about chickens... How can one freely farm with that going on???...

A dozen pastured brown eggs sells for at least $6 per dozen. At the Ferry Plaza farmer's market, arguably the most fabulous on the USA, the one organic meat seller has a line a mile long at his booth, and sells all he can raise.

For any meat to be KOSHER, it has to be slaughtered by a "Shochet", a rabbi specially trained to kill the animal with one cut to the jugular. (shochet is pronounced Show-het, with the ch sound made like you are hawking up phlegm.) I live 3 miles from the famous, world's largest kosher slaughterhouse, formerly "AgriProcessors" which was the site of the largest ICE raid in US history. Now it is "AgriStar". They currently kill about 1,000 cattle a day, and gosh knows how many thousands of chickens.

"The animal must be killed "with respect and compassion" by a religious Jew who is duly licensed and trained, often called in English a shochet (Hebrew: שוחט‎) although in Hebrew this word refers to a butcher regardless of any particular religion or culture. The act is performed by severing the trachea, esophagus, carotid arteries, jugular veins and vagus nerve in a swift action using an extremely sharp blade ("chalef") only by a qualified shochet."

The Jews here are the ultra, ultra, ultra Orthodox kind, and have been here for almost 25 years now. The town has the highest number of rabbis per capita of anywhere in the world. My SO is a non-practicing Reform Jew, a sect which is much more liberal in religious practices. The ultras here are Chabad Lubavitch Hasidim, from Brooklyn, NY, and they are a bunch of -----holes, the people here hate them; they are rude, nasty to non-Jews, and even try to haggle at the Post Office for mailing stuff to Israel. Here they founded a schule (not sure of Jewish - HT seems to think I'm swearing, it won't let me use the correct spelling - at the moment), a religious school for their kids, and Jews from all over the country send their kids here, since it's rural and safe.

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"Success is preparation and opportunity meeting." - Andrea Smith, music director for XM 82, 2008.

Old Turkomen proverb: "When we have rice to eat, life is good." From: "The World Is A Carpet"

I agree. I just wanted to make them aware that some see certain small farming ideas as nothing more than skeet to shoot down.

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"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." C S Lewis