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I am ready for my dream of owning a farm

D34DM1C3

D34DM1C3

Tourist
help, I've dreamt of owning a farm since I was five.
The time has come.
I've finally decided living in the suburbs and working for some crap corporate is not for me.
I'm prepared to labor day and night to achieve my goals and to put food on the table and feed my animals. But how do I start.

I need your expert advice on how to approach this and where the money would come from. Advice on selling product and keeping my live stock.


I currently don't have a farm but that will soon change.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!
 
So I have a little experience, so I guess I have a few questions. What animals are you hoping to keep and raise? Are you planning on doing anything specific with them? Are you located in the east, midwest or west? Do you own any equipment already? Will you be near an urban area or way out in the country?
 
I would like to raise pigs, cows, and less than a handful of horses. Possible some chickens in a coop. Im really thinking the primary income would be crops. No equipment or land yet. Im trying to build a plan. I am east near Illinois. Would live more country side than urban when I decide to purchase land.
@Bucephalus
 
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Awesome! I only really know farming in the west so I will give what information I have. There is a lot to consider! Since you are in the Midwest water isn't as large of an issue as it is here in the west, but definitely make sure anyplace you find has some access to water.

You need quite a lot of pasture for cows, horses, and some decently sized facilities for pigs, so keep that in mind. Here in utah they recommend around 1 acre per head of large livestock to keep them with enough pasture for the summer. You will also need to consider getting some hay equipment such as a tractor, swather, and bailer at a minimum (or plan on hiring a guy) to cut hay to get you through the winter. Hay can be pretty expensive so make sure you have that sorted before you bring in any livestock.

As far as row crops go you will definitely need equipment, and depending on what you are planning on growing you may need to become part of a co-op to make any money (scale). It's a tough way to make a living, so keep that in mind. There is a reason trump has been subsidizing the farmers a lot.

I would suggest if it's an option to stay closeish to an urban center because you will have better access to things like farmers markets where you can target some niche markets with things like specialty vegetables, fruits, and the like. But you will have to scale down your operation as a trade-off. You could try to get into the meat market but I will not touch on that in this forum. It's also not something I know much about
 
Lots, and LOTS of farmers go broke.

I would not recommend cropping unless you have some very niche product that no-one else grows. Otherwise it's very hard to compete with large scale farming enterprises that have huge expensive machinery and thousands of acres to play with.

Same for meat animals. You have to find a niche product that big farming does not cover, otherwise competing against them is like a corner shop competing with Walmart.

It costs a lot of money too, and really easy to lose it all.

Before diving head first I recommend getting some farm experience, maybe work as a farm hand for a year or so to see how things are done and how they can improve
 
really there's not going to be a reply on here from anybody that can give you a great advice, we don't know your circumstances we don't know how much money you have we don't know anything about you.
you need to find a farm that you could afford find the equipment that you need to buy and figure out what animals you want, then do the research on how much is going to cost to get everything up and running having horses and animals and things like that expensive
 
Single family farms CANNOT support themselves. Any single family farm must also have a normal day job to make ends meet.
 
You're looking at a million dollar investment anywhere in the Eastern US, pardner....between the land purchase and associated taxes, the animal purchases, and FEED, keeping the power turned on while you climb the learning curve, so you dont starve along with your critters, AND the ability to do all the things that make a farm self-supporting, let alone make it pay, you're biting off a chunk. Ever kill a chicken? Butcher a hog? Kill a steer, or castrate one? Fields need attention three seasons of the year, and need to be fallowed about once in four years. Can you build a shed, or reshingle a roof? Change a sparkplug? Weld a broken tooth back on a harrow, or a disc drag?

You're looking at 20-hour days for years with no guarantee of weather, no assured crop....family farms often take a generation just to break even. And that's assuming a family of 4 or more kids; your own kids work cheap.
Mother Earth News publishes a quarterly on Hobby Farming...small but much more manageable in these times. Its still a big investment, but you might be able to do it....
 
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One thing I forgot to add....Water. The cheaper farmland in the Northern Hemi is west of the Mississippi, BUT...west of the 100th Meridian, the annual average Rainfall DROPS dramatically to around 20 inches a year...THAT is pretty dry, but as you go further west, the rainfall keeps dropping til you reach Nevada, a BEAUTIFUL garden spot if you can learn to like growing and tasting SAGE. The Rainfall here, in the DRIEST state in the Union is about 7 inches annually( know how I know that? because if it all falls at once, I can measure it with........a ruler! Get your minds outta the gutter!). The land is cheap. Still, Sage is the predominant cover crop, most critters here eat it, and anything you kill and cook REEKS of it. BTW, that's the taste you catch at Thanksgiving in the Turkey Stuffing, but multiplied x about a million....it equals near-terminal indigestion.

I do wish your project luck, but check out all the options and facts before you make your attempt.
 
D34DM1C3 said:
I'm prepared to labor day and night to achieve my goals
Click to expand...
That you most certainly will be! Owning a farm is a full-time job… usually for a crew of people. It depends on what you want to do exactly but it’s always a lot of work.
One who lives on a farm absolutely must have trade skills! Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, etc are all essential. If you don’t have/aren’t willing to learn then find someone who can do a work trade and live onsite to help you keep your place up and running.
As for buying land itself, I know of several people who’ve done owner contracts. It’s a great way to build a relationship with the previous owner of the place and circumvent the banks. Often you can work out much more affordable terms to acquire a piece of land.
Rental housing is a great way to help your place pay for itself. Where I live on the west coast of Washington you can easily get $400-$700/month from one person to park their rv or tiny house and have a little plot to garden and have animals (hey, maybe even some other zoos would be interested!)
These are all of my plans that I’m going to put into play in the next year or two. Best of luck to ya and let me know how it goes!
 
Farming is super hard work that never ends, a lot niche farms are cropping up in the uk, who specialise in rare breeds, and sell produce through farmers markets, I think a community farm or small holding is the way to go, even just renting land

Hope your dreams come to fruition though, good luck for the future
 
I stayed in the I.T. Industry for an additional decade to make enough "seed" money to make my 16 Acres, First Payment (roughly Half of it's asking price) I had a good paying job at the time so Dropping 25K on land, was no Huge deal, but I did have to give up Beer & pizza nights for quite a while.
 
D34DM1C3 said:
help, I've dreamt of owning a farm since I was five.
The time has come.
I've finally decided living in the suburbs and working for some crap corporate is not for me.
I'm prepared to labor day and night to achieve my goals and to put food on the table and feed my animals. But how do I start.

I need your expert advice on how to approach this and where the money would come from. Advice on selling product and keeping my live stock.


I currently don't have a farm but that will soon change.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
What state do you live in? What do you do for work?
 
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