Sustainable Living > Homestead
buying a farm
DLMKA:
Last summer I found a farm not too far away for sale. It is all certified organic and comes with all the livestock and equipment needed to run the place. The livestock includes dairy and beef herd, red wattle hogs, a handful of chickens, guineas, peacocks, ducks, etc for pest control. Equipment includes pipeline milking set-up and 4 stanctions with 250 gal stainless bulk tank (room for 1000 gal), 110hp Case tractor, 45hp(?) Kubota with loader and blade, wagons, hay equipment, 10 ft disc, and all the feed and hay inventory. The place has an on-site retail store for selling meat and some other items produced locally by other farmers. They've made $60k profit off the little farm for a few years now and they really aren't working themselves very hard or the land. Lots of room to improve both profit margin and volume if desired. I could see that profits could pretty easily exceed $100k
Anyways, we went and looked at it a couple times and started putting together a business plan to take in and start working on financing. With holidays and everything late fall and early winter we kind of got behind and they were working with someone that was going to make a cash offer. They prospective buyer was an investor and was going to hire someone to run the farm. Last week, after 4-5 months of conversation sharing financials and turning away other potential buyers (ourselves included) they backed out. Now we are hurrying up to see if we can secure financing to become full time organic farmers.
Waverlybees:
I hope it works out for you. Sounds like a good living can be made with a little hard work.
Dan
Perry:
If I were 20 years younger I'd be interested myself. It is probably one of the hardest ways to make a living, but I'm betting it has one of the highest satisfaction rates going. It has to be something you love to do, and I've never found fault with that.
I hope things go your way and it becomes reality for you.
DLMKA:
Farming is in my blood. My mom grew up on a farm north of Minneapolis, my uncle still lives there although he doesn't farm, just rents the land out. My dad grew up on a fairly large dairy farm south of Minneapolis, my uncle and cousins still live there and continue to farm. I think starting about 3 years ago I realized after being laid off for a year that I'd like to get back to my roots. We've got a big yard and garden but zoning restrictions keep us from doing any animals here, we've had some chickens but had to got rid of them after one of the neighbors complained.
I'm not afraid of hard work. I am getting tired of working for "the man" and not getting any raises in 3 years no matter how hard you work and had to take 5 weeks of unpaid time off last year effectively cutting my pay 10%. I'm just frustrated with my current situation, totally unsatisfying and tired of upper management getting huge bonuses while I take cuts.
We're going to start talking to USDA about low interest loans as well as Farm Credit Services this week and see how fast we can get the ball rolling.
Walt B:
Good luck to you. I'm sure you will find it more satisfying than that big equipment manufacturer. ;)
Speaking of 10% pay cut, I worked for one of your suppliers and we took a 10% cut, but we were still expected to work a 50 hour week (minimum), with no weeks off. It wasn't a hard decision to "retire".
Anyway, I hope it works out for you. Pigs and cows and chickens, oh my! 8)
Walt
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