Hobby farms, small scale farms

[fairfarmhand]

The first thing I would do isn't animals or gardens.  Orchard first.  Your trees will need years to establish and grow well.  You need to research the history of fruit trees in your area and see what does well, what cultivars do well, and what is nearby the property (you don't want to be near someone else's badly kept orchard).  Orchard before anything. 

 

Second, at the same time, really...nut trees.  Nuts are valuable food, but the trees take years to get going, and most of them are large.  I would start with pecans and filberts.  Avoid walnuts, they mess up the ground and are filthy trees.  Chestnuts stink and smell like, um, not pleasant.

 

Third, before you start buying animals or anything for animals, you need to budget and make some decisions.  Is this a business or a hobby?  Do you want to make money or do you want to break even or are you willing to lose money?  All are legitimate choices, but you should make it deliberately so that you don't end up losing your shirt.  Most hobby scale farmers that I know are pouring a significant portion of someone's income into the farm. 

YES!

 

 

Trees first.

 

Hint: When you lay out your property, if you put things like small animal pens in a largely open space, you may have less trouble with predators. Our chicken house is far far from tree/shrub cover and we have little trouble with coons or opossoms. Much less than those I know with more trees and cover near their pens.

 

Also, get a good farm dog. Great Pyrs, Border collies, big working dogs can help with predators.

 

BTW, it takes many many years to even get close to breaking even, much less making any money.

 

If you don't count the cost of infrastructure (land, fences, barns) we've been doing this for 12 years and have only just now seen modest profits, most of that from high-end registered cattle that took a huge investment to get into. But don't start with high end registered anythings. Start with generic, cross bred stuff, at least with livestock.

 

Also, gardens away from cover will have fewer problems with rabbits and such eating them. Don't lay out your property primarily for aesthetics. Look at practicality. Reducing predators and ESPECIALLY getting the tractor/truck/trailer where it needs to be without backing into a fencepost or something.

Edited June 3, 2016 by fairfarmhand

[Meriwether]

Thanks for all the advice. The orchard will go in the first season it can. I planted fruit trees at our first two locations, but we never stayed long enough to get fruit. I gave up on it for the temporary locations, but it will be a high priority when we buy land. Carol, I can tell you live in CA. Most of those trees wouldn't fair well in the Midwest. I'll be looking at apple and pear types. So much will depend on what land we actually buy, but I'm thinking of putting the apiary on one end of the orchard and using clover as a ground cover.

Making money? :lol: Snort. My parents are making decent money on their (many times bigger place) now that they are retirement age. I grew up poverty level cash poor (I did *not* feel like we were in poverty. We ate our own beef. Mom had a garden. Dad built our house. Basically, we wore cheap clothes and had bad vehicles. We didn't eat out, etc. But we had a good life.) But Dad worked two jobs for 25 years to pay for the farm. After one (hard) year, he figured up the taxes and informed us we had made a seven dollar profit on the farm. That was the point my brother decided he was never getting into farming. It will take us years and years and years to pay off the infrastructure (land, buildings, fencing, etc.), but I hope to make at least break even money on the animals, if that makes sense. I know myself well enough to know that I will likely give away our excess instead of selling it. When we had chickens before, I gave away about 10 dozen eggs each week.

Details aside, I come from a long farming background - one set of grandparents was Amish, the other Mennonite. I first heard the saying that a farmer is the only one who lives poor and dies rich when I was bitty. Dh's job will be financing our start up costs. We may not get them back until we die and the kids inherit our assets. That is okay. I want the lifestyle for the kids.

[Guest]

I love their personalities, it's the olympic levels of perseverance and the destructiveness that I hate. And the roosters... Although, we finally have a nice roo!

 

The problem is that the chickens belong to my middle dd and she likes heirloom lighter breeds that think they are freakin' eagles or something. She raises them by hand and they are, I swear, 10 times smarter than regular chickens once she gets done with them. And now she's in college...so I have her chickens to deal with...and her turtles, and her dog...

 

Ducks and quail are so dumb and easy to contain (in comparison, it's not that it is super easy, lol)...and I like that!

 

12 years of crazy, smart, eagle chickens at this house and I am so done with chickens here. lol.

 

To deal with the duck poop thing we tractor them. We actually rotate every animal, including the goats. She also has call ducks which I think are calmer and dumber. Though that might just be my perception or my long lost optimism showing. lol.

 

ETA - the first year we had chickens they were fat, slow Buff Orpingtons. Much easier, lol.

Georgia

Ack! We have eagle chickens too! Whoever said chickens cannot fly has never been around them in real life. We have a blue Andalusian that I am tempted to tie weights to....

[fairfarmhand]

Blue ANdalusian chickens are awful. Stick with a calm heritage breed.

 

Love Austrolorp, Orpingtons and Dominecker

[Carol in Cal.]

OH!  I didn't know where you lived.

 

OK, Midwest--shorter growing season, harsh winters, but warm nights during the growing season compared to here.

 

I think you're right about apples, and I would suggest also nut trees--easy to store the nuts, and lots of food value, shade, and beauty.  Probably a blueberry blind.  And other berries.  Pears?  Aren't some pear varieties cold-hardy?  And definitely cherries, they need the frost. 

 

I wish my FIL had documented his extensive veggie garden experience over the years.  But alas...

 

"This Organic Life" would be a good book for you to read.  It's about a family working toward achieving vegetable self-sufficiency in upstate New York, and the passing references to various preservation techniques and to what they grew would be really helpful triggers to doing your own planning, albeit incomplete in terms of details.  A great overview, though.

[Bluegoat]

There are more and more fruit trees that can manage marginal climates, so it's worth looking into what's available.  We have peaches here now which were very hard to grow when I was a child.  There are some very cold hardy pears.

 

There are also some lesser known or used things that may work - Nanking cherry, highbush cranberry, blackthorn (sloe), hardy kiwi, elderberry, currents.