Madness of the method.
Why would two accomplished middle aged professional people suddenly decide to become farmers? Well after many years of sitting around working on a computer and getting fatter and more out of shape, and thinking about how can I get into better shape and stay in better shape for the last half of my life I decided to pursue more active pastimes both for vocation and pleasure. It became apparent that If I expended everything I had on becoming a farmer two things would surely happen. I would be more physically active and I would not go hungry. Two positive factors for me because I love to eat and the closer to the farm my food comes from the better.
The primary goal I had was to purchase a parcel of land and with good stewardship make the land pay for itself and eventually our lifestyle.
After two years of searching for the right place, I purchased a fallowed cattle farm complete with many tones of junk left on it. During the first year my partner and my self worked very hard cleaning the farm of scrap and re-building many of the fences.
We did a lot of research during that time about what type of farming operation we were going to tackle before we started. I do not consider us a homesteading couple as in the current sense of the term because we basically just bought a lot of raw land and not a McMansion on 10 acres. Many homesteaders or beginning farmers often do not take an analytical approach before getting started. Many are driven by a passion for a particular type of animal or lifestyle. Jumping into this in mid life, without the experience, background, and risking everything some very difficult questions simply had to be evaluated deeply and honestly first. So we spent six months studying all kinds of operations and looking at systems and cost of implementation of each.
Some of the criteria we used in our evaluation are as follows.
Does each produced product have an “in demand” local or reachable market?
Is that market stable long term or growing?
How detrimental is that product or production method to the land itself?
Will each product or production center of the operation pay for the entire property if it is properly scaled?
What is the scale factor time-frame of each product?
Does each product have alternative revenue streams?
Can that product coexist without damage to other products?
Is this product or mode of production manageable with the available equipment and manpower?
Does the particular product being produced compliment or assist the success of another product we are trying to produce?
Do any or all of our products market together to our intended market?
Can the marketing and delivery of the final product be outsourced and are there companies willing to do this currently in the local marketplace. “ie are there wholesale markets currently available for raw production.”
After applying all the above questions it made our final choices make since to us.
This is a list of our products in order of implementation.
Goats
Farm birds
Market gardening
Bees
Livestock guard dogs
Farm products manufacturing
Farm management hardware products
Farm management software products
Farm asset marketing services.
As each of these projects comes on line they will be added to the website.
Products
