the homestead life, where can i learn about the lifestyle of farming?

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Welcome to the forum. I am in Oregon. Yes, people here do or have done that. Some big scale some small. There are many discussions here. Not to be discouraging but, honestly I don't know if anyone would recommend it. It's a pretty tough gig these days with the weather, the government and NWO against you. Perhaps a little introduction about your experience and general location would help.
 
With or without animals.......??? If I was to ever do it again, it would be without animals.
 
willsoenn said:
does anybody here farm for a living?
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I breed and raise beef cattle on a commercial scale.

But like a lot of other cattle farmers I know, I also have other work that provides additional income streams.

Diversification of income is a good thing in general and a great thing to insulate you from the roller coaster of primary production commodity markets.

Many of the people for whom farming is their only income stream, live pretty frugal lifestyles or are semi-retired.
 
Agree with others... during these times it takes hundreds of acres to earn a living and provide for a family. I live on the farm where i was born, family have been here for generations. My puny 100acres will not support a family as it did 70yrs ago. The profit margins are small no matter what you produce. We had peaches until 2015, produced about 15K lbs a year, produced beef until 2018. The profits would augment a steady income from other means but wouldn't support a family by themselves.

However, if you wish to learn contact the nearest university with an agriculture program. In my state these universities sometimes place students with small farms. Allow them to learn first hand from people like me, old farmers. And they bring new techniques and methods with them.
 
There are many, many amish farmers around me, but most have other jobs, too. Even with 300 acres, it's hard to make a living at just that, unless you have a slew of teenage sons to help you out, and then that's temporary, because they grow up and get married and leave. And I live in a growing area. Did you say Montana? I can't imagine that that is a high farming area, but maybe it is. One neighbor is in his mid 40's, farms 200 acres, and works a day job as a welder. Our closest neighbor raises cattle, and farms the feed for them, and works construction daily, and he is not wealthy by any means. We have his buggy horse and milk cow on our property to save on his feed, and he has a number of calves in one of our pastures that we arent using. I would say to farm, for sure, but keep other sources of income open.
 
@willsoenn I hope we haven't discouraged you too much. Just giving honest feedback. I think you may be on the right track. Many of us here do much of our own food production. Some of us on large properties some small. Either way with few exceptions most of us have another job or business. Stick around check some of the info here and ask questions. You certainly are not the only one looking to be self sufficient.
 
Welcome to the forum!

I come from an agrarian background. All of my ancestors were farmers or ranchers. It is hard work and the hours are long. I know farmers who are or were up before day light. For some, their day was not over before it got dark.

I have lived on farms, but mostly as a child. Both sets of my grandparents owned farms. My parents owned 40 acres at the edge of town and did a little farming while dad worked in town as a farm implement repair person and repaired televisions.

I once was considering getting into farming, but the uncle I was going to do that with was an ornery guy and I wasn't going to live a life with someone who was always angry about everything.

I know that two men that were h.s. classmates of mine grew up on farms and ranches. They have both been hired hands for other people. One man manages a farm and the other has worked on a number of ranches and raised a family of 4 children while doing so. It is interesting to me that neither of them has ever gotten their own land.

The most successful uncle of mine, a farmer, was up in the mornings before everyone else in his family, around 6 in the morning. He came in for breakfast and lunch and then had a nap. He had a large acreage and grew all kinds of grains. He liked to have one quarter of a quarter (40 acres) in something unusual, such as blue corn. He grew wheat, rye, milo, cane and other small grains. He also had hay fields that needed to be put up. He raised cattle and hogs. Between him and one of his sons, they owned 2600 acres. His financial success didn't necessarily come from farming. He sold insurance in the evenings. He sold all kinds of insurance, including crop insurance. He came home at night after his family was in bed. He sold the insurance, his wife managed the paperwork. He also sold feed and seed, solar and whatever else that he thought would add to the family income.

I grew up in a county that had a population of around 2000 people. One of my dad's cousins was a farmer. I only met him a couple times in my life, and I never met his children while I was growing up in spite of them going to the same church I did and coming to town to shop on Saturday. Why? Because he had a large amount of land and worked long, long hours like my uncle did. His son now runs that farm, and I have met him once in my life. It is a busy life and hard work.

I suggest finding some land, starting small, and keeping your day job. Develop your land and whatever you want to do for income. It could be growing crops. (BTW, farm equipment is outrageously priced. Combines for harvesting wheat can be more than $1 million.) It could be raising cattle, poultry, hogs. Learn about what the markets are doing. My uncle who raised hogs did so for many years. Then the market changed and he sold all of his hogs and the hog buildings. BTW, raising hogs can damage your ground water.

I went to h.s. with two people who got married. They raised poultry. Poultry does not need nearly as much land as cattle do, but they do require lots of attention, or you can lose a bunch or all of them in the blink of an eye. The couple raised lots of chickens, but they also raised pheasants, ducks, turkeys and geese. It would be much cheaper to raise poultry than cattle, but the profit margin is very different with poultry and beef.

I knew a man who had a dairy farm. That is another demanding job, milking cows twice a day. Even if you have milking machines, you still have to round up the cows, wash their udders, get them ready to be milked, and put the milking machines on.

Farming is also very dangerous work. I won't tell you the stories I know of the injuries and death. Being outside in all kinds of weather, dealing with all kinds of weather can be hard and dangerous.

I wish I could be more encouraging, but there is a reason that many people who grow up on farms leave home at a young age.
 
willsoenn said:
does anybody here farm for a living?
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We do, been doing it for 7 years now

(but in all fairness I have to tell you before this, we had high paying engineering jobs in the city so we had enough start up capital for it)

how much land do you have and what is your climate like? That's the first consideration of what you can farm well there , oh and how much money do you have for equipment?
 
Hardcalibres said:
Many of the people for whom farming is their only income stream, live pretty frugal lifestyles or are semi-retired.
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Yes, this is us. Everyone we know either had high paying jobs and just saved up the money and started a farm , or they have additional income from other jobs
If you are young , you cannot just start a farm, you won't have enough money unless you work somewhere else
And now , thanks to inflation, we live a VERY frugal lifestyle, but I love doing this

We have goats, sheep, chickens, gardens and fruit trees and sell at the local farmers market, plus sell live animals also
 
163 acres with a all year round spring running through and a road going through the half. my great great grandparents farmed on my dads side. my great uncle still owns the family farm elsewhere on much greater acreage but the land is becoming barren there, i think during the 1900s it was greener. that place not the most fertile soil and is quite windy a lot of the time.

i want to start a farm but then i dont know i would be happy not with the right one. country life. the 160 has a rock quarry i hear there's 250k worth of rocks, 4k for 12 pallets. i estimated a gross income of 20,000 a year raising livestock based on google/auction sales. maybe more maybe less. and then i dont know if the animals would need to be trucked all the way to billings for auction, thats more than an 8 hour drive by truck)

i need to talk to people learn about it, right now all i know is from google. chickens, goats and cows. maybe sheep. or pigs.

theres no house there, estimated 30-40k to connect to the electrical grid. i gotta think small scale with enough income to expand.
 
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We have an auction house about 15 miles from us that the locals sell their cows at. I don't know anyone making $20K a year from that, but maybe it's possible. Feed costs. Infrastructure, and initial stock price. Buying calves at $400 a piece and feeding them out to a good weight is expensive. Breeding your own takes time. Talking to our closest neighbor about his calves the other evening, and if they're going to the sale barn before Thanksgiving (highest price) or not. Some are, some are waiting till after the first of the year. Because he's estimating his farm tax. He rents pasture where ever he can this time of year, since it's cheaper than round bales.
 
willsoenn said:
i need to talk to people learn about it, right now all i know is from google. chickens, goats and cows. maybe sheep. or pigs.

theres no house there, estimated 30-40k to connect to the electrical grid. i gotta think small scale with enough income to expand.
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I can tell you goats need proper fencing and shelter or they will not do well.
Maybe in Montana you would be better off with cattle but I don't know much about them, we have had everything here but a cow.
I know one thing, calves are cheaper here than full grown goats at most auctions, but we have most of ours shipped with our club to PA, to a very large auction near all the big cities full of immigrants that want lamb and goat meat
Our market is also near some universities and a lot of our customers are college professors or students from other countries where they eat a lot more lamb and goat than they probably would in Montana. I guess you have to find someone local to you ( Ag extension office would be good start) to learn about your situation.
Electricity: most of our neighbors only have solar, we have some. You could run a large house with everything on solar here for less than what it would cost you to hook up electric, but then again, you probably get less sun? Not sure, again your location is very different from ours. We also get a lot of rain, so our pastures are almost always green. Plus we have much less acres than you.
 
does goat meat taste good? i've tried meat that tasted really sweet and i could not finish the dish between protein and animal taste and sweet tasting meat. i do not know what gamey tastes like except that i've had dried deer jerky and it was really tough texture to chew. deer meat is the only game meat i've sampled. if i were not consuming the amount of sugar daily and weekly i were it would be a good meal?

i do not know the life there is the life for me, deep sadness at times and i dont know who i am and mental illness.. well, thieves steal like the entrance gate and forklift parts, whatever they can get away with scrounging when no ones there. cows make their way into the place, last time i were there their were 2 cows aheheh.. the fact is i am not independent, i would not be the one trailering a tractor to the place and i would feel like a fish out of water doing the planting myself i do think my parents put me in mind the life i wanted. my hatred i've done them an injustice not listening, recurrently dictating life.
 
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willsoenn said:
i dont know indiginous peoples but thousands live nearby.. the ones i've met seem to have the mentality that anything they can take is theirs or.. something?
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We have Mexicans like that. Don't get them mixed up!

That "if its unattended it's mine" crap will get you lead poisoning around here, maybe a case of dogbiteus in the rumpus disease.
 
alright, forget my comments on that :) what im interested is farming for myself and others. where can i get to know like minded ahhu users.
 
willsoenn said:
im interested in farming for a living and providing for my family. anybody talk about that?
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Ag talk University?

Despite having grown up on a cattle ranch. And growing hay. And working for another rancher as my first wage earning job. And being immersed in the lifestyle for the first 18 years of my life. I still needed to learn a lot to be "successful" in agriculture.

My secret sauce? The new Renaissance. My grandfather as a farmer only had his own experience and that of his father and possibly the experience of a couple of close neighbors. But I had access to a world of experience!

And that is what it takes. My tenured advisors advised me wrong over and again! I look back at some of their well meaning advice with horror? But I realize now that they too were severely restricted by their experience. Agriculture is like hitting a moving target. You should employ continuous learning and open mindness. Be modest in expectations and carefully question your decisions.

But always remember my favorite line from my favorite movie: " what one man can do, so can another! " "say it!" "Louder! With conviction!"
 
About the only way I know a small operation can make it these days is to live close to a major high end market city and produce specialty items. You pretty much have to find your niche market items. While always being a move ahead of the newest trends.

Look up the book 10 acres enough by Edmond Morris and read it it may help to give you some insight even though it was written over a hundred years ago.
 
Trying to make a financial living on a quarter section is almost impossible these days. however you can grow food for several families. you have to be mechanically skilled, know how to listen to what works in the area. have a really tough mental state. stay away from chemicals and fertilizers. (actually learn how to steward the land, not mine it) this guy and his family have a lot of wisdom Polyface Farm
 
Tirediron said:
Trying to make a financial living on a quarter section is almost impossible these days. however you can grow food for several families. you have to be mechanically skilled, know how to listen to what works in the area. have a really tough mental state. stay away from chemicals and fertilizers. (actually learn how to steward the land, not mine it) this guy and his family have a lot of wisdom Polyface Farm
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theres nothing wrong with mining rocks its not philosophical. i dont wish to apply chemical fertilizers and i dont think i have to. i prefer organic, more substance like vitamins. i feel the produce of the grocery store is missing substance. edit substance is the incorrect, uniform isnt always best. substance but not nutrition. i do not believe it couldnt provide a living.. like WTHeck? its more work than fast food industry jobs, why should fast food have to pay more when its less work for less nutrition. its not impossible unless its wyoming.. we're not talking about fertile land.
 
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willsoenn said:
theres nothing wrong with mining rocks its not philosophical. i dont wish to apply chemical fertilizers and i dont think i have to. i prefer organic, more substance like vitamins. i feel the produce of the grocery store is missing substance. edit substance is the incorrect, uniform isnt always best. substance but not nutrition. i do not believe it couldnt provide a living.. like WTHeck? its more work than fast food industry jobs, why should fast food have to pay more when its less work for less nutrition. its not impossible unless its wyoming.. we're not talking about fertile land.
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Sorry I should have been more precise and accurate in my mining reference. I was referring to the "farming" methods that deplete the soil , not quarry work. and agreed the store produce is lame at best.
 
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