What is (or was) your biggest roadblock to starting a farm?

This was my first poll question of choice for you readers.

How to get enough money to start

Lack of farming know-how

The time it takes when you’re still working an off-farm job

Other answer…

Those were the options I provided for your polling pleasure.

I know that many of you saw the poll in our sidebar because, so far, 63 of you answered it.  And, of those 63, 57% said that how to get enough money to start their farm was the biggest issue.

So, now I have a question about poll etiquette.  Because, really, is it bad form to ask about someone’s challenges without at least a bit of knowledge that might help them over the hurdle??

How to get enough money to do anything is a sticking point for a lot of people and farming has a lot more ‘junk’ surrounding it than most businesses.

For one thing, there is a whole societal belief that food is cheap.  And, yes, crappy food is cheap – at the initial outlay.  The true cost of crappy food, or pseudo-food, as I like to call it, comes when you look at the health care bills it causes and the environmental damage it does.  When you’re producing good food, naturally the cost is going to be higher.

So, I guess step one to getting enough money to start a farm is to clear society of some old, mistaken beliefs about food and install some new ones.

If that’s step one, it kinda sounds like there might be a lot of steps before you get to the money part, doesn’t it?

But wait, there’s more than just cheap food ‘junk’ that makes it difficult to make a living farming.  As a fascinated observer of humanity, I have noticed that it isn’t only long time farmers who have the ‘Life is hard,  please notice me struggling’ mindset.

It seems that a lot of new farmers getting into sustainable agriculture have that same mindset and, honestly, it’s a killer.  This is the ‘Poor Dirt Farmer Junk’.

(John used to say that he was a poor dirt farmer.  But he has learned that to say this is to invoke the wrath of the wife.)

If you want to repel abundance, this is the way to do it.  Don’t get me wrong, farming is not Easy Street financially.  Yes, we struggle too.  But if you’re into farming because your identity is about struggle, well, a bucket of cash could fall on you and you’d still figure out how to make it hard.

So, do I have any new useful answers for those who are in the ‘not enough money’ category?  I’ll do my best, but it might not be what you’re expecting.

Three Financial Thoughts For Planning Your Farm:

1. Do it yourself:  Do what yourself, you ask?  All of it.
   Yes, the goal is to pay yourself a reasonable wage; $15 or $20 per hour, say.  But start where you are.  If you have little financial capital, make it up in hourly capital.
2. Sell first, then produce:  A lot of farmers (especially conventional farmers) have gotten into the habit of producing something and then trying to sell it.  Don’t do it!  Sell it – or, at very least, market it – first so you know you can sell it.If you don’t know how a C.S.A. (Community Supported Agriculture) program starts yet, find out now.
3. Know yourself:  (and your spouse/partner/family)
   Make no mistake, you will be short of cash and/or time – likely both.  Unless you save A LOT of money before starting your farm, you will have a farmer’s lifestyle for some years.

   Know what need motivates you to farm and be able to tell when enough is enough, for you and for your family.  Because, yes,  everyone can survive with nothing but second hand clothes, old cars, “No, we can’t rent a movie”, “No, you can’t play hockey”, “No, we can’t have a vacation”, without cable TV and “No, Daddy won’t be home to tuck you in”.

   But, can they thrive in the conditions you’re planning on foisting on them?

I know, number 3 doesn’t sound like a financial thought but it applies directly.  If you’re going to make hard financial choices for your family, make sure the individual personalities you’re dealing with can thrive despite them.

Even better would be to make the financial choices that help your family thrive.  But don’t ask me exactly how to do that.  When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, here is an unofficial number 4:  Starting a farm is like having kids.  You’re never really going to be ready or have enough money but that shouldn’t stop you.  Follow numbers 1 through 3, then jump in.

Your options are sink or swim and, in the case of farming, neither one is likely to kill you.

I write my experiences and thoughts about the realities of starting a farm, no holds barred, no rose coloured glasses, and people find me.  In startling numbers.  These days, one of my ‘How to Start a Farm’ series can usually be found on page one or two of Google.  (You can buy a $90 e-book on how to get yourself on the first pages of a Google search!)

I’m so encouraged that such numbers of you want to start farms!  I can’t tell you what that would do for our communities, our health and our economies if you all actually did it!

(Come on! You can do it!)

So, give me a moment of your time, and tell me what it is about farming that interests you.  I’m including some questions to get you started.  But don’t feel you need to answer them.  Just take a minute to tell me where you’re at with your farm dream and where you want to be.

If you’re not among the ‘dreaming about farming’ group but have already reached your farm dream, in whole or in part, put your two cents in!  I’m looking to get some serious farm-start-up momentum going over the next little while!

I’ve gone through the family farm situation while growing up and I’m deeply embroiled in creating and re-creating a farm now.  Creating a farm has so many facets.  It can get beyond overwhelming.  Tell me where your overwhelm is.  I’ve been to enough of the valleys and peaks that small farm start up can take you to.

There is a reason things get repeated enough times to become cliche.  Usually, they get said a lot because they’re true.

So here’s mine:  If I can help just one person succeed at a new farm, I’ll be happy.

I’m fascinated to know what draws different people to farming.  And, I love writing about the process we’re going though on our farm.  Give some good thoughts and I’ll have writing fodder for the upcoming winter writing season!

Here are those questions (should you want them):

1. If you’re looking into what it takes to start a farm (or turn your farm into your job), do you truly think you might do it some day?
2. If you already have started your own farm, is it working out the way you imagined it would?
3. What part of starting your farm (or expanding from hobby farm to income farm) has got you stumped?
4. In your wildest dreams, what does your farm look like?

Farming can look really good from a middle income drudgery job that has you bored out of your mind for 40 hours a week. You and whoever you share your life with might even head to your favourite wing joint once a week to mull over how and when to make your farming dreams come true.

Maybe you imagine a nice house in the country with an old red barn or a rustic market garden plot while you browse the garden centre, coffee in hand, picking out terracotta pots for your balcony herb garden.

These are just couple of brief mental images – possible normal, everyday scenarios – that I ask anyone thinking about starting a farm to scrutinize closely. How much of what you consider ‘normal, everyday’ could you stand to forgo?

This is important because, unless you’re bringing a small fortune into the farming venture with you (read: a cool million, no exaggeration), some of what you consider incidental will become luxury.

Farming as a small business (as opposed to a large business that you create with your million dollar investment) is not very financially profitable. Sure, there is a great return on investment if you’re counting health, peace of mind and other soul-salve type personal rewards. But, it is generally accepted that actual profit above and beyond a somewhat meager wage for your labour is hard to come by, to say the least.

I’m not saying it will never happen. I’m saying it takes a long time and requires that you ‘keep your pencil sharp’ as John’s Opa and weathered dairy farmer would say.

Let me lay out what ‘keeping your pencil sharp’ might entail using the two scenarios from above.

Start with the wing night dream session after a torturous week in a cubicle.

First things first, weekly wing night is out. Unless there is at least one substantial off-farm income, that weekly restaurant trip will turn into a biannual event.

How’s that working for you so far? Remember that you’re trading some of it for other rewards like starry skies, letting kids run out the door unchecked, getting your hands dirty and feeling connected to the natural cycles of the Earth.

Let’s talk about your forty hour work week. Feel long, does it? Well, you’re in luck. It’s history. Juggling an off farm job or a veggie CSA means 7 days a week from sunrise to sunset, or longer for part of the year, at least.

How about the vehicle that got you to the restaurant. Can you drive something cheaper? More versatile? Rustier? Something that is full of little bits of hay and smells suspiciously like livestock? Our Ford Focus is my farm truck, hay and all.

How about the dream farm scenario number two? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with the coffee and nice terracotta pots.

Sure, you won’t be confined to your balcony but your plants will be in whatever pots you can get at Giant Tiger for $3.99 or the cracked ones the old farmer left in your newly acquired, dilapidated drive shed. The coffee is something you’ll stop for on your way to wing nights – on your new schedule, in your new farm truck/’92 Ford Taurus wagon.

(Guilty conscience here: We currently drive a 2005 Ford Focus wagon, fully loaded with leather seats. We got it on lease and have been kicking ourselves – hard – and wearing the exact same clothes to wing night every since.)

Your nice house will be a wonderful home, if you make it so. But if you’re used to calling the repair folks whenever your tap is dripping, you’ll likely need to think again. A lot of minor things can be overlooked if you have to trade your dinner to get them fixed.

The big red barn, while an icon of simpler, nostalgic times, will be dark and damp and not that great for raising animals in. When the roof leaks, it will have to be fixed before the house gets any attention and will cost significantly more than you can fathom being able to afford. Here is where the line of credit becomes your friend and your foe. If you had any space left on it after planting crops, it’s full now. Better not schedule any more emergencies till after harvest time.

Have I got you kissing your computer terminal with it’s regular, tidy summed paycheque yet?

This is the reality of starting up a farm. The money will be tighter than most people can ever see themselves coping with. Handling money stress is a job requirement. But, if you’re up for it, if you can let financial uncertainty and the need for new shoes slide off your back like water off a duck, the rewards are worth it. And, if you keep your pencil sharp, you’ll see a sustainable farm income in time.

Well, farming – and starting a farm, in particular (due to the ‘two-full-time-job factor) – is just like anything else in the world. It has it’s ups and downs. There are busy times and quieter times. You get to watch crops flourish where you’ve spread your best compost and you have to shovel the crap out of the chicken house to get that good stuff to spread.

Okay, so we don’t have a chicken house, but we will in the winter and I’m purposely not thinking about spring clean out.

Point being that, just like with anything else, you can revel in the high times and keep your head above water in the dips. Or you can drown. And, when you’re drowning, it’s hard to remember that, whatever problem is big enough to sink you, there is an answer out there.

Here at J. & C. Nyman Farms, we’ve been feeling a little like we’re drowning despite business going so well. Why does that happen? To challenge us? Isn’t farming enough of a challenge??

Anyway, it happens and, like I said, the answers are ‘out there’. I’ve always been pretty good at seeking the ones that someone has written down. (Aren’t books great?) Lately, though, I’ve gotten better at harvesting answers from what I consider the collective consciousness. Sounds a little hokey maybe, but it’s been working for me.

For example, I called this post ‘Attitude is Everything’ because that’s what John and I have both been struggling with. The ‘Why does this have to be so hard/This shouldn’t be this way’ attitude. We might as well have been wearing cement shoes. So, I absolutely went to my list of favourite quotes, my bookshelf and my trusted friends in search of solutions.

More importantly, I listened for answers that came to me unbidden. Like my neighbour, a gentleman past retirement age, lets say, who said: “Boy, I hope your son knows how lucky he is to have this life, Colleen.”

Some might have taken offense to this and I don’t necessarily think that our 2.5 year old needs to feel ‘lucky to have this life’. But, I realized that John and I had been looking upon our life too negatively for sometime.

From a two year old’s perspective, the fact that the lawn was knee high might even be a plus, not a reason to think ‘this shouldn’t be this hard’. To a growing mind and spirit, the fact that sleep is traded for the opportunity to green chop feed, haul it to the barn yard and hand bomb off the hay wagon to our sheep, probably sounds like a super deal. (I know it does, in fact. That’s why bedtime has been going so poorly lately). When the fencing catches up to the season and the sheep are on pasture all the time, I’m sure he will feel like something is lost, not gained.

And, what would be wrong with looking at things this way? Currently reality can’t be changed so why not enjoy it for what it is. Or at least know that, despite how hard it is, it is still fun, rewarding and, dare I say it? A wonderful life. (He! He! clichés make me laugh!)

Hmm… as I reread what I have written, I realize it’s all no brainer stuff – when I’m not actively drowning.  So, I guess I can just count myself one of the many who have written down the answer to a challenge so they won’t forget it. If anyone hears me sounding like I’m drowning in bad attitude, please refer me back here. And feel free to refer yourself if you ever need it. 

More specifically farm related stuff to come in the next post…

So, I’m sure many farmers would laugh to hear me say that there are only three essential things to lasting through the sometimes permanent start up phase. But, in my humble opinion, you’re wasting your time if you even think about those other important details before being very clear on the first three. And they’re basic. You’ve heard them before but if I need a reminder now and then, I figure you might be due for one sometime too.

Without further ado, here they are:

Essential Task 1: Witness Your Days

Focus on the very minute you’re experiencing as much as possible. If you spend your energy focusing on the future that you hope for, fear will never come or can’t pay for you will miss stuff. Big stuff. And, you won’t get nearly as much done on the farm.

What is the reason almost EVERYONE sites for wanting to farm? Lifestyle. Also described as a good environment in which to raise kids. Or peace and serenity.

If you spend too much time living in the future (or the past) you will miss the very purpose of farming and you won’t get that much farming done due to scattered attention.

What a waste. If you must be wasteful, do it in other areas. Don’t waste your children’s childhoods, your relationship’s honeymoon years or the work time before breakfast. Hell, leave the fridge door open instead.

Essential Task 2: Know What YOU Love Doing

As well as knowing what you love to do, do it. As young people, we don’t often really know what we want to do. We get into things only to find out years later that we don’t enjoy what we’ve created. I think that we often create these ‘How did I get this life?’ scenarios and think we’re doomed to live them out until the end of our days.

Don’t get stuck. Review your life and if you don’t like what you spend your time at, change it. Having said that we rarely know what we want when we’re young, we’re also rarely totally off base. If you thought (or think) you want to farm at age 20, when you reach 30 or 40 you probably still have that in you. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. But do review and change what needs changing.

It’s amazing how many farmers are their own bosses and still feel they are trapped by their farm. (Hint: Don’t get too far in debt to farm. Much harder to change things then.)

I put that in brackets but it could almost be the fourth essential task. The more debt you take on, the less you can change when you find you’re spending your time doing something that doesn’t make you whistle while you work.

Channel the dwarfs. Make sure you’re doing whistle-worthy work.

Essential Task 3: Stop Working and Hang Out

This may sound counter productive. I am talking about the start up phase, after all. Aren’t we supposed to put our nose to the grindstone and get this business up and running before coming up for air?

NO. Take a lesson from Leo at ZenHabits and Reward Yourself. Often. Your spirits will sag when one or more family members are working full time jobs doing something they may not much enjoy only to come home to another full time job that entails manual labour. Even when it’s raining.

You’re spirits will sag at some point. That is unavoidable unless your a member of the Brady Bunch.

What you can avoid is resentment from family members. If you don’t take a break to be with and focus on your loved ones, their resentment will be well deserved. Notice the emphasis. You’re not taking a break to stick your head in the latest farm paper here.

As Leo points out, it is good to reward yourself. If the budget is really tight, sitting down to a play-dough cake made by your two year old and a hot coffee will feel like a feast. Have the occasional feast.

Feast on your family’s attention and let them feast on yours. Hang out. Dude.

___

There they are. The thunderous threesome of ‘must-do’s’ as I see it. And, yes, they are pretty fluffy, not business-minded at all. They’re possibly even spiritual on some levels. And sure, you could rhyme off more than three essential business practices that seem to blow me out of the water.

Here’s the thing. We’re talking about farming. And, again, let me take you back to the reason people choose farming. There are very few basic motivations for starting a business. It fills your pocket is definitely one. It strokes your ego is not uncommon either. Or, it allows you to do what soothes your soul.

Farming falls into the third category. Pocket lining and ego stroking are not farming’s forte. So, my 3 Essential Tasks are Soul Tasks. If you let these slip, your going to erode what you set out to accomplish.

If you aren’t witnessing the passing of your days, if you’re not doing Whistle-Worthy Work, if you aren’t stopping to reward yourself and your family with your attention, you’re going to miss out on the Soul-Paycheck. That lifestyle, the kid-friendly environment and definitely the peace and serenity will pass you by.

Don’t let it happen. That would just be working one ‘because I have to’ type of job to pay for a second. Don’t work two full time Soul-Drainers. If you’re going to run a Start Up Farm, at least make it a Soul Farm.