By ‘kids’, I mean our son who will be 4 in August and the little girl I have taken in for daycare for the last two years.  She just turned three.

Above: John and Shea feeding bottle lambs

Two toddlers combined with my opinions about mixing parenting and farming was not a recipe for getting work done.  In times gone by the ‘tie the kid to the fence while you drive the tractor’ parenting theory was quite prevalent.  We’re not into that here.

Despite John’s frustration that I’ve been unavailable to help him for the past three and a half years, I firmly stuck to what I consider common sense.

Forcing two-yearolds in snow suits to walk up and down a huge hill back and forth to the barn with no help mom’s carrying buckets of grain, for example.  Or leaving them screaming while you feed hay because the kiddies – 25  lbs – are scared of the sheep – 150 lbs – when mom’s not carrying them.  These things don’t take a lot of deliberation to figure out.

Now that they’re bigger, though, and more comfortable in the barn, I’m going to take advantage of my new ability to get things done – and to let the kids get things done.

There is nothing small people like better than to feel they’re getting to contribute and be a part of what you’re doing.  It applies in the barn just as well as in the kitchen.

So, with that said, here are a few tricks I’ve figured out and picked up from other farm moms for helping kids enjoy chore time:

• Hay is always fun.  If you think you don’t have a need to have loose hay around, think again.  A safe spot – like that empty pen – is a great place for a climbing, burying roll in the hay, kid style.
• If you have an extra pen, why not put a slide or some sand in with some sand toys?  Or wood shavings.  The extra pen is a blessing.
• Trampoline with enclosure a.k.a. huge playpen.  I met a sheep farmer whose children – 3 years and 18 months – would spend all chore time playing on the trampoline with special ‘barn’ stuffed animals and soft balls.
• Give them their own, kid sized tools.  Our son has a pitchfork with a 36 inch long handle.  We taught him how to use it without injuring anyone and he loves it.  Visiting children get excited to take a turn really feeding the sheep.
• Make sure they can get up high.  Kids are eye level with sheep and a good head shorter than even a young calf.  Let them get out of range of licking, nibbling and loud baaaa-ing when they need to.

And, finally:

• Don’t wear out your welcome.  Be prepared to pack it in within a few minutes if the kids get tired.  I don’t mean jump the second someone make a peep.  Make a judgment call.  Have you been focusing on your work to the exclusion of the kids for too long?  A little independent time is important, but once they’re done, you need to be done too.

Growing up on a farm is something I always knew I wanted for my kids.  I don’t want to farm first, parent second, though.  But I also don’t want to parent first and farm not at all.  That would be cheating them of all the great things kids can learn and do on the farm.

So, as ‘my’ kids get more independent and confident, I will let them see me – and help me – work more.  With a little forethought, it can be good for all involved.

If you have any tricks to share when it comes to combining farm and kids, please tell.  Even if you have the most incredible ‘tie them to the fence’ farm parenting story.  I’m up for a good laugh.  (Funny, mostly because it’s a thing of the past, for the most part.  Thankfully!)

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.

Think it’s not possible?  I mean, Foie Gras.  Come on.  It’s the most inhumane foodstuff available, right? Well, it can be. Most times it is.

Take the time to watch this video and you’ll get your dose of sustainable agriculture inspiration, that’s for sure.

Almost makes me want to get some geese.

Normally, that type of thought might bring more ‘missing luxury’ if you believe The Secret. But I must have thought it in a more positive light. Here’s a pictorial of my reasoning:

This is a beautiful vest that my sister sent me from Vancouver. Thanks Sis!

Here we have my Christmas present from DH and DS. That’s a number 8 jar!! And original, or so we’re told. I await my buckets of milk with baited breath.

Not so much a picture of the actual luxury in question but of the location of said beacon of quasi-modern technology. This was the joy of chores this morning… Wait for it… We, here at J. & C. Nyman Farms, now have… running water IN the BARN!!

And I said I don’t have a luxurious life. Ha…

Here’s hoping that everyone has a little bit of whatever they consider luxury this holiday season.

Cheers!

For some comedic relief to start and to show that I don’t only read about farms, check out this great daily comic.  Today’s strip is about ear wax.  How does that entice ya? 

Here’s meat – or rather the veggies – of my reading, though.  And oh!  The inspiration to be had in the gardening department!

Click here for Winter Planting Plans on the Observer Organic Allotment Blog

• Check out the beautiful produce pictures at one of my favourite blogs, Throwback at Trapper Creek.
• If you’re interested in extended season gardening specifically, click on the winter garden plan picture to read about this piece of useful art.

• For those of you who get a little overwhelmed with the task of gardening to sustain a family,  (we’re just starting to attempt to grow enough to avoid the grocery store), I found this great resource.  It’s a gardening calendar specifically for hardiness zone 5b but I’ve got to think there are more helpful bloggers out there in other zones.  (Potential future post: compilation of gardening calendars?)

On the livestock front, I had the pleasure of reading about a shockingly smooth pig loading session at Tylerfarm Homestead’s blog.  Yes, it is that time of year.  The cold weather meat producing animals have reached full size.  The freezer will be full soon.

Our pigs are not yet ready for the freezer as they are on the slow, mainly grass-fed plan. Here John is enticing them back to the barn after a successful attempt to escape. Our three year old sounded the alarm while I was cooking lunch: "Mom! The pigs are on the road!"

My pig loading experience stems from long ago and was not that smooth.  When my sister and I were small, our family lived on a small farm near on Blue Mountain.  My mother has been known to tell the story of one loading day when a somewhat coarse talking neighbour came over to help out.  I would have been 3 or 4 years old with my sister a couple of years older.

I guess my sister, Gena, and I sat on the edge of the log enclosure the pigs lived in and observed the proceedings.  Later in the day, the weather had turned and we went in to play in our living room while mom worked down the hall in the kitchen.

As she tells it, her ‘mom-sense’ went off and she started listening more closely to us playing.  Finally, certain that she was hearing our attempts at some of the worst language you can think of, she came in to ask us what we were doing.  My sister, always bold and sure of her right to do as she pleased piped up:

“We’re playing ‘load the pigs’, Mom!”

Neighbours.  You take the good with the bad.

On the topic of pigs, click on this lovely Large Black to visit the site of a great little farm that I have recently

Click on the photo to check out Upper Canada Heritage Meat.

discovered not too far from us.  I have yet to approach them about it but I’m dreaming of some of these beauties for our farm next year.

For anyone yearning to hold onto summer just a bit longer, here is the one and only flower on our new hydrangea bush from this year.  It took all summer to brew.

I took this picture two days ago and it is still sitting there, though slightly less fresh.

On a final note of what has been, for me, a leisurely, random post, our co-op student, Kenley, was here on Saturday for what was her last full day.  We did some puttering around in the garden, shelling dry beans, taking down the pea trellis, bundling the last of the herbs for drying and generally enjoying the beautiful day. 

We have enjoyed having her here and are thrilled that our local highschool has seen fit to run an agricultural co-op program that actually give the students the chance to learn from experience.  What a novel concept!

Kenley’s last few hours will be spent next Saturday, preparing our meat CSA packages for delivery.  After that, we’ll be back on our own and richer for having had her with us.

Now, I can cross ‘Sanity saving’ off my to-do list and move on to the marketing. Happily, that is a task that I enjoy, not only because I know that a small farm like ours would never fly if someone didn’t SELL IT!

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?

Note the capsized wheelbarrow.  That is about halfway down the garden.  The wheelbarrow is mired in leafy, green, food-free plants.  Native plants, as my sister insist.  Weeds.

In the forefront, though, we have Detroit red beets, basil, a few late planted carrots, the spot where the onions were, the corner of a tripod for the peas (now drying for seed collection), yellow beets, parsley and some dried poppies which blew over from the flower bed.  I didn’t have the heart to treat them as weeds and they were quite a lovely addition to the garden.

Past the wheel barrow, you can see the dying squash and zucchini vines.  We have a gazillion squash.  If you’re a member of our CSA or live near here, contact me about squash.  Make me an offer.  I’m dealing acorns and butternut.

(Notice the unmowed lawn?  Come on.  We do have priorities.)

This pic shows that I was panicing during bean planting time.  ‘Will I have enough time before I go away in late May to get all the beans in that I want to plant?!  Plant them all RIGHT NOW, just in case!!‘

As a result, I spent a few weeks harvesting my body weight in beans everyday.  Sure hope we want to eat frozen, pickled and canned beans come winter.  (In this pic, I have already gone through and pulled a bunch of bean plants to feed the pigs.  Pigs love beans.)

To the rigth of the beans are a few random basil plants and the parsley etc from the previous pic.  There is also a little stone wall full of weeds.  As I mentioned, this is a new garden plot.  You never can tell how many rocks there will be until you turn the soil.  Here, there are a lot.  To the left of the beans there is a whole large square of a rare crop known as foxtail.  Very useful for… looking a bit like a fox’s tail and… tickling toddlers’ necks… umm… covering up A LOT of rocks that didn’t get picked.  In fact, I was afraid there would be a huge hole in the Earth if I picked all those rocks.  I will tackle that spot next year.

Finally, behind the beans/foxtail we have 7 messy tomato plants that are doing wonderfully despite my hatred for the removal of tomato horn worms.  I did most of the extermination with much squirming and ‘Oh Gross!’ comments.  Once I caved and begged Johnny to do it for me.  And he did.  What are husbands for?

(Just a note:  I’m ordinarily not a wimp.  Maggots and tomato horn worms do it to me.  And, I am able to handle them.  Or rather deal with them.  But to see me do it, you’d think they were actually in my underwear.  What a thought!)

For the last picture, you get a better shot of the foxtail along with a shot of the carrots (front right) that I planted where ever there was sand from the hydro trench.  On the very left, there is a lot of rhubarb (that I think I planted too close together), followed by invisible asparagus and sunflowers.  (There are turnips hiding under the sunflowers.  They did remarkably well for being smothered.)

The reason I included this picture is because the sunflowers deserve special mention.  When I told our three year old sun that he could help plant them and then enter one in the fall fair, I could not have guessed that they’d grow large enough to swallow him whole.  I felt a little silly saying that he was entering these giants in the grains category of the Picton Fall Fair when he couldn’t even carry one!

And, of course, he won.  Does that make me kind of like the mom who does her kid’s science project?  Oh, please.  Not that.  For next year, is there such thing as a miniature sunflower?

So, even if you’re not farming vegetables, one of the best things about being on the farm day in and day out is the ability to work a garden into your reality.

Our garden doesn’t look as pretty as that of our friends who run a 5 acre market garden and veggie CSA.  We definitely have more weeds and more random plantings as a result of trying to balance my limited knowledge of biodyanmics with the weather and how much time I have to plant before a toddler needs something.  I will include some current pictures of the garden in the coming days.  Anyone who is feeling bad about not weeding enough is welcome to post my garden pics on their fridge to help them feel better. 

I did apply a great heap of mulch in the spring, though, so the vegetables won out over the weeds and have produced a bumper crop of everything except peppers.  (My first foray into pepper growing was not terribly successful.)  Todays picture of a pail of our delicious yellow heirloom tomatoes will be the first of a handful to come this week.

We are eating really well here these days.  That in itself is a good enough reason to farm.

There are people who lead and people who follow.  Someone famous said that, I’m sure.  I don’t know who it was, but I do know that they were right. 

Each roll is appropriate to certain situations.  Leaders initiate action and make changes.  Good leaders make positive changes and improve something about the world around them.  But they don’t do it alone.  In fact, leaders couldn’t change much without followers.

Followers are perfect for getting jobs done and for keeping things going long after the initial action to get them started.  I’m sure we all can figure out which one of these characteristics we embody more, leader or follower.

(Even among these laying hens there are the leaders who jump out every time I open the door initiating the search for the greener grass outside their ‘condo’.)

How does this apply to starting a farm?  Well, the clue is in the word ‘starting’.  Like I said above, it’s the leaders that initiate action.  And you’re trying to initiate some serious action in the shape of changes to every area of your life if you’re trying to start a farm.

I’m sure this applies with all start up small businesses.  If you can’t summon and inflate the leadership qualities that you have, you’re going to struggle during the start-up phase of your farm.

Why?  Because initiating action requires certain leadership characteristics such as:

• Finding being in charge exhilarating, not stressful
• Being driven and having the desire to create

Being in Charge:  Exhilarating or Exhausting?

There are those who feel on top of the world when they’re the ones who get to call the shots, motivate the team and carry the lions share of the responsibility.  These people feel more alive when they’re coordinating a project or focusing on a goal.

This is not something that I have that much experience with.  While I don’t mind being in charge and do find it mildly exhilarating, I also find it mildly stressful.  Call me a fence sitter when it comes to being the boss.

There are those, however, who cringe at the thought of having to make decisions and be responsible for the outcome of a project.  These people will have a hard time starting a farm.  Starting a farm is a project and you, along with any partners you have, are completely responsible for making it run.  There are opportunities to be farm employees, but there is no space for someone starting a small farm to have an employee mentality.  Someone has got to be in charge.

Being Creatively Driven

I spent a few years working on setting up a Teen Room in our public library while I worked there.  Everything about the creation of this new space, the fine tuning of the guidelines for it’s use, the rearranging of attitudes around the need for it was exciting to me.

I was inspired and driven to make the new Teen Room a success.  And it was.  The only problem was, when the room was established and things were running on autopilot, I started to get board.  The challenge to create was gone.  The creation phase was over and someone more suited to maintenance needed to step in.

Granted, there are projects that inspire me enough to keep me interested even in the maintenance phase but this wasn’t one of them.

Farming needs to be one of these dual inspiration projects if you’re going to make it successful.  You need to be the leader in order to get the ball rolling and, even while you’re doing that, you need to be of a follower or maintenance mindset.

Both at once, you ask?  Yes.  Farming has to be done every day.  You need to maintain your animals even while you’re driving the marketing aspect of the business from your office.

A couple of quality follower or maintenance characteristics that will help in your farm business are:

• Enjoying routines
• Thriving on seeing physical results of your labour

Routines-R-Us

This one is mandatory:  In order to not go crazy farming, you need to be able to stomach the same routine seven days a week for months at a time.  I’m not meaning that you’ll do the exact same things from sun up until sundown.  But you will have certain tasks – chores – that remain pretty much unchanged everyday for a whole season sometimes.  And they might take you a few hours a day.

If you’re interested in a dairy farm, you’re looking at many hours a day, no changes but the normal farming surprises that come with animals and weather, 365 days a year.

If you don’t have a routine bone in your body, you don’t have a farming bone in your body.

A Result You Can See

For me, this is what makes chores do-able repeatedly.  While I don’t do our daily chores these days, I have been an everyday chore-er in the past and know that this is what makes it rewarding for me.  Standing back and seeing the turkey curtains on the barn all cleaned out, looking back at the row of cows that are milked and seeing that it is longer than the row yet to be milked.

Daily chores are much easier and more rewarding if you can take joy in the small details and if you feel accomplished when you see the results of your labour.

These are only a couple examples of how the leader and follower in us all need to be tapped into when starting – and running – a farm.  Now I’m turning the challenge over to you:

Post a comment below with your thoughts on what characteristics you have that will help you towards your farming goal.  And, by all means, share your thoughts on the things you have to work on.

Maybe we can help each other get a balance that will start a farm!

]]> http://jcnymanfarms.com/2008/08/20/how-to-start-a-farm-5-farmers-need-to-be-leaders-and-followers/feed/ 2 JNyman http://jcnymanfarms.com/2008/07/28/how-to-start-a-farm-4-farming-is-more-than-half-marketing/ http://jcnymanfarms.com/2008/07/28/how-to-start-a-farm-4-farming-is-more-than-half-marketing/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:18:33 +0000 J Nyman http://jcnymanfarms.wordpress.com/?p=104 ]]> This is Part Four of a series called: How to Start a Farm: 6 Things All Would-Be Farmers Should Know Before Getting Knee Deep in Sheep (or any other farm venture). See Part Three here.

There is some confusing language used around farming.  Even the word farming doesn’t really convey what the job entails.  (A lot of jobs have this problem, though.  When we say police officer, we don’t think paperwork, but I understand that they do a lot of it.)

I think the business of farming suffers more acutely from this confusion, though, because of the romanticism that it stirs up in people.  When people – even farmers – think of farming, they’re imagining sunny afternoons planting crops, late night barn checks watching and listening to their peaceful animals and all of the outdoor, in-touch with nature tasks that farmers do.  Even the less desirable tasks that come to mind are of the outdoor, hands on variety.

How many people picture paperwork, computer time and a long list of phone calls when they think of farming?  Not many.

And what on earth could farmers need to spend that much office time for, you ask?  Why, marketing of course.  Let me elaborate.

Marketing wasn’t always a task that the small family farm had to engage in, for sure.  In fact, at least since the Barley Days (1860 to 1890) here in Prince Edward County, marketing has been done by out side bodies.  Export to other countries and continents has been going on for generations.

My own Great Grandfather was a grain buyer for Pioneer Seed in Alberta around 1900.  He would travel from farm to farm buying up all the grain to export and ship to cities.  Similarly, nowadays, farmers can simply haul all their grain to the elevator or all their animals to the auction hall and wait for a cheque to arrive in their mailbox.

So why, you ask, do farmers need to do marketing if the systems for it are already so well established?  Why, if you can simply transport it to the right place and wait for a cheque, should farmers do anything else?  The long answer to that could be another post altogether to discuss the ethics of certain production models, start-up costs and more.

The short answer is this ‘Mailbox’ business model sees the farmer getting about 9¢ per retail dollar.  So bread, for example, you’d make about 14¢ for the wheat it took to make one loaf.  The ‘Do your Marketing’ model of small farm businesses can see you making 60, 70, 80, 90 cents on the dollar.

Hmm… a lot less work to get the same money.  Or a lot more money for the same work. Marketing looks pretty good, all of a sudden.

For those who have read the previous posts in this series, you already know that keeping your pencil sharp is essential.  The difference is that, on John’s Opa’s farm, the main use of the pencil was the math required to spend less than you make.  Your pencil will have more varied work.  It still has to do those expense calculations, but it also has to plan how best to market what your farm is producing.

For anyone seriously looking at farming for a living, I give you yet another set of questions to ask yourself:  Do you like dealing with people?  Are you a planner?  Are you self motivated?  Basically, do you want to do the marketing?

Because, farming really is more than half marketing.  Said another way, the success of your farm is based at least 50% on the quality – and possibly the quantity – of the marketing you do.

You might want to get a second pencil.  It’s going to be busy.