The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Introduce yourself => Topic started by: chuckalicious on January 25, 2014, 09:32:44 pm
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Hi all, I am one of probably 100s of new users you get in the same boat, but I shall carry on :excited:
I am currently a stay at home dad to my 2 daughters, but once they go to school I am looking for a new career/job. My wife is a teacher and we live in the Stirling area. At the moment we are trying to think of ways of me making a little money while working outdoors. Until becoming a dad, I worked in the IT sector - not something I want to return to.
Our dream has always been to have a smallholding, but, we have never actually looked into it any further than "ohhh, that'd be lovely".
So really I'm here to find out as much as I can about what can be done. We don't have any land but would be looking to buy some land and build a kit house on it after selling our own place. My wife would continue to work so we had a decent steady income and my new role would be to work on the small holding.
I of course have some questions. First of all, is there any sort of rule of thumb of how much land you need before you begin to make any money, or at least for it to pay for itself?
Secondly, can you go in and learn while you're at it or is it best to get experience beforehand?
We're not in it to make large sums of money, we just want a new way of life, for me to be happy in something I do and to provide a great place for our daughters to grow up and maybe learn a thing or two about life.
So any tips/advice/warnings greatly appreciated :)
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:wave: Hi there from a bit south of you.
How much land do you need before you make any money? - you won't make any money anyway, but how much you need to, say, feed your family with your own produce depends to a large extent on the quality of the land you buy. There is some good land around you but also some really acid boggy stuff, which is inevitably the most likely to come up for sale. What you can buy will obviously depend on your budget, but buy the best you can and leave a fair wack to get set up. Make sure you see your chosen piece of land in foul weather as well as summer sunshine, have a look at the plants growing - rush/rashes will show the land is wet and acid, for example. Have a dig around in the soil, have a look at any animals there and their state of health, look at surrounding farms and smallholdings and see what they are doing. Don't allow the excitement and romance to blind you to reality.
I fully understand that you don't want to work in IT any more, but is there some way you could use your IT skills to work part time from home, preferably for yourself? That would help to reduce or at least delay the imperative to make some money from the smallholding and should be flexible enough to fit in. When working on the land you adapt to doing what the weather allows. You can't say that on Mon-Wed you will work indoors then for the rest of the week you will work outside, because those are bound to be the days it pours. So if it's a good day you get on with outdoor tasks, and if it's a bad day you try to do as many indoor, or at least under cover jobs, once you've done the animals and any daily outdoor jobs. Also, everything can change in a moment if an animal is ill or gives birth, gets through the fence or is attacked by local dogs.
The question of whether you should have previous experience is often discussed on TAS so have a look back through the archives. Many folk have previously worked a vegetable garden and are confident in that, which provides a starting point to build from. My advice would be to take it easy initially and don't rush out to buy all sorts of livestock just because you think you have the space for it. Give yourself time to learn about each species. Laying hens are a good starting point as they are relatively easy and very popular with children who can help with their care. Once you see how much time and effort they take to care for (not all that much once you're set up) then you could start adding in animals such as sheep for meat and fleece, or pigs for meat. I would suggest that trying to breed for breeding stock to sell is best postponed for several years until you are more experienced, although it is an eventual possibility. Take a year or two to learn about each of your animals and to see where they fit into your smallholding and your capabilities.
When we bought this place 18 or 19 years ago, my OH had no farming experience, although I grew up on a farm, but we had both worked our allotments and grown fruit in our garden for years. This gave us the confidence to take the plunge and initially we intended only to grow crops and keep hens. It didn't take long before the sheep arrived and now they have just about taken over the enterprise. We have kept pigs too which we dearly loved, but we decided that for us what we had with the veg, hens and sheep was plenty to keep us busy.
My final bit of advice is: yes, it would be lovely but smallholding can be hard work, and full of crises and disappointments, heartbreak even, so don't expect it to be all roses and sunshine. Your chosen life is a wonderful one but you need to go into it with your eyes wide open.
Good luck :thumbsup:
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Thanks for the sobering reply. My concern is your comment of not making any money. Does that mean it actually costs money to run the smallholding that has to come from elsewhere, or does it pay for itself but there wont be any real profit?
We will have a budget of around £150k before we would need a mortgage so the closer we can get to land, house and setup for that the better.
thanks again :-)
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im in the same boat as you and only down the road in alloa
have no illusions, if you break even and get a bit of produce for yourselves you're doing well
(There are lots of discussions on here on the subject)
And that's after capital outlay, so fencing and stuff that's required.
Small scale (couple of acres) doing veg chickens and maybe a couple of weaners for the freezer is one option to look at.
Smaller plots are more likely to already have planning and are therefore very expensive!!!
Larger plots are cheaper per acre but almost impossible to get planning for a new build on...
You may be better looking for a plot that is very run down and either renovating an old property or bulldozing and starting again (subject to planning) as at least the existence of a property means they will allow another one on the same site usually...
I have been looking on and off east of stirling as far as Alloa and Dollar and in 2 years 1 lot of land has come up for sale 200 acres that they had seperated all the buildings off from and wouldn't sell and made sure no one could build anything even barns on the land...
West of stirling might be easier but its mainly large farms so getting a smallholding plot could be interesting.
Our search has now moved to other areas as we are no longer specifically tied to Stirling and other areas have more smallholding sized properties available.
Good Luck
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Interesting about the lack of land and planning permissions. We are only focusing on the Stirling area as we have friends here and we love the area. My wife works slightly west of Glasgow so she still needs to be able to commute.
the highest thing is ensuring we can get our girls to a decent school!
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:wave:
Hello from :raining: arbroath,
Good luck with your plans
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It depends what you do, intially you will have infrastructure costs whether that be a polytunnel, wood for making beds, hen houses, etc. If you buy any type of livestock there will be feed and vet costs e.g. if a bag of hen food cost say £8 how many eggs could you buy in the shop for that ? / How many do you use and where would you sell the excess
and if its anything bigger than a chicken then you will have some associated cost for transport whether you buy a small trailer or are able to pay someone else for taking animals to mart / slaughter house etc.
Depending on the land you may need fencing. etc etc
It also depends what practical skills / ability to learn you have, whilst not wishing to generalise on the IT sector it generally doesn't give you calluses, so you would have to judge your own physical capabilities in what you are planning to do and also the skill levels and tool availability also
You can buy things second hand but it takes time to build things up, i would suggest offering free labour to others that have the abilities to upgrade your skill set - in the directions you are interested in going and whether its mucking out chicken houses for a dozen eggs and some experienced words or helping dose / treat other livestock or digging some ones veggie plot then you can get a feeling for what you like and what you are good at.
As for making money or even balancing things out - smallholding is not described as a lifestyle for nothing - yes with a little hard work and a good deal of knowledge then you can make a little - If you don't cost your own wages - but generally theres not enough size in a smallholding for more- unless you can find a niche in the market somewhere
Potentially you could think about other incomes such as holiday lets a chalet in the field or self contained annex - probably don't want B&B with 2 young kids - sell some of your produce to visitors
Or work from home part time using some of your IT skills to earn a little ( ideally when its raining :0)
You could also look at potential for a tied agricultural planning plot - basically the house is built for the purposes of habitation for working on the land and by the rules you would have to have a certain ( usually the main) proportion of income from this work - something like sheep and lambing qualifies this but there are many others - generally the costs are cheaper
All the negative said it is a wonderfull way of bringing up kids but it is hard and mucky and you would have to endure the wonderfull weather Scotland throws at you - at the moment loads of rain and mud!
I would suggest doing some theoretical and also physical research before you throw a penny at it.
Good luck
BL
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The only ways to make a profit from land seems to be to sell it, esp for housing, or to run a commercial sized enterprise from it, which would not be classified as a smallholding and certainly wouldn't be your dream.
A major problem with buying land at the moment would be with so many people wanting to 'invest' in land as a sure means of growing their savings - the value of land is seen as always increasing. But that does make it expensive for someone who actually wants to use the land to live and work on.
Having a mortgage, esp on one person's salary, can make life a struggle and a constant worry, but if you can cope then that may be the way. Some people rent their land but that would worry me as having no security of tenure - it's bad enough having to leave rented accommodation unexpectedly, but when you have animals and lots of equipment to take with you, well, that's one of the potential heartaches.
I don't want to put you off altogether, but I do want you to be realistic. At this stage to have a large allotment or two and a few hens in your garden would be a way of starting, then keep your eyes peeled and your ears skinned for suitable properties. It took us a good two years to find our smallholding. We were living in Edinburgh and most holdings which came up then within what we thought of as commuting distance, were either snapped up by property developers or 'the horsey set' who could afford to pay higher prices (no offence intended to the many folk on here who keep horses but are not well-heeled townies).
Eventually we cast our sights further afield and found this place, which seemed too far from 'civilisation' and work for most people to contemplate. Also it needed quite a lot of work to make it comfortable, but as the only offspring still living at home was at a very useful age, we didn't have to worry about disruption and coping with small children whilst living on a building site. The hours commute to work seemed a lot back then but now lots of people do that every day from the surrounding area.
If you spend time looking for your dream smallholding then you can take the opportunity to gain some skills while you wait. There are courses to go on and farms where you can gain experience, for example helping out at lambing time. There are also a couple of 'help' schemes - HelpX and WOOFS - where you stay on a holding for a week or a month and help out with the work in exchange for board and lodging. It can be a bit of a lottery I think whether you get a good or bad experience, but you will certainly learn plenty. Other folk on here will have other ideas for gaining experience before you start.
I agree with big light about the physical fitness aspect - start working out now, or better still do 'green gym' work.
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Hello and welcome :wave:
I'm a newbie as well and and in the Scottish borders. :) I'm in a similar boat to you, just starting out, as in just starting out, as in starting to research read and hopefully attend courses. Re your IT skills don't write them off, as I'm not computer savvy at all, and what we always need is a 'man (or woman) who can fix it (computer) when it breaks down'. You could have people bring their broken computers to you and you could say you'll fix them, ring them up with a quote they say yes and hey ho some work from home. Seriously us none computer folk need people like you. And yes a long with small holding courses, computer course is also on the list. :)
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Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. They are all very useful if a little too down to earth :-)
If it really is that hard to make even a small amount of.money maybe this isn't for us. We need to do much more research and I plan to go on TAS intro course in May, bit so far it all seems a little like its an almost impossible dream to get the land we need in terms of planning and location to decent schools.
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Sorry if thats burst's the dreams a little but better to be realistic
You can still achieve a nice life for your family and kids, an allotment or big garden would allow you to have fresh fruit / veg, possibly chickens , an orchard - really depends what your dream is!
BL
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Hi from south ayrshire, towards the end of last year we were lucky enough to find our perfect home a 9 acre non working farm, were just starting out and by no means small holders just yet, our first additions were 2 ducks (7 chicken eggs currently in the incubator) grant through for a woodland and various other plans afoot. It's very exciting & we could get very carried away but realistically I think it would be quite hard to make a profit from small holding, things that grow, need feeding, vaccinating, housing, bedding, lots of time all cost money, the result be it fruit, veg, a chicken or a pig to slaughter has a certain value which unless your farming on a larger scale wouldn't provide great monetary gain. Personally I think small holding is more 'a way of life' :farmer:
I've looked into getting goats & pigs so far and for me it would be more of a hobby.
I'm hoping to get eggs and meat for our family from the chickens (initial cost of the eggs, incubator (borrowed on this occasion) electricity for 21 days then for brooder heating, food, wormer, time, housing vaccinations, dispatching, plucking, gutting etc) would be much much cheaper to go buy from the shops.
Good luck with what ever you decide to do :)
(Modified to add...hubby's a self employed IT consultant that pays for it all) :innocent:
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Hello from me in South Lanarkshire :wave: Welcome to TAS :)
I think you'd find it really difficult to make a 'profit' from smallholding (sorry !)
If you're concentrating on growing something specific - herbs, salad leaves etc. as a niche product you might fare better than you would with livestock.
We've kept pigs for 6 years (run as a business for almost 3) and haven't even broke even yet...... and that's without counting the hundreds (possibly even thousands) of pounds we spent getting set up - fencing, animal housing etc. In the last couple of years I've started looking at it from more of a business point of view and it's lead to the sad realisation that keeping livestock is a lovely, but not 'viable' business in cash terms - you've got to love what you're doing. It's love that gets you out of bed on snowy, windy, rainy days when you feel like staying under the duvet, and has you trudging through mud to tend to your smallholding - not the thought of a few pounds at the end of the year ;)
I'd echo everyone else who says use your IT skills to provide you a wage and do the smallholding side as a way to provide great produce for your family. The difficulty in wanting good transport links, good schools etc is that you tend to end up in areas where land is really pricey (if even available) you get more for your money the further you go from big towns.
HTH
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Hello and welcome from Carnoustie :wave:
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Having tried most things to make money from our smallholding, I'd say it was virtually impossible.
However, myself and my husband both worked in IT before we moved to Scotland and we used that skill to create an online retail business.
We earn just enough money to keep us going and pay for the animals we keep.
Since we work from home, we can do whatever hours we choose, sometimes working on the business in the evenings leaving us free to work outside during the afternoons. Most mornings we are dealing with orders and getting parcels ready for the postal collection.
If you can find something you are interested in to sell and set-up your own website, you can create a little business to bring in a few pounds, whilst still living the lifestyle you want.
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Thanks again. We are still at the ideas stage but it is.certainly beginning to sound like smallholding, assuming we can find good land and be allowed to.build a house on it, within budget, would be, as you say, more of a lifestyle choice than anything. To a degree I'm not sure if that's fair on our girls, but I wont know until we look into it more.
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Good point.
We held off getting our smallholding until our boys were through Uni, so they could go to both school and Uni in Edinburgh. Travelling an hour each way every day is too much. My school was an hour and a half away so until I got a bike it was a large proportion of time spent travelling. I had no social life as a teenager either and that is even more important to the young. We gave our children a love of the great outdoors by other means without imposing our values on them (which could well have had a negative effect) On the down side our children did miss out on a farming childhood, which is a wonderful thing. So pros and cons whichever way you decide.
While your girls are growing, could you change your career to something countryside orientated, say do a course in countryside management and be a countryside ranger. There are all sorts of jobs out there in the big outdoors, in forestry, wildlife work, SSSIs, national parks, Rare Breeds parks such as Palacerigg.
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Hey Chuckalicious
Your plan and dream sounds great and you are definitely in the right place for good advice and help. Having just set out on the same sort of road, I reckon this place is the best forum, of its type.
It sounds like you are getting lots of good advice already and I'm in no position to give any yet. But I can impart some of the ideas we have had (and are still having), for our place. One of which is tourism. We have a yurt, in the woods, on our croft, which I hope will bring in a few quid on a reular(ish) basis. I am also looking at doing a very small amount of the 'old career' work (graphic design), but only to give us enough money to keep the croft afloat and to invest in it, long term.
Another avenue, for a bit of extra money (especially with you having an IT background) is some kind of blog or web site, maybe with google ads etc. this is something else I am doing too. Basically trying to strike a balance of the 'old' and 'new', to allow us to live how we want.
Check out our story at www.offgrid-online.co.uk (http://www.offgrid-online.co.uk), if you like. May give you some inspiration or ideas. :-)
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You could always broaden you search area by homeschooling so you don't need to be in the catchment area for a good school. Smallholding and homeschooling can work very well together - my boys know loads of biology :D
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Thanks again for all the excellent advice. After more consideration, this may not be for us. We do need some sort of extra income and now that we have researched the actual build costs of a new home, it is way out of our budget.
Back to the drawing boards me thinks!
Thanks again
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Back to the drawing boards me thinks!
As far as making a living goes, yes you're right. However, what attracted you to the idea of smallholding in the first place? Was it getting filthy rich :roflanim: , or just filthy? Was it living an honest life, providing healthy food for yourselves, etc etc? If it was, you can do all of that and more with just a big back garden.
We have a few acres here (not far from Stirling at all - drop me a PM if you want to come for a visit), but the reality is that we could have done everything we've done so far with just a big back garden, and 60% of what we still plan to do.
If you can make enough money from a part time job to keep you going, but still leave time for running a smallholding for yourselves (i.e. not for profit), that can work well...........