The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: aliceinwonderland on July 12, 2012, 02:03:44 am
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I have just spent the last half hour having a good old trawl through all the real estate/farms for sale ads in my area, as even though I really can't afford/it wouldn't be sensible to move out to the country and start a farm yet (I'm young, I want to travel, I have no money, I have a great job in the city), I like to dream.
One thing that popped up a lot is that pretty much everything under about 120 acres is classified as a 'lifestyle' property, rather than cropping/grazing/dairy etc. This might just be an Australian thing - because our pasture tends to be a lot drier and less nutritious, you simply need more space to create a viable farming business. But, to my mind, you can certainly have a viable, if small, farming business on less than 120 acres! Maybe it's just that the real estate agents think that if you live on a property of more than, say, 150 acres, it's no longer a 'lifestyle' that people strive towards?
What are your thoughts? Is there a difference between 'lifestyle' and 'commercial' farming, and if so, what is the difference? Is there an ideal property size for what you want to achieve?
Thanks everyone! I must say, I love reading this forum and check it all the time - and my mum and some of my rather important clients have all started calling me "Mrs Farmer"... they think it's a joke, but they will see! ;)
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I suppose farming in Oz is dependent on water availability, we have no problem with water this summer, well maybe too much has been made available, and 100ish acres is enough for 1 person to manage single handed, if , like a good many farms here in Wales the land is steep and can't be used for growing root crops , then grass and the animals that eat it are the main produce, you can't plough a mountain, or harvest the crop easily. so sheep and cows are the main produce. So we tend to think of hobby farms (smallholdings ) as anything from a large back garden to 40 acres . the average would be around 2-4 acres. If all you have is red dust and poisonous reptiles then you have to think on a larger scale , if it can be ploughed and irrigated and made fertile then you could manage on 100 acres, one of our main problems is stopping the weeds from taking over. dust storms are extremely rare here . :wave:
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Thanks Tizaala! :wave:
Just to clarify - I live in one of the few cold and wet parts of Aus (Victoria - it snows at my parents' place in the mountains), and have only been in a dust-storm once! My housemate had just washed her bedsheets and hung them out to dry on the clothesline, and they ended up being stained red - she was not impressed. I lived in the UK for a year in 2007, and I've also lived in Canada, so I know about things being cold and wet and how that affects EVERYTHING.
I was just a little bit shocked, more than anything, by the terminology of 'lifestyle' farms. I had always planned to buy a property of about 70-100 acres, and run it basically as a small farm (or large smallholding?) and take some meat/cheeses/charcuterie type things to farmers markets and local purchasers. I'd want to have the full collection of animals - a few beef steers, a milker or two (depending on how the cheese-making goes - I've only done it a couple of times, and that was with bought milk), some goats and definitely some pigs. I'd see about keeping sheep - I'd love to but I know that between shearing and trimming feet and lambing and getting sick they can be quite a full-time animal! One of my old school friends lived on a sheep farm and he always had to take a month off school leading into spring to help with the lambing - and we're only talking a few years ago! Chickens are a given, and I'd love to have ducks and geese and turkeys, but we'll just have to wait and see! All free ranging/rare breeds etc, of course!
With all of these grand plans, it's worthwhile (from my perspective, at least) to see what kind of space I'd need to find. That's where the idea of this thread came in - I'd want to be able to make SOME money from my new farming life, but at the same time I know that it's hard enough to break even, let alone profit. SO, just from the initial research that I've done, it seems like I'll need a bit more than 100 acres if I'm to make a proper go of it!
What amount of space do YOU need to run all the livestock you'd like to (either as a lifestyle or commercial farm)? I know Rosemary has about 12 acres or so, but do you wish you had more? What's the ideal size for a 'lifestyle' farm, and how much bigger do you think you should be to become commercially viable?
Sorry for all the questions - I've spent the last four years at uni (doing something totally irrelevant... changed my mind about future careers half way through!) and have learnt to do as much research as possible!
Thanks! :thumbsup:
Alice
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We have at the moment 7 arabian horses 13 goats, 17 sheep about 50 chickens , at the moment we don't have any pigs, and we have to buy in all our foodstuffs and bedding for them , hay , hardfeed etc. we have about 6 acres to play with but would ideally like about twenty .
Keep your dream in your head until you can afford the right place, but like having children , if you wait till you can afford them you will be too old to have them. :wave:
PS : the lifestyle term is only used to sell the dream.
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farming has changed over the years that 100-150 acre farm that you aspire to at one time could support a family and give them a good living and education times change and just in farming at one time if you had one bus you could make a living from it now you would need ten buses just to get the same living and this equates to farming also depends on how ambitious you are
back in the good old days of farming the farm was valued on the land no consideration was made for the dwelling house now everybody is chasing the shilling and unfortunately the house is valued separately
but as long as you are aspiring to the dream there will be lifestyle farming and that is what has created the present market basically a roll reversal in the 1830s well to do business men came in there droves to the country side just to escape city living then there was the rush to get back to the city's in the 50s-60s now they are wanting back out to the sticks part lifestyle part greed always hopping to make that extra shilling
to make a living from a smallholding is basically impossible unless you can get a niche market and if you do there will be a dozen others wanting your share and undercutting you to get it
like the farmer that won the lottery and what will you do now well i will just keep on farming till it is spent ;) :farmer:
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We're 'proper' farmers - our only income is the farm, we haven't any diversifications, BH has farmed all his life and his father before him and his before that... BH has only ever farmed, his grandfather had to work outside the farm to make ends meet. I'm not sure whether or not his father ever had outside work.
The term 'lifestyle' sits well with us and is used by us and other farmers in our area. In part it means, to us, that we are in this for the whole of it, not just to turn a profit. Check my tag line - there have been 'money men' tell farmers in our area how to make more money, pay less tax - and some of those farmers took their advice, made some money and now aren't farming. They've plenty of money now but they are not well off - not in things that matter.
We count ourselves fortunate that we can afford to live this life, feed ourselves, take the odd holiday, and have enough to reinvest into the farm for our future enjoyment. If we had kids we'd be making them a viable inheritance.
Figures-wise, we farm 340 acres of our own plus 100 acres of rented/tenanted land. All our land is 'severely disadvantaged' but we are just below the Moorland Line. We've around 300 breeding ewes and 35ish breeding cows; everything else (pigs, choox, house cow, ponies) is small numbers for enjoyment - our hobby farming, if you like!
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I meant to add, affording to live this way includes, to us, not having to think about the cost of the vet bill when we make a veterinary decision. And that's one of the reasons I think it's hard to make it viable on a small holding with small numbers of stock - if you're on a shoestring with 15 sheep, a caesarian probably just about doubles your annual vet bill, and may represent an amount you would struggle to justify, or even to find. If one of ours needs a caesarian and it's recommended medically, she gets it. The bill hurts, of course, but is spread across the 300 breeding ewes and 35 breeding cows. Culling strategies take into account the vets bills - sheep which prolapse or need veterinary assistance are culled before next tupping time - but an animal needing veterinary attention gets it, not a bullet, and we don't have to cut back the next month to cover it.
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While I was typing this (below) Sally posted and I see she has a totally different view of the meaning of 'lifestyle' farming to mine :D :D . I would call your system simply 'farming' Sally 8) This all goes to illustrate that different people use the various categorisations in different ways - there's no single definition.
It is an interesting point and is reflected in how we see ourselves as well as how others see us. I think there's more to it than just 'commercial' versus 'lifestyle'. Round here (Central Scotland) 'lifestyle' farmers tend to be those who get someone else in to do the work for them, and have no financial need to make a profit. 'Hobby' farmers do things on a small scale, don't make a living from their smallholding so support themselves by outside work, and do all the smallholding work themselves. 'Crofters' run their land according to long-standing systems and as I underrstand it their acreage is stretched by having access to common grazing; traditionally, Crofters also have other jobs, so everything they do contributes to their income - but maybe that is changing nowadays. Then there's just plain old smallholders who try to make a living from a relatively small acreage - I believe the official max to be called a smallholding is somewhere between 50 and 100 acres. There are still 'small family farms', many of which come within the smallholding category area-wise, and can be up to about 250 acres, depending on whereabouts you farm, because even in Britain there is a vast difference between the quality of land, and how much you need to make a living. Even the definition of 'a living' varies with who you are, how many dependants you have and what you expect as an income.
There are other threads on here about how to make a living from a smallholding.
It certainly sounds as if in Australia you need a whole lot greater acreage to make ends meet.
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we rent a croft that's about 100 acres its cost me 50000 the last 5 ye res 4 kids no prophit at the mo and things getting harder diesel a week in the tractor £100 vets etc very hard to make prophit not a good way of living have 200 sheep used to have over a 1000 all gone naw 3 tractors 1 naw and he just gets less .
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My understanding was that it was never the intention that a living could be made from a croft, rather that the crofter would need outside work, which kept a workforce available to the laird?
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The answer is; it depends what you are doing. 150ac is a working size for a dairy farm (albeit small), although I wouldn't reccomend you got into dairying at the mo. I run sheep on about 100 odd ac and its very much part time - I reckon 500ac of grazing is just about enough to make a living in sheep (not including very low density mountainside etc).
Speaking of workforces needed - the farm I live on is 1500 ac with another few hundred rented. It employs one full time staff member, plus the landlord and and gets extras in at harvest. All arable, mind.
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It's amazing the difference in what a farm will support compared with in the past.
The farm I now live on once supported 3 families and had 6 adult men working on it plus boys, and women and kids at hay timing. Most of the land was sold off after the war, but the farm next door, which is a similar size now supports one family and has one man working it full time plus a young labourer a couple of days a week.
What makes the difference? The standard of living we expect now? The price we are prepared to pay for food?
The result of the reduced work force is that the walls and barns are now falling down, and the land drains need repairing, the seaves keeping on top of.......all along the dale.
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Same story here, jaykay - BH worked out once that we farm what would once have been the farms of seven families. Mind, I expect it was drier then. I mean drier generally, not just referring to the last couple of weeks. It's been getting wetter for twenty years hereabouts.
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sally the early 60s were just as wet it is just we want to block out these memory's :farmer:
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What makes the difference? The standard of living we expect now? The price we are prepared to pay for food?
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labour was cheap, technology expensive, now its the other way round.
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But was labour cheap because people just expected to be paid a pittance and be able to buy little with it, ie they were more tolerant of being poor then? Or were basics cheaper so that a low wage still bought an ok standard of living? And if the latter, why were basics cheaper?
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that depends on how you define 'poor' and when, pre industrial revolution or after?
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Here in Somerset, there seem to be a lot of what we call 'Gentleman Farmers'...certainly where I live... offspring of a long line of farmers who are well educated, monied and already have the land/barns/machinery/large old farmhouses and lines of livestock before they start handed down to them. From the many I know, the ones who have a good living seem to have this as their advantage... but they also often diversify into B&B, run courses in smallholding etc, hog roast and catering businesses amongst other things. Plus the expensive mistakes have already been made and learned from by the forefathers (not always tho!) I think it is very difficult to set up ANY business in this climate. Rents and rates are huge in UK, VAT and Tax up, feed expensive, petrol ridiculous, land prices horrific and insurances ludicrous...and thats BEFORE any stock or cereal are introduced. And that is why i am hanging out for a rich farmer/vet!!! LOL!
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It's amazing the difference in what a farm will support compared with in the past.
The farm I now live on once supported 3 families and had 6 adult men working on it plus boys, and women and kids at hay timing. Most of the land was sold off after the war, but the farm next door, which is a similar size now supports one family and has one man working it full time plus a young labourer a couple of days a week.
What makes the difference? The standard of living we expect now? The price we are prepared to pay for food?
The result of the reduced work force is that the walls and barns are now falling down, and the land drains need repairing, the seaves keeping on top of.......all along the dale.
I believe the farm I live on once supported 30 odd employees.....
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Mallows - my mum has always said that I will need to find a rich husband - a wealthy farmer or vet could be lovely! Now I just have to hunt one down...
Thanks for all your replies, everyone!
I'm just trying to work out in my head exactly what I want, and how to do it - basically, I'd love to have everything that comes with a small farm, but also not have to work another job to make sure the bills are paid. I had thought that unless I grew something really special and unique it wouldn't be possible, but you never know. There are plenty of small farms around this part of Aus that specialise in luxury products, like capers and olive oil and goat's cheeses, as well as the ubiquitous Australian wineries (some of them are quite nice, some of them are definitely not), but then I'd have to work out what thing in particular I'm passionate about enough to want to do that all the time. Once I've worked that out, then I'll need to work out how much space I'll need - I've got a feeling that this will be a long term process!
In the mean time, I'm just going to learn all I can and see what would suit me best. A year ago I was thinking I could be an academic, and a year before that I was planning to be a diplomat, so we'll just see how I go!
Thanks again for all your help, everyone! :thumbsup:
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If its any consolation, I don't own a scrap of land, but I still keep sheep.
I rent all my grazings as grazing only, but there are farm tennancies about, where you would rent the whole thing.
You don't need to own a farm to farm, in fact I would say to farm on a place the actually gives a good return, I would say the costs of buying said place are prohibitive for most people.