Thinking Of Moving Into Farming?

It is one of the most seductive things that one could hope for, a clear open piece of land in America the beautiful to call your own.  A safe, clean, and wholesome lifestyle for your children and having the added benefit of knowing that you’re tilling the soil and working the earth to produce a living. 

But as enticing as the myriad television programs can make this life out to be, and trust us – we’re big fans, if this is something you’re only just now starting to think about then there are a few points for you to place on your vision board first.

Image By jameswheeler

ARE YOU SURE THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT?

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield.” Dwight. D. Eisenhower

Never a truer word spoken.  We’re sure that you’ve given this some solid thought, after all, it isn’t the sort of thing that you discuss over a weekend and contact your real estate agent on a Monday, but we just want you to give it one more once-over.

So make sure that you’ve gone over all of your planning all of your budgeting and all of your conversations with your family including your children if you have them and for one last moment (and this is going to be the last time you get to do this), role play your own worst-case scenario because from here on out, you won’t get to indulge in imagination anymore.  This is going to be one of the biggest commitments you’re ever going to make, so holding back just a smidge longer isn’t going to hurt.

BUYING OR LETTING?

It may not be the worst idea to give your farming ambitions a little time to simmer while you’re taking a test drive on your appetite for the future.  In the United Kingdom, the National Trust is the biggest owner of farming land and they “let” land too, so if you’ve only recently come to the idea of farming, then this is about as real a skill-test as you’re going to get and many of the farms can be bought later on.  Have a look online and see if there are similar schemes in your local area, Stateside.

MACHINERY MATTERS

In all of the major considerations that you’re probably working through right now, you may or may not have given this topic the right amount of thought.  But as “no-brainer”, as it may sound, doing a solid audit on what you’re going to need and what it’s going to need to do for you, is important.  It’s going to impact absolutely everything, so this is a little more technical than what we can go into on this post, but it’s well worth putting into your thought pot already.   If you’re planning on starting small and planting around your country home, you’ll need all sorts of equipment.  Bolens is a good brand for starting on, relatively inexpensive and if you need them, you can get the parts to fix your Bolens power equipment here. 

Making this move is going to reveal your own life to you in thrilling, terrifying but ultimately rewarding ways and while it won’t work out for everyone, the only way to truly know…is to try.  This is just an introduction to the introduction, but there is some more reading material for you, here and some reasons why the move to farm stores, is taking off.