The Newfarm Forums

[D Man]

Hello current and future farmers. What a wonderful resource and community you have built here! I will spend hours reading.

After over a year of talking and research combined with six months of "urban" gardening, my wife and I are on the hunt for a farm. We attended the Piedmont Farm Tour this past weekend and learned A LOT about the size, scope and location of our effort. It really helped us narrow down our requirements for a place.

We had these wild expectations of size and location. The biggest hinderance was the thought that we must change jobs immediately when relocating. After seeing the success and resourcefulness of the Chatham county small farms, we are encouraged that we can locate within commute distance and still have a small farm. The objective is to eliminate the commute all together, but that comes with the success of the farm.

The second hinderance was the thought that we must have a minimum number of acres (in the order of 30-40). This severely limited the number of properties we could consider and also increased the search radius beyond commuting distance. We now know this minimum acreage to be very untrue. 3-5 acres is perfectly reasonable to operate a small yet profitable farm operation.

We are going to visit our first candidate this evening. We tracked this one down out of several hundred listings and have high hopes that it is the one. Its a 1902 farm house with outbuildings and just under 6 acres. It is also within commuting distance for both of our current jobs.

Preparing to leap...

d

[D Man]

Disappointment.

The property backed up to a migrant housing/trailer park and a turkey farm to boot.

We looked at several more and are beginning to believe we should consider ourselves urban homesteaders. I don't think we would ever qualify as a farm, but we can still have fun.

d

[Windsinger]

Welcome to NewFarm, D Man!
I think right now most of the posters are blistering fingers with plantings, weedings, and baby livestock care, not on computer keys!

You were sort of responded to in another posting thread, about not having any zoning regulations in rural areas. Our own little 18 acres in West Virginia has a trailer park and a salvage yard for side neighbors, a very nice single family development behind, and a neighbor who builds fences and posts "no trespassing" signs about 15 or so feet away from their side of the line. We paid about half of what it was worth for the area, and hauled out three dumpsters of trash straight away - probably the reason the property was priced so low was the trash and garbage all over the place, and a house that is taking longer than we thought to fix up enough to move in. After taking some two years to find! It fit most of our most important criteria - commuting distance for Husband, affordable mortgage payments, between 10 and 20 farmable acres, liveable house (ok, so the house turned out to be less than liveable...).

We would do it again. Bad as it was, as long as it is taking, the property has shown us what a little jewel it is. A bit more polishing and it will be a productive vegetable farm with a comfortable home, and lots of room for my conservation tendencies to flourish - streams, a pond, woods and wetlands begging to have invasives removed and native flora restored.

We had considered staying where we are, a half acre surrounded by what is about to become a small city - literally, with some 50,000 new neighbors, shopping centers, office parks, retirement village, highways, and parks all on some 6000 acres of what has been rolling Maryland farm land. All of it has been sold to developers, about a dozen farms in all. But the crime rate here is going crazy, traffic is going nowhere, public services stretched beyond the limits, taxes doubling, and what made it bearable to live in an urbanizing area is disappearing - cows and corn as far as the eye can see, with woods beyond.

Urban farming is coming into its own, so it would definitely be something worth looking at. If you like where you are, stay. Your market is right outside your door, a lot of people are farming small backyard plots for a tidy little bit of profit. It is farming, if you are growing stuff to sell. Lots of books are out on the subject:

MetroFarm by Michael Olson
On Good Land by Michael Ableman
Micro Eco-Farming by Barbara Berst Adams
the Square Foot Gardening books by Mel Bartholomew
the Lasagna Gardening books by Patricia Lanza

All of these and more have a lot to offer in the way of ideas and the use of small spaces to grow a profitable business. A lot of gardening books have lots of ideas in how to use small spaces for growing a lot of plants - doesn't matter if it is tomatoes and lettuce or petunias. Some of the "small" farm books are a bit discouraging when they go on about 100 acres or more - I read them anyway and use what I can, they have a lot on cover crops, soil building, and such.

So, keep looking for your very own place, settle in to where you are, if the neighbors are not perfect ignore them as well as you can (we did move the fence back about 15 feet or so to sit precisely on the surveyed property line) - in other words, do what is right for you, and if a piece of property shows up with some promise go for it.

Best of luck.