Could I Ever Afford to be a Farmer?

Farming can be very capital intensive.  Said another way, you may very well need to have a lot of money up front to start farming.  When I was in college, this idea haunted me.  I really wanted to farm, but was it even possible?  How could someone with a net worth of approximately $500 and no income stream to speak of afford to buy property, buildings, equipment, animals, and supplies to begin farming?

To a great degree, I was trapped by a rigid mental paradigm from which I could not break free.  I had the idea that I needed to buy all of these things to start farming.  I had the idea that the only way I could buy these things was by borrowing.  I was also convinced that the only way I could qualify for a loan was if I could prove that I didn't need the loan by having adequate assets to act as collateral.  I remember at the time, the cheapest dairy farm I could find was being offered for $250,000.  At the time, a good starter home was selling for $60,000.  I was nowhere near close to qualifying for a starter home, so how could I possibly qualify to buy a $250,000 dairy farm?  This thought weighed heavy on my mind.  Inflation has taken its toll, and now those numbers seem almost trivial, but the relationship still exists.  In this neck of the woods, a nice starter home is probably $180,000 or so and the smallest dairy you could find in the area is probably $1,000,000.

                                 

After much mental anguish and hand wringing, I came to the conclusion that as a young man without inheriting a farm, there was no realistic way for me to be able be a farmer on my own farm.  I was not interested in spending my life as a farm laborer, working for other farmers.  The idea of being a full-time farmer began to slip away.  I was conceding defeat.  I began to think of my "farm" more as a lifestyle or self-sufficiency type "homestead" or farmstead.  My future farm would be to provide for the needs of my family.  I began thinking that my farm would grow great food, sustainably, probably not for sale.  I would enjoy the diversion from my unknown career path, and I would still be able to help my kids see the joys, struggles, and benefits of farming.

This moment was a tough one for me.  On one hand, I felt as if I was giving up.  On the other hand, I also felt like I was acknowledging the reality of the situation.  I saw this as one of those "grow up" moments most of us have as we reconcile dreams and reality.  I would not seriously consider the writings of Thoreau until much later in life, but one quote from Walden that has struck a chord with me was this, "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them."  Was I getting prematurely old?  Was I giving up on life and lowering my expectations to a low goal with a high probability of easy attainment?  These were all questions circling my mind as I came to this conclusion.

I have reflected on this decision many times over the past 30 years or so.  Life gives a person experience and perspective.  I have learned that the paradigm from which I made the decision I made about farming was naively constrained.  I made my decision with very little information.  I made my decision with very little perspective on the various factors that would impact my ability to succeed.  That said, that same lack of perspective would likely have led me to follow a path in farming that had little chance of ultimately being successful.  Commodity dairy farming, or commodity farming of any kind for that matter is a very tough business.  The economics of commodity businesses dictate that only the very lowest cost producers have a chance of making even a modest living.  Most producers in the "perfect competition" market place either make no money or they lose money in the process.  It is quite likely that my view of the world would have forced me into a commodity market with no real hope of good success.  

                                    

With all that I have learned over the past decades, I would have gone back in time and had a good talk with myself.  I would have told myself several things.  It is foolish to finance yourself into farming from the get go.  You don't have to buy much of anything to get started.  You need to have differentiated products, commodity markets are for suckers.  If you can sell a differentiated product that some people appreciate, you can make money.  You need to carefully consider the direct marketing approach rather than selling into a commodity market or to market aggregators.  If you have direct marketing, you can earn the value of the difference between wholesale and retail.  Always make your product better than others, but do it smartly.  Good enough does not cut it if you want to make money and differentiate yourself.  Don't follow the crowd of commodity producers.  Evaluate what they have to offer, but look elsewhere as well when choosing approaches to production.  Seek the most efficient production options that employ the least amount of capital investment.  When starting a farm, gain experience, then seek to lease property to do your own farming.  Farming is not about owning property, but owning property can be the result successful farming.  The goal is to farm with passion, integrity, and joy, not to own property.  But owning property is cool too.

In retrospect, knowing what I know now and understanding the paradigms I was trapped in, I probably made the right choice.  I do sometimes wish that I could have gone back in time and given myself a good lecture and helped to ease myself out of my confining views of the world.  We are where we are and the experiences I have gained over the years have helped me frame my much more modest goals for the future.  I look forward with great anticipation and hope.

Post Mission Decision Point

Returning from a mission is often a challenging experience for former missionaries.  I wouldn't say my situation was particularly challenging, but I did go through a period where I was trying to find a job and trying to find my way in getting lined up to go back to college, etc.  Perhaps two weeks after I returned from my mission, I got a call from a familiar voice, Paul Durrant.  Paul was Rawl's artificial insemination (AI) technician.  Given that in a herd of 45 cows or so, there was likely one or two cows that came in heat each week, I saw Paul frequently.  He had become a good friend to me when I worked for Rawl.  Paul had a surprising question for me.

Paul told me about someone he knew that was starting a dairy up in the Box Elder Country area.  He was looking for a young, hard-working herdsman to help him get his dairy going.  Paul had heard that I was home from my mission and thought I fit the bill very well.  That is when he gave me a call.  He asked if I wanted a job working at this dairy.  He gave me a brief sketch of the compensation package, which was very compelling to someone without a job and no money at all.  The job was a full-time dairy job, which really meant, probably working 60 hours a week.  If I were to take this job, it would mean no college for me.  It would however, mean immersion in dairy farming, which I loved.  What to do....?  Decision time.

I didn't take very long to make my decision.  My Dad's influence was very powerful.  Probably five years earlier, we had the conversation that went through my mind.  When I was about 16, I had spelled out the idea that I could take an 18 month Dairy Herdsman certification course at Utah State University, then get right out into the work force, doing what I wanted.  My Dad made the argument about the limited range or earnings potential.  My counter argument was that herdsman were often on an incentive program related to production or profitability.  My Dad argued back about the limits of natural systems leading to limits on earning potential.  We went back and forth and back and forth.  Ultimately, my Dad said, "I don't care if you want to be a garbage man.  The reality is that going to college teaches you how to think and how to think critically.  It gives you new and broader perspectives on the world and how you interact with the world.  Going to college helps you to become a more well-rounded and well-grounded person.  You need to go to college."  Well that was the end of that conversation.

After mulling over the five year old conversation with my Dad, I told Paul, "Thanks for thinking of me, I really appreciate it, but I need to get myself back to college."

I have often pondered, briefly pondered, whether or not that was the right decision.  I could have gotten right into farming instead of spending much of my adult life living my farming life vicariously through books, periodicals, the internet, and DVD's.  My answer to that pondering is always the same: I did the right thing.  Because of my choice at that point in time I was able to meet my wife and have my kids and have all of the grand experiences of life that I have had to this point.  Many of those experiences have changed my worldview in many respects.  Among those changes is how I view agriculture and how it fits into the human and otherwise natural world.

It seems quite likely to me that if I had immersed myself in commodity dairy farming at that point in time, I would have adopted a "production at all cost" mentality so often associated with that segment of agriculture.  I may have been blinded to the need for long-term, regenerative, healthy, sustainable agriculture.  Many of my early thoughts about sustainability, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance may have been put on the shelf, maybe to be forgotten.  The time from that time until now has given me a great opportunity to think, learn, challenge myself and the views of others, and learn about a variety of ways to look at farming, farming problems, and farming opportunities.  I have learned much and matured much.

At this particular branch in the road, I chose not to pursue farming with an unknow greater goal in mind.  I felt like I needed college to get me set for life.  My Dad was very influential there.  Ultimately, I think it was the right decision.  That decision opened the doors to so many wonderful things in life.  That decision did not alter my goal, dream, and desire to have a farm and all that goes along with that.

Korea - Small Farms and Roadside Vegetable Patches

After attending one term of college at Utah State University, I worked towards going on a mission as many LDS young men did and do.  I did not know where I would go, but I completed the requisite work to submit the necessary paperwork to be considered for a mission.  I was called to serve in the Korea Pusan Mission.  Pusan is in the southern most part of South Korea.  In effect, the mission covered the bottom half of South Korea.

I did not go on a mission to learn new things about farming, but given my predisposition towards looking for things about farming to learn, I found that I learned much in Korea.  The things I learned related to such topics as solar greenhouses, small farms, kitchen gardens wherever there could be a garden, terraced farming, tractor alternatives, and new fruits and vegetables.

In the first city I lived in, Masan, we lived in a relatively tall apartment building.  I don't recall specifically, but I'd guess it was about 20 stories tall.  One of the very interesting things I saw there was that outside of the apartment building, along the sides of the roads, people that lived in the apartment building would till up any few little square feet of space they could find to plant vegetables.  They planted radishes, greens, garlic and other things.  The importance of fresh food was real.  Many of the people living in the apartment grew up in the country where fresh food was part of normal life.  They knew that what they could get at the market was not as fresh, nor as tasty.

Today in many places in the U. S. farmers markets are a big thing, a new thing.  In Korea, that was the order of the day.  If you wanted to buy food, there were no Albertsons, Safeway's, or Costco's.  There were basically open air markets where farmers brought in their products on a daily basis and sold them.  Refrigeration was still relatively rare where I lived, so daily purchases at the markets were in order.  In Masan we had a man who did our cooking and helped keep the apartment clean.  He would visit the market daily.  He cooked up some pretty fantasic Korean/American food, all from the daily market, which was effectively a farmer's market.

On occassion, when I would travel between cities, I would inevitably travel through the country.  During the cold winter months, I would see hoop houses, or solar greenhouses along the way.  When it was getting close to dark, I would see farmers unrolling what I presume were rice straw mats over the top of the greenhouse for a small amount of insulation at night.  Winter hardy vegetables were harvested all year long.  These included things like radishes, certain cabbages, carrots, etc.  These winter hardy vegetables were grown in the late summer and early fall.  The solar greenhouses basically acted as a way to hold the good quality vegetables in suspense over the course of the winter where they could be harvested and sold as needed through the winter months.  I thought it was very ingenious.

With small parcels of land, and limited budgets, Korean farmers relied on smaller scale technology.  For plowing, hauling, and other farming activities that U. S. farmers would use tractors for, the Koreans used what I called a "two-wheeled tractor."  These could be attached to implements and trailers.  I saw them being used as the family automobile, hauling the family to market in town in the trailer.  This too seemed like an approriate technology to me.  I learned that bigger was not always better.

As in most Asian countries, rice growing was king.  Rice is traditionally grown in a level terraced system.  Often these level terraces went up the mountainside.  These terraces were flooded for much of the growing season, primarily as a method of weed control.  Rice is tolerant of their roots being submerged.  Most other plants are not.  In Korea, the summer was the rainy season, so accessing water to keep the terraces submerged was not a big problem.  The paddies were drained at the end of August and in early September, the rice matured and was harvested.  The first rice was a big deal in Korea.  It was celebrated.  The Korean "Thanksgiving" revolved around the harvest of the first rice.  While not subsistence farming, the farming in Korea was close enough to subsistence farming to make me feel and understand the gratitude that they had for the food as the harvest was happening.

I certainly don't claim to have any expertise in Korean farming, the things I saw and learned made a life long impression on me.  I learned from their farming techniques and approaches as well as their attitude towards and gratitude for real food.

Off to College - Quitting Rawl's Farm after Eight Years

It was obvious to me.  Through my adolescent years, I knew that one day would arrive that I would have to tell Rawl that I would be leaving his farm to go off to college.  I didn't know if it was obvious to Rawl or to his wife, Virginia, or not.  I thought it was obvious, but even for a teen, relatively inexperienced in terms of understanding biases developed through life, I thought that he might not understand.  For a long time I had wanted to go to Utah State University, the Land Grant university in the state of Utah.

Towards the end of my Junior year of high school, I determined that I needed to tell Rawl of my plans.  I knew that Rawl depended on me.  I knew that he had more cows in his herd because I was there the help him.  I wondered whether or not he might retire when I left.  I wondered if he would find someone else to take my place.  These were questions that I contemplated and weighed heavily on my mind.  Given the potential for life altering events for him, I felt I needed to give him a good year or so notice regarding what my intentions were.

In sort of an akward way, I asked Rawl and Virginia if I could take them to dinner.  I asked them if they wanted to pick a restaurant.  We went to a Chinese restaurant, somewhere in Layton.  I don't recall the name.  We hustled through evening chores so we could get home, clean up, and go out to eat before it was too late.

I don't recall the dinner being all that memorable in and of itself, but I told Rawl and Virginia that my plan was to leave Farmington in September of the following year and go to school in Logan.  Rawl had a fairly narrow window in mind of when I may leave, but he was imagining a different scenario.  Rather that going straight to college, he wondered whether or not I would work for him until I went on a mission sometime the following Spring.  That was not my plan, and he didn't work too hard to convince me otherwise.  All in all, both he and Virginia were appreciative of the heads up on my plan.

As time passed, Rawls intentions became clear.  He intended to sell his dairy herd when I left.  As my last summer working for him came, he began shopping around his cows and heifers.  Farmers from within 100 or so miles came to see his cows and to bargain with him.  Towards the end of the summer, Rawl had determined to sell his herd to a dairy farmer somewhere in the North Ogden area.  Before I went to school, he sold his heifers.  The rest of the cows would be sold over a few weeks.

I agreed with Rawl, that I would come home from Logan on the weekends and help him milk the cows and care for the remaining herd as long as he had them.  That went on about another four or five weeks.  I would hurry home to help milk the cows, while Rawl and his son put corn silage up in the pit silo.  On Sunday evening, I would drive back up to Logan for school.

It was a sad transition for me.  I was concerned that my leaving Rawl's farm would cause him to want to sell his dairy.  His dairy was a permanent fixture in my childhood life, recollections, and mind.  I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I were somehow responsible for the demise of his means of earning a living.

One weekend I came home, and all of the cows were gone.  The only stock remaining were the steers left over from previous calvings.  My heart hung low.  Rawl was happy though.  Ultimately, he thanked me for the timing.  There was a bubble on dairy cattle prices that summer that fell off towards the spring when he had hoped I would leave.  He also was able to get out of the dairy farm schedule rut that so many people detest.  He was able to ease into retirement in good health and reasonably financially secure.

It was an end of a very important era in my life.  I learned much from Rawl, his cows, and the experiences I had on his farm.  As I learned more in my later life, I came to realize just how forward thinking Rawl really was.  I owe a deep debt of gratitude to him.  He was not a parent to me, but very much like a second parent, or a very involved grandparent.

I still have dreams of working on Rawl's farm, to this day.  The experiences are permanently etched in my mind.

Park Valley Property - Preparing for the End of the World

When I was a teenager, perhaps about 14 years old, my parents investigated the idea of buying ten acres in Park Valley, Utah.  Note I did not say Park City, Utah, but Park Valley, Utah.  Most people that live in Utah have no idea where Park Valley is, let alone non-Utahns.  Park Valley is about five miles south of the Idaho border in northwest Utah.  The largest nearby down is probably Snowville.  Don't know where Snowville is?  You get the point.  Park Valley was in the middle of nowhere, so to speak.

This investigation occurred back in the mid 70's.  We had just weathered the OPEC oil embargo and the Cold War was in full swing.  The fact that we were located about 15 miles south of Hill Air Force Base, a perceived military target, didn't cause any great relief either.  The general tone of the time in my community was that we needed to be prepared to take care of ourselves in case of another oil embargo or in the case of a Soviet military attack on Hill Air Force Base, or even Salt Lake City.  The Church, ever warning of being prepared, grow your own food, store a year's supply of food, etc., helped inspire a preparedness attitude in the wake of the macro level uncertainties.

With that as a backdrop, my parents started the evaluation of the Park Valley property with  my enthusiastic participation.  Park Valley was in the middle of the desert, with annual rainfall of probably about 10 inches.  We drove out to Park Valley and looked at a couple of pieces of property.  We asked about wells.  We looked at photographs of gardens people were able to grow on the mineral rich, organic matter poor, desert soils.  We considered what it would take to build a house and raise our own food.  We thought of the goodness about living away from Hill Air Force Base and from the main population centers in Utah.  We thought of having livestock and hunting in the Sawtooth Mountains for part of our food.  We thought about heating with wood and what it would take to be self-sufficient.  These were all part of the deliberation and imaginative process leading up to a decision about the property.

The sales person was persistent and persuasive.  Eventually we decided to buy the property.  I pitched in a small amount of money for the down payment as I wanted to be part of the investment and the potential activity.

After we purchased the property, we went camping on the property, which was a very memorable experience for me.  There was an owl that lived in a juniper tree on the property.  The owl made its very noticeable "Hoo, hoo, hoo" call through the night.  Two of my brothers and I slept outside under a juniper tree looking at the stars.  I saw more stars that night than I have ever seen since then.  Located about 50 miles from any sizeable city, the light pollution was non-existent.  The stars were brilliant, enchanting, and mesmerizing.  The air was fresh.  There was no road noise, no people noises.  It was near silent, except for the owl and occassional rustling brush in the wind.

I wanted this property to be a bastion of self sufficiency.  My Dad investigated the possibility of work in the two room school house in town.  We determined that it would not be feasible to move there.  I plotted and planned how I could build a house there and make a living.  What could I do from home?  Could I do a mail order business?  Remember, this was well before the internet and e-commerce.  Could I do gunsmithing?  Could I raise and sell food?  My imagination went wild, but I never reallly concluded on anything.

Although the Park Valley property never really turned into that bastion of self-sufficiency, it inspired a great deal of thinking about what it would take to be self-sufficient and what it would take to grow my own food and provide fuel for heating and cooking.  Acquiring the property and thinking through options and ideas were very influential in the formative period of my life as I planned the future farm in my life.

I haven't been to the Park Valley property for many years.  I could not find it if I drove there today.  I would probably need a surveyor to help me find it.  At this point in my life, I have no real interest in pursuing the property as a farm.  I sometimes do wonder about a little cabin on the property, and the potential of seeing those stars again, and maybe hearing the owl call "Hoo, hoo, hoo" in the brilliant darkness of night.

The Mother Earth News

Way back in the 70's, my parents occassionally subscribed to new magazine, The Mother Earth News.  This was kind of a countercultural, back to the land movement sort of magazine for aging (30 something) hippies.  My parents didn't fit that description, but they were both frugal of mind and heart and the idea of doing things for themselves, raising their own food, and supporting themselves fit very well within their way of thinking.

As a teen, I would read selected articles out of The Mother Earth News.  I would read about how to build low cost structures like rammed-earth homes, adobe, straw bale, log cabins, underground houses, stone root cellars, etc.  I would learn about how to build a low-cost wind generator, or water turbine as well as installing solar electricity.  I would learn about heating with passive solar, wood, geothermal, etc.  I would learn about heating water through a copper coil on the back of a wood stove, or running a hose through a heating compost pile, or passive solar heating.  I would learn about baking bread, raising heritage breed chickens, and the different breeds of draft horses.  The Mother Earth News has a lot to offer to an imaginative, self-sufficient farmer wannabe.

One of the articles that stuck in my mind was the evaluation of the different breeds of draft horses.  I learned that you could certainly tread lightly on the land with draft horses and meet all of your motive power for farming.  You could minimize soil compaction with horses, compared to tractors.  Horses could gather (pasture) or raise (hay and grain) their own feed.  Different breeds had different advantages and disadvantages.  The beautiful Clydesdales (of Budweiser fame) were magestic beasts, with feathering at the tops of their hoofs (like the Shires as well).  Belgians were popular with the Amish and were the most numerous and most available breed.  The Suffolk Punches really caught my eye because they were the only breed that were specifically bred for farm work.  They were a tad smaller than the other breeds, but had body conformation and temperment that made them especially suitable for farm work.  I put my eye on the Suffolk Punches for my farm because of The Mother Earth News.

The Mother Earth News introduced me to the idea of rare breeds or heritage breeds that were being lost due lack of use by "progressive, industrialized agriculture."  When it came to chickens, the Dominique really caught my eye.  It looked a lot like the black-and-white speckled Barred Plymouth Rock.  The Barred Plymouth Rock was long consided the small farm bird of choice.  The Barred Plymouth Rock was derived in part by crossing the Dominiques, with the white Plymouth Rock (I believe).  When reading the description of the Dominiques, I read that they were especially good foragers, meaning they found much if not most of their own food.  Some of the newer breeds liked to hang around the feeder waiting to be fed.  The Dominiques went out and rustled up their own grub.  They laid a moderate amount of eggs and produced meat to boot.  Another feature of the Dominique that I found attractive was that it was endangered.  There were few breeding birds left in the world.  I loved the idea of the Dominique as a contributing member of my own farm.

Through my adult years, I have subscribed to The Mother Earth News probably half of the time.  Sometimes it was a bit too much of a financial burden.  Sometimes I just loved having it come every month.  Sometimes I would subscribe and read it cover to cover.  Some months it would go unread.  Sometimes when I was not subscribing, I would pick up a copy and Barnes & Noble or New Seasons.

The magazine changed much over the years, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.  It changed ownership at least three times, I believe.  At a point about 15 years ago or so, it briefly went from a pragmatic, down to earth do-it-yourself magazine to kind of a new agey, earth spirit, self-proclaimed environmentalist magazine.  I think that bit lasted about four issues before it became clear it was an unmitigated disaster.  Don't get me wrong, The Mother Earth News has always had just a bit of that hippie based new agey, earth spirit, environmental magazine, but at its heart, it was always a down to earth magazine about how to live self-sufficiently and pragmatically, while enjoying and living a healthy country life style.

The Mother Earth News has helped me frame the way I think about living in the country and being self-sufficient.  Today, you will find it in a stack of magazine by my reading chair, adding additional insights and bits of information as I think about and plan for the farm.

Book from My Parents - How to Live on Almost Nothing and Have Plenty

Back in the "olden days" of 1979, my parents recognized my obsession with self-sufficiency and growing my own food, and fed the obsession with a book for my birthday.  The book was titled, How to Live on Almost Nothing and Have Plenty.  This book was not quite as influential on my thinking as The Have-More Plan, which I mentioned in an earlier post.  Yet it gave me an updated view on some of the things I could do to accomplish my goals.  The book is a dog-eared paper back, having been read several times and referenced many more times than that.

How to Live on Almost Nothing and Have Plenty was a key reference for me in my late high school, college, and early married years.  Particularly after high school, I had almost zero discretionary income.  While living in Logan, I would go the the local book store and drool over books related to gardening, livestock, farming, and self-sufficiency.  I succumbed once and bought a book on small livestock by Jerry Belanger for $5.95.  This book, How to Live on Almost Nothing and Have Plenty, along with The Have-More Plan, carried me through my thought experiments during my early adult years.

The Table of Contents discusses changing your lifestyle, growing vegetables and fruits, livestock, and even cooking.  Other than a relatively brief mention, The Have-More Plan did not discuss cooking.  I'd like to say that cooking is a foundational self-sufficiency skill.  If you don't know how to cook reasonably well, self-sufficiency could certainly be drudgery.  This book helped me to realize that.

I recall many times trying to figure the optimal way to raise hogs on a small scale.  I would read the chapter from The Have-More Plan, then the chapter from this book.  I would note the differences.  One would focus more on efficiency.  The other would focus more on raising more of the feed for the hogs yourself and purchasing less.  Each would recommend slightly different housing or access to pasture.

Chickens would be similar to the hogs.  One would recommend humane confined housing and the other would recommend free-range, with adequate protection from predators.  In one situation the eggs may abe easier to find than the other, but conversely, in the other, the feed costs would be lower and egg quality higher.

The varied reading and different ideas and ideals challenged my own thinking.  There truly was and is no "one right way" to do things.  I would read a chapter here and there and ponder and think of how I may adapt the ideas.  The books challenged my foundational thinking.  What were my ideals related to food production?  What was quality food?  How should I treat animals?  How would I optimize my time or the time of those who may help me?  What would I do myself and what would I have someone do for me?  What would I buy and what would I raise myself?

How to Live on Almost Nothing and Have Plenty set me on a path of exploration which included a lifetime of study of alternatives and the comparison and contrasting of those alternatives.  This study and intellectual development over literally decades have gotten me to the point where I am today in my thinking.  This study set me off on different avenues of study through my life that frame the way I think about food, nutrition, health, ethics, sustainability, self-sufficiency, economics, etc.

Although I have not read this book for probably 15 years. the lessons were valuable in helping me grow, develop, and come to what I consider to be a relatively wholistic view all of the things discussed above.

Thanks Mom and Dad for the gift of this book and the beneficial impact it has had on my life.