The Beginning Farmer

Sorry for another late post… I just wanted to take a moment this morning to say thank you to the United States Government, the taxpaying people of America, and all those who worked so hard on the 2008 Farm Bill. It is really wonderful to have people so concerned about the agricultural community in the United States that they find a place in their wallet for us lowly farmers … errr … landowners. I mean I can’t believe how gracious everyone is to find some spare change for little ol’ me!

**end of sarcasm**

Really, I don’t know all of the ins and outs of the 2008 Farm Bill, but there are plenty of interesting things that I’m learning about now that I’m a landowner. For example we recently received a call from the FSA office in our county telling us that we had until September 30th to sign-up for our crop base under some new provisions in the new Farm Bill.

The long and short of it is that because we own 40 acres of land (26 acres of which are “tillable”) we are entitled to some money. $313 to be exact for our corn base, soybean base, and wheat base. We have 14 acres (I believe) included in our base so it works out to roughly $22.36 per acre of the base. And to top it all off we don’t have to do anything to receive that money. We don’t have to plant crops, we don’t have to have a management plan, and we don’t have to have them inspect it. All we have to do is own it.

So, why didn’t I turn it down? I would like to think that I would turn it down on principle … and maybe at some point I will, but for now we took the payment because of the future sales. Although the base isn’t important to us it could possibly be important to someone down the road if we had to sell and then it could make a difference.

It is an interesting provision in though…

It seems that no matter where you turn the only thing you can hear about right now is the financial “crisis” (yeah, I put that in quotes because I just don’t do financial “crisis'”). I hear about it on the radio, on TV, through the internet, at church, around town, and just when I thought I had found a safe place I even found Allan Nation writing about it on his blog! But, I suppose it is a pretty big deal even if I haven’t been following it too closely so I was interested to hear what Allan Nation had to say on the subject.

Of course you can read about it by checking out the blog for yourself, but I’ll give you the basics right here… There is some bad stuff going on out there and lots of investors have lost theirs (and other peoples) money. A lot of that investment advice seems to be coming back empty right now. But, if people would have just focused on getting out of debt then we wouldn’t be in the place we are right now.

Okay, that is my over-simplified summary of his short post, but I do think it has some good nuggets for agriculture and beginning farmers. First of all it points out that it is a crazy world that we live in and things are likely to change all of the time, so we need to be diversified and prepared for change. I am already seeing posts and comments pop up over on the Epi-Log about people planning on buying less expensive food, eating out less, and so on. So, things change from time to time and that leads to changes in the lives people live.

But, I believe Mr. Nation’s short posts also underlines one of the most important aspects for agriculture and beginning farmers (and everyone else) … minimize debt. Of course there is a time for it (that has been hashed out on here before), but that doesn’t mean we need to go overboard with it. My wife and I are in debt for the first times in our lives right now and although it was a little scary we do believe it was a wise choice. The thing about it though is that while going into debt to buy land and build the house we have tried to minimize the amount of debt we have at all costs.

We have only borrowed money for the land and the house and will be putting in infrastructure as we have money, time, and resources. This means everything won’t be set up right away and we will have to improvise in some areas, but it also means we won’t be saddled with debt that comes calling for payments! I have mentioned before that we have tried to purchase this place just like we would if we were buying our first house in town for a growing and active family. In our case we just have a REALLY BIG backyard where we can keep cows!

I’m not sure what is going to happen through all of this, and on one hand I don’t really care because I have bigger fish to fry. But, it does remind me of my old Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared”.

Last night we spent our first night at the farm. It was more like camping than staying in our house because we slept on an air mattress on the cement floor, but it was still great to spend the night out there an get a taste of what it will be like in just a couple of weeks. But, in all the commotion of sleeping out at the farm and working late putting in the flooring I just realized that I forgot to post! It is pretty unusual for me to have such a late post, but I’ll take a quick break from work at the church to update you on the happenings at the farm.

• The new closing date has been set for October 14th. As soon as I get at least one room completely covered with flooring (and we have the outlets installed) I’m going to start taking over boxes and just stacking them up. If I can get the flooring throughout the house by the 14th then all the better!
• Sometime this week I’m going to have to take an afternoon off to put up a small paddock for a couple of Dexters. I tell you more about that a little later.
• If you follow my wife’s blog you will know that all the doors and closets and the trim that goes around them are all done. All that is left is the baseboard (need to get the flooring done) and around the windows.
• We still don’t have the chimney installed yet for the stove, but I do believe we have found an Amishman that will come up and do the work for us so that we know it is done right and that we won’t have a leaky roof.
• Our pigs are growing well and should be ready to process in just a few weeks (I’ll be sending out information for those interested this week so shoot me an e-mail if you would like the information). They have been a bit cantankerous lately though by knocking the plug out of their waterer. I’m not quite sure how they are doing it.
• The tractor is mostly up and running at this point with all new hydraulic hoses, new rear tires, new oil, and a few other things. Now I just need to get a new belt (because it broke) for the power steering unit and we are good to go.
• Once that belt (mentioned above) is fixed I’m going to spread the gravel out on our drive a little more and get a HUGE dumpster out there to clean up all the construction mess. I can’t stand the piles of garbage we have now!
• Whew, there is a lot to do in the next couple of weeks and beyond, but I have to admit that I’m mostly loving it.

Sorry for the late post, and I hope everyone is having a great day…

Yesterday I was looking for a new magazine to subscribe to because my subscription to “The Stockman Grassfarmer” had expired (great magazine, but I can only do one at a time so I wanted to try them all out). I just wanted to get a glimpse of what some of the articles were like in the various magazines out there for small scale farmers when I ran across an interesting article from “Graze”. The title of the April 2008 article was, “From zero to $300,000 in five years”. That caught my attention because I was under the impression that there was no money in farming, especially if you were starting with nothing.

Well, I don’t have time to pontificate on the article too much, so I will encourage you to go and check it out. But, before I go I will leave you with a few thoughts of mine after reading through the article one time.

• Even though we bought land I do believe renting is one of the best ways to go if you can make it work for you. The reason we bought was because we were going to build our own house and spend about the same as a couple in our position would on a house in town.
• Having someone to help you get started is a wonderful thing. I haven’t had the chance to have a mentor like I would have loved having, but the connections I have made through this blog and field days that I have attended have really been a help in planning.
• “Sweat-Equity” really does work. Just read the article to see what they were able to do.
• Record keeping, record keeping, record keeping! I love how detailed the information is in the article.

I believe this was a very encouraging article. There are plenty of risks to be hand in such a venture, but I think there are risks no matter what you do these days so you might as well enjoy your risks. If the rest of the articles are like this one I think I’ll enjoy a year’s subscription to “Graze”. Do you have any other magazine suggestions before I pull the trigger?

No, that isn’t my blood pressure (although that would be pretty good on the systolic side, but slightly off on the diastolic side). Actually that is my download and upload speeds using the Verizon internet thingy that I’m trying out. Sitting in the church (about the same as at the farm) with the double USB port thing and an external antenna I manged 115 kbps download and 100 kbps upload. For comparison I did a test using the adsl internet we have here at the church and received 1,547 upload and 380 download.

So, what do you think of that (does anyone know how that compares to dial-up)? Unfortunately I’m not in the Verizon “Broadband” access area, just their “National” access area. When I was in the “Broadband” area I liked it a lot, but then I drove twenty-five minutes to my house and I wasn’t as pleased…

I have continued researching the satellite options, but must admit that I am completely scared of those because of the MANY poor reviews all of the companies receive from users. I do run across some reviews from satisfied customers, but I just wonder how many satisfied people there are (I know the satisfied ones don’t talk as loudly though).

That is the internet quandary that I am in right now. I am really beginning to see how important the internet could be to our farm through our blogging, communicating, networking, and sales. With all of that in mind I’m just not sure what to try. I may go and check out the Alltel store here in town, but from their coverage maps it appears that I can expect about the same as my Verizon I have now.

In other farm related news it seems that we will have a little over two more weeks to finish the house and move in. That should give us time to finish the entire floor and all of the electrical installations. Then the only things left to do while we are living there is some trim and stovepipe installation! Soon….

I’m off to begin laying the floor this morning … one of the things that we will now get done with our extra time … But, since I have posted about goats from time to time on this blog and because I have seen them listed a lot lately in our local advertisers I found this podcast from WHO Radio’s, “The Big Show”, very interesting. In this podcast from their daily radio show Ken Root interviews a couple that raises goats just about half-an-hour east of me. They seem to be very knowelegable when it comes to Boar goats.

Enjoy, and feel free to throw out all of your goat thoughts…

LISTEN HERE

For various reasons (some of which you know about if you follow the blog) I haven’t been able to do as much work on the farm as I would have liked so far, but today I was pondering one of the encouraging things. You may remember that I had planned to have the cattle on the farm by now grazing down the pasture and such, but building has taken the front row seat for the time being and the pastures will just have to wait. There is hope for our pastures that have been in the Conservation Reserve Program for the last 14 years though.

There are a very few areas that I have mowed this summer (I’m talking about a total of three times of mowing), but one of them is east of the garden next to the water hydrant. In that area there is a decent amount of red clover that has come up on it’s own just because it has been able to compete with the other grasses when they were shorter. This does give me hope for the rest of the pastures and confirms something that I have read in Gene Logsdon’s books that clover and bluegrass will grow if you keep an area clipped and they are able to compete.

Now, I think is a good time to start making plans for what my pastures will be like next year. Do you have any suggestions?

Okay, so to say this week (or last three) has been full is an understatement in the least. With that in mind (and the list of thing that I need to do in mind) here is a bullet point list of the week so far:

• One flat tire on the truck while trying to go to Des Moines to get building supplies. I should also point out that we have no spare because it was stolen… We will get one soon!
• One flat tire on the tractor (my Epi-Log post will be after noon today) which eventually led to me deciding to get new tires … that eventually led to a tire tube exploding on the rusted out hole in the rim … which in turn led to the tire guy taking it back to the shop … and finally he just decided to take both rims … I haven’t heard back from them yet.
• One power-steering belt (that is my educated guess at least) broken and gone from the tractor. So, even if we had tires we are out of commission for the moment.
• One fuel system (tank on down) on the tractor that should be checked out after the other things are fixed.
• Multiple trips to Des Moines for things we need to have.
• I finally had time spent in the field raking hay … until the tractor problems.
• A sleep deprived and at times stressed out family, but we are still excited…
• My blog shows up over a urinal (I think that is cool/funny).
• Youth groups Sunday and Wednesday evenings.
• And a big crazy “you’re kidding me” with the whole moving out of the house thing. We’ll see how I feel about this in a couple of weeks.

So, that is it in a nutshell (minus the things I have forgotten or have forgotten on purpose)… Thanks for hanging in with us!

Well, things are flying out at the house now as we are down to just a few more days (to be honest we aren’t close to ready, but everything will happen anyways), so I just have time for a few words. I thought I would give you all an update on the tractor tires since you had so many good suggestions.

After writing the post about my tire problems I realized that I had a hole in the tube and while one of the tires could serve us alright the other was a cracking tearing mess. So, since I new the tube needed to be replaced I decided I might as well just do the tires at the same time and be done with it for a long time.

That is what I decided to do today and the local tire guy came out to the farm to switch them up for me. Just one problem arose … at some point these tires had fluid in them (as many often did) and as usually happens the fluid causes rust around the valve stem when it leaks out. Well that rust led to a major hole in one of the rims so the tire guy ended up just taking both of the outer rims to the shop for repair. Hopefully I’ll have tires tomorrow … but the tractor story doesn’t end there…

**No picture yet today … I took one of the tractor without it’s shoes, but I haven’t had the time to load it yet. I’ll get it up as soon as possible.