Can You Make a Living on a Small Farm? | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

A pretty good article with a bunch of good ideas.

There is no easy, one-size-fits all answer to this question. You might think that small farmers are a thing of the past, but many new small farm businesses make a start in today’s world. Some of them succeed, while others struggle.

I recently read a heartbreaking account of a family faced with the decision to sell their small farm and move to the suburbs. The husband needed to go back to a full time job to support their family because they couldn’t survive on the profit from raising all natural pork and poultry for market.

This is not an unusual story, in fact it takes places all too often. We hear the call to ‘buy local’ and ‘support your farmer’ from all over the media. Good news about new farmers markets starting up with gaggles of shoppers attending have given hope to small producers. Many people would like to return to a simple farm life with a fair price paid for the milk, eggs, meat, and produce they can raise in accordance with nature. Good food from small farms, raised by honest, hardworking people…what could go wrong?

What could go wrong? Big agriculture, farm subsidies, and the ‘low price leaders’ of our day…these are the things that undermine the small farmers’ dreams of self sufficiency. Because a chunk of our tax money goes to fund big agriculture, rather than small farmers, they are able to raise food at a much lower price than the 10 acre farm. They are able to keep their prices low, although if you take into account the tax dollars supporting them, we really aren’t getting any deals. It’s a broken system, but I don’t see any repairs in the works.

However, it is possible to make a living with a small farm operation, but it’s not an easy life. There are a myriad of things to take into consideration before embarking on this back to the basics lifestyle. If you are considering the possibility of quitting your day job to start a small, independent farm, here are some things to do before you make the jump.

Can read the rest here, any other things you folks can think of?

http://www.theselfsu.....-farm.html