Can you make money on a farm? | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

Small farms are doable.  It's just a shift in paradigm about what a farm is and what it looks like.

Case in point:

A good friend of mine bought 20 acres about 2 years ago, @5 of it wooded.  He has a stand of shagbark hickory that he just got an FDA license to bottle and sell the syrup at $25 a pint.  He's planning on building a sugar shack in the woods from lumber he's harvested and fieldstone he's been collecting for the past couple of years. He was leasing 10 acres to another farmer who is farming all the land surrounding his. This spring he'll plant 10 acres of lavender, and already has about 60% of it spoken for by local hippy boutiques.  He also plans on bees, and a roadside U-pick strawberry and blueberry patch.

The farmer he was leasing to was giving him grief about "wanting to be a farmer". After a few months of teasing, my friend asked the farmer how much he was into that new tractor he was driving around.  The farmer told him $230K.  My friend told him he had already paid $600 for his lavender seeds and had just bought a harvesting attachment for his free tractor off craigslist for about 2 grand. I've never seen his balance sheet, but I'll bet my friend won't be $230k in debt at the end of this year.