How to Start Farming
Hi Everyone –
Here are some difficult questions to answer: How do I start farming? How does my family start farming? How do I grow something out of the ground? How do I raise livestock? How do I milk a cow? Are these the first questions that come to mind? Or maybe they are: How do I make money at farming? How do I support my family with a farm? How do I live off the land? Can we be completely sustainable on a farm? Do I quit my current job and start farming?
Many questions and thoughts about farming naturally come to mind when thinking about homesteading. So let’s start with some bite-size pieces before we contemplate the universe of farming and end up with frustration and disappointment, or subject ourselves to a never ending search for the unattainable. Let’s start by making farming attainable with the following definition…
FARMING: The physical work of growing plants and/or animals, whether for personal consumption or for sale as goods.
Now let’s clarify this homesteader’s definition of farming that states, “whether for personal consumption or for sale as goods.” Let’s first focus on the personal consumption part of this definition. This means that we can start farming by growing a tomato plant in our back yard or even on our apartment balcony. Of course that doesn’t make us farmers, but we can farm without being a “professional” farmer. I know several people who have planned their own wedding, but that doesn’t make them professional “Wedding Planners.” We are free to conduct a little farming experiment, or enjoy a larger farming project, or build a hobby farm, or grow a booming family enterprise, and/or any combination of the above ☺
…professional farming is a science and a career that takes years to learn…
Sometimes we have visitors here at Our Lady’s Ranch that are ready to quit their day job and jump into farming. I usually stop them with some statements of reality like… “So you want to drop your well-paying career that took you twenty years to learn, and jump into a farming life that pays one quarter the amount and takes three generations to learn how to do it?” Most people forget that professional farming is a science and a career that takes years to learn, along with a passion that becomes an organic lifestyle, as opposed to a simple romantic notion.
So let’s just relax a little bit about this whole farming question and enjoy little steps towards farming that are practical and fit within our current state of life. And of course, we can also explore family farming enterprises that do become the family’s primary source of income, but one slowwwwww step at a time. Farmers plant trees for the next generation, so let’s plant ideas that can take root and grow into maturity as we mature in our own discovery of what we want and why we want it. We have offered an in depth workbook entitled Guidance for these first steps of discovery. Take your time with it and really pray through each step to help you determine what kind of homesteading/farming lifestyle relates to the values that God has already placed on your heart.
As you consider the question, “How to start farming?” the first step is to collect more information about types of farming and which ones attract you. Go ahead and search all the common media that are a great benefit in this regard… YouTube, Instagram, and Google. Just dream something up and Google it. Explore a little and have fun with it.
Then search for farms in your area. A good way to start is at a farmer’s market where you can meet many family farmers who are willing to tell you all about their produce and how they grow it. And you’ll find that most of these small, modern family farmers will enjoy sharing their stories of how they got started. But don’t stop there… Schedule some farm visits and farm tours. These small farmers might struggle a little with money, but none that I have ever met struggle with sharing their knowledge and love of farming.
While you’re kicking up the dust and researching, by all means get something going… The tomato plant mentioned above is a great start. How about flowers? You can work with potted plants or dig up some dirt in the back yard. The hardest part is getting started so just go for it! There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. What else would you like to try in the space you have available to you now, in your current state of life? Do whatever you can at home, and what you can’t do yet, go and do it on someone else’s property.
And the questions advance…
Okay, that gets the ball rolling. Now let’s say you’re really enjoying the farming projects so far and you love being able to work as a family. Then you start noticing the kids really thriving in this farming environment instead of watching a screen. And your heart is moved to pursue more of this thing called “farming.” So the questions advance… How can we farm more? How can we live in the country? How can we live on a farm? How can we make a hobby farm that provides some food savings and creates a little food security? How can we make our living from farming?
Well, I wish you wouldn’t have asked all those questions, because now I have to pretend I can answer them. I can’t because every situation is so unique, but I’ll try to get you started anyways. First go to the Guidance page on Our Lady’s Ranch web site, as mentioned before, and reflect on the exercises shown there step by step and write your answers down. Throughout that section, you’ll find many ideas of how to get started in a bigger way without hundreds of thousands of dollars. And for those of you who want more information now, here are a few stories that will satisfy your immediate cravings…
I have three specific stories for you, each at different levels of engagement/lifestyle. First, the “Hobby Farm.” Second, the “Family Farm.” And third, the “Community Farm.” One disclaimer though… I could go on all day about these scenarios and someday we will write a book on how to get started in homestead farming, but for the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to have to be relatively brief (not one of my strong points).
#1. The Hobby Farm
First, we have Tom and Lisa who are awesome practicing Catholics and have very successfully started and managed a hobby farm for over fifteen years now. Tom and Lisa have raised six kids and their primary source of income comes from Tom’s work at a Catholic non-profit company. They looked for property for several years and then found a nice seven acre parcel with a house on it and some irrigation water from the county system. They busted their tails every day for several years with Tom working full time off-site and then working in the evening with wife and kids to clear shrubs and erect fencing to make pastures. They planted several fruit trees and fenced in a garden so the deer didn’t eat the fruits of their labor.
Then they experimented with growing pigs, then a few beef cows, and then a milking cow, all the while building more facilities like a small pond in the back, a little milking barn, and a mobile chicken coop. This is a super-inventive family using ingenuity and hands on trial and error to figure out a program that worked for them. They started their small cattle operation by purchasing a few dairy cow bull calves. Dairy farms practically give them away because they can’t milk a bull-calf, so they serve no purpose for themselves. Then to feed their growing population of pigs and chickens, Tom found a bread company that gave him (for free) all of their outdated bread – a trailer full each time, twice a week!
Tom and Lisa worked very well with their kids so the whole family not only saved money on labor costs, but enjoyed sharing common goals and work experiences that will last a lifetime. Their kids are now all in college or finished, but their incredible family stories will last forever. And regarding finances – They operated as a hobby farm, so they flew under the radar of big business. They sold their home grown products and butchered meat to neighbors and friends at first, while eventually building a nice following of unrelated customers that continue to purchase food from them to this day. They also ate their own home-grown food, so the household budget stayed very low by saving money on not only food costs, but outside entertainments and activities as well. I never saw them miss a church event or party and they still went on family camping trips. But they avoided expensive vacations and none were the less because of it. They actually made enough extra money from their hobby farm to supplement the kid’s college costs along with several “World Youth Day” tickets. Way to go Tom and Lisa and thanks for your awesome witness!
#2. The Family Farm
Next we have Ken and Aleta – Two former school teachers who decided that they had to start farming before their hearts exploded. So they did some calculating and figured that Ken could quit his job to start the farm and Aleta could stay with a steady paycheck and help out on evenings and weekends. This plan was fairly brave of them considering they just started their family with a little girl and a boy (about five and three years old), along with a new mortgage on the two-acre plot of land with a house that they had just purchased on the outskirts of town.
This little family is a great example of how to get started farming with little to start with. That first year, Ken plowed some little areas on that small parcel and planted a few rows of tomatoes along with various other summer produce plants. They signed up for their first season of selling at a farmer’s market and pretty much sold everything they brought with them. The cash came in steady enough to cover the costs of their first crop, but not much more than that. They got inventive for their next year and started a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), where customers pay ahead of time for a season of weekly produce baskets. This system provided the capital they needed to expand their farming operation for the second year. So Ken plowed a little more of that small parcel (remember only two acres with a house and driveway) and he built a small chicken coop to begin offering eggs to their loyal customer base that was just getting started and slowly growing.
That second year gave them a good financial boost along with a stout customer following so that, by the third year, Aleta stopped teaching to join the family agrarian efforts. They grew a bountiful harvest that year, while joining an additional farmer’s market, securing enough customers and sales to barely “make-it;” By this time they were relying completely on a farming income to pay all of their bills, mortgage and utilities included. By the fourth year they began hiring a person or two to help, they got involved in the local foodie organizations and clubs, and even managed one of the farmer’s markets. These efforts catapulted them into a financially healthy, sustainable operation. Now they were actually doing it! With ingenuity, effort, and common sense marketing, they became a well-know and loved legitimate small family farming operation.
Today, several years later, they actually lease additional farmland and employ several people to continue their love for farming in a way that sustains their own financial needs while serving other folks needs as well. Over the years they have enjoyed eating super healthy food themselves, while providing quality food to all of their customers. Farming for Ken and Aleta has also helped them enter into a larger community of other farmers and associates who have become lifelong friends. Their risks and efforts are a good example of how good planning and hard work can yield an agrarian lifestyle that becomes a full harvest.
#3. The Community Farm
For our third scenario, I can summarize a little version of our own story about Family Friendly Farms, here at Our Lady’s Ranch. Actually, it would be way too long to give the whole history, so I’d better just share what we’re doing now and we can work backwards from there. We are now Phil and Karen, Zach, Ty, Isaiah, Stevenson, and Keller, with soon to have a few more live-on-ranch farmers as well. So here’s what we all do in farming…
My name is Phil, the one who started the business and now I oversee it along with the administrative duties (and apparently writing a few blog posts every now and again). Karen is my wife who promotes the business through social media and various special media marketing channels. She is our business development manager who drives new sales and motivates our rapid growth. Zach is my son who grew up building the business with his siblings, and has recently returned to the ranch with his wife Cecilia and their one year old daughter Thalia. Zach is our sales manager and operations manager at this time. Ty is my oldest daughter who has grown from bringing in the cows with me since she was ten years old, to packing orders and managing the sales. Now, as a professional graphic artist and author, she maintains our websites and composes our blog posts while raising her baby girl with her husband in Texas.
My other kids all helped build the ranch and the business and their nick-names are Tia, Ali, Jo-Jo, Miggs, and Nina. Each one of these little rascals started working as soon as they started walking – yes, about one year’s old… okay maybe by the age of two, but not any longer after that ☺ They collected eggs, fed the animals, moved boards, dug trenches, installed irrigation, cleared fields, cultivated garden beds, planted vegetables and fruit trees, field dressed livestock, sold products, visited with customers, gave farm tours, trained employees, and on and on and on. They have also each learned how to operate heavy equipment, use power tools, build things, hunt and fish, play musical instruments, cook and care for people, and clean up after themselves (yep, the biggest one).
As you can see, I’m very proud of all of them, but that’s not why I wrote those accomplishments above. I’m sharing the kids’ skills with you to encourage you into this agrarian lifestyle you seek. Homestead/farming combined with homeschooling and a moral family life is unparalleled in many areas of life, and makes for an incredible way to raise kids. So that’s the commercial, and now back to the story about community farming…
This past summer, living at the ranch we had several households, which have become necessary to sustain not only the farming operation, but also a balanced way of life that includes time off the farm. This has become a huge advantage for everyone here, especially me who recently married Karen in Honduras. That couldn’t have happened without community help. So the scene here last summer was me and a few kids left in the main house, Zach and his family in the three-bedroom cottage, and Isaiah, Stevenson, Keller, Claire, and Mario; each living in separate camper units at the ranch. We utilized the main house as a lodge for common prayer, meals, and recreation and we all worked together building the farming operations and sales while maintaining a vegetable garden, a fruit tree orchard, an olive grove, a milking cow, and a park like setting for nice walks and customer farm tours.
We originally started the farming business as a livestock operation with only cows, and then we added pigs, then sheep, and then chickens. We now grow and sell Grass-Fed Beef, Pasture-Raised Pork, Grass-Fed Lamb, Free-Range Chicken, and seasonal Turkeys. We also continue various homesteading activities including the vegetable garden, the fruit tree orchard, the olive grove, and a few milking cows. We have become a demonstration farm and regional hub for the Catholic Land Movement and we provide farm tours upon request. Our biggest limitation at this point is housing, so we’re planning to create more housing opportunities for people who want to enjoy this homesteading/farming experience with us, whether it be for a weekend, a short season, or a multi-year commitment.
How we went from those first two cows to the operation we are now is a twenty year story that I can’t just rush into this post. So if you would like to read more about the Family Friendly Farms history, just email that request to Ty.
We would also like to hear about your farming aspirations and your own story as it has occurred thus far. Please take a moment to email us any questions you may have and/or anything you want to share. All of our stories are relevant and very helpful for others desiring this homesteading/farming lifestyle, so please do share.
Wishing you all the energy and opportunity to move forward with your heart’s desires.
Blessings and Peace to you from the Zeiter Family and Friends,
Philip Zeiter
Our Lady’s Ranch
