I work full time (now remotely) and live on 32 acres of woods and fields. It used to be farmed but hadn't been for a while when I bought it 12 years ago. My initial idea was to grow produce to sell but it didn't work out.
Here are some of the problems I encountered:
1.) Deer - we are overrun with white tail deer. If I don't surround anything I grow with 6ft welded wire fence, it doesn't last a week. I have set up electric fence wired in many different configurations, but the deer seem to figure it out. Usually just as I think I found something that works.
2.) soil - we don't have quality top soil and amending the soil take time and money
3.) rodents - initially we had great success with raised beds (4ft x 8ft) but after several years they eat the roots (really bad in terms of carrots and potatoes) and pretty bad for aquash and beans. We have cats, but they can't kill the rodents fast enough.
4.) time - working full time and trying to pull everything together is really hard. When a crop is ready it needs picked and doesn't care that you are trying to meet a deadline at work. Especially for crops like peas where it seems you have a three day window to pick them at their peak.
5.) time2 - I have equipment so that I can use diesel fuel instead of muscle power. This allows me to get a lot more done, but there are two type of equipment, broken and about to break. I find it impossible to have the time to fix everthing. My back hoe has a broken hydraulic line for over a year now.
6.) selling produce - nothing in more annoying than the customer at the farmers market that comes at the end of the day and tried to buy whatever you have left at a huge discount. Also, there is a fine line between collusion and competitiveness when it comes to pricing at a farmers market. There seems to always be a guy that buys a stall once because he has too many tomatoes and sells them at a price I would lose money at if I had to match it.
7.) seasonal animals are easier than crops because you have more control. We lost all of the produce this year because of drought, but did well on eggs and free range chicken. I'm thinking about a small number of pigs or lamb next year. We don't keep anything but egg layers over winter.
One thing to mind is that I work damn hard at physical labor. My parents are in good health in their eighties, but I don't see me getting there. The toll on my body is very evident to me. I really hope I don't live that long as it won't be pleasant.
I do love growing things though. we have a beautiful orchard of pears, apples, plums, and cherries. Rasberries and blueberries that I can pick at any time. Probably the highest quality chicken and eggs you can find. Great parties when the sweet corn comes in.
The amount of time and physical labor to get anything done is crazy. We have rodent problems, too, and our collection of six-towed barn cats do the best they can. Chickens do an amazing job on rodents, BTW. Chicken and duck eggs fresh from the farm are amazing.
We had an opossum get into the barn last night and killed some of our ducks. Normally these aren't hard to get rid of but this one was very aggressive and I had to shoot it. Earlier in the year it was raccoons and they were able to break into a cage and do an amazing amount of carnage.
Bugs got to our pear and apple trees this year before we did so that was a bust.
I've been trying to get bees going but mites are killing everything.
Oh, back-hoes. Mine is new but even new farm equipment has problems. I cut the end off one of my fingers working on our tractor/back-hoe earlier in the year. Which is fun since my day job is software.
Couple of questions on behalf of some friends who are dabbling with produce on their property:
1) I have heard about how tremendously troublesome deer are, but have also heard good things about the "impossible to purchase in quantities less than a ton" Dippel's Oil ... has that worked at all for you?
2) So the rodents are burrowing under the raised beds and up to get to the roots? I didn't realize they would go that far down. How far down are the "walls" of the raised beds?
I will look into that, I have not heard of it. The problem with a lot of sprays is that they need applied on a regular basis.
Our raised beds contain about 15 inches of soil. The rodents burrow up from the bottom. You can't see them, but there are tunnels all through there. I've thought about putting hardware cloth on the bottom, but again I'm back to how much do I want to spent in order to make growing produce even more expensive.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that you need to be proficient with a gun. A .17 or .410 is adequate. Racoons, are my nemesis. If they get in a coop, they will kill a crap top of chickens and only eat the heads off of them. We free range our chickens and have several small coops they go into at night which we close up. I'm a light sleeper and can hear the racoons drop down on the roofs from the trees. We need the trees and bushes to protect the chickens from the hawks and eagles. Owls are another more minor problem as are the coyotes. Foxes as well. Having good dogs helps a lot.
Also, for the love of god avoid Guinea fowl. They have the survival instincts of a brick. They are also very loud. We bought 30 as an experiment and sold them off to a chef as soon as we could. There were only 12 left at that point.
Thanks for the breakdown on this. Very interesting infor.
I realized the equipment issues with my lawnmower recently. I had to maintain the lawnmower in order to maintain my house. Then you have to maintain the tools that maintain the lawn mower that maintains your house.
Can you get (or make) raised beds with a floor under them? That should keep the rodents from being able to tunnel. (Unless they can chew through the floor...)
Here are some of the problems I encountered: 1.) Deer - we are overrun with white tail deer. If I don't surround anything I grow with 6ft welded wire fence, it doesn't last a week. I have set up electric fence wired in many different configurations, but the deer seem to figure it out. Usually just as I think I found something that works. 2.) soil - we don't have quality top soil and amending the soil take time and money 3.) rodents - initially we had great success with raised beds (4ft x 8ft) but after several years they eat the roots (really bad in terms of carrots and potatoes) and pretty bad for aquash and beans. We have cats, but they can't kill the rodents fast enough. 4.) time - working full time and trying to pull everything together is really hard. When a crop is ready it needs picked and doesn't care that you are trying to meet a deadline at work. Especially for crops like peas where it seems you have a three day window to pick them at their peak. 5.) time2 - I have equipment so that I can use diesel fuel instead of muscle power. This allows me to get a lot more done, but there are two type of equipment, broken and about to break. I find it impossible to have the time to fix everthing. My back hoe has a broken hydraulic line for over a year now. 6.) selling produce - nothing in more annoying than the customer at the farmers market that comes at the end of the day and tried to buy whatever you have left at a huge discount. Also, there is a fine line between collusion and competitiveness when it comes to pricing at a farmers market. There seems to always be a guy that buys a stall once because he has too many tomatoes and sells them at a price I would lose money at if I had to match it. 7.) seasonal animals are easier than crops because you have more control. We lost all of the produce this year because of drought, but did well on eggs and free range chicken. I'm thinking about a small number of pigs or lamb next year. We don't keep anything but egg layers over winter.
One thing to mind is that I work damn hard at physical labor. My parents are in good health in their eighties, but I don't see me getting there. The toll on my body is very evident to me. I really hope I don't live that long as it won't be pleasant.
I do love growing things though. we have a beautiful orchard of pears, apples, plums, and cherries. Rasberries and blueberries that I can pick at any time. Probably the highest quality chicken and eggs you can find. Great parties when the sweet corn comes in.