My post a few weeks ago, when I said that raising your own meat is not really “frugal”, got an interesting response. A lot of folks agreed, and said farming is not cheap. Some readers disagreed and said that “frugal” and “cheap” are not the same thing and that the long-term, intangible benefits make it a frugal choice regardless of the up-front costs. The idea of quality vs quantity.

{shrug}

I think both are right. It’s expensive, but it has priceless long-term benefits–they’re just not monetary. And obviously, we agree with the intangible benefits, because we’re still here doing it. {smile} I read a great, simple post over at LivinLovinFarmin that sort of sums it up…You either get it or you don’t! It’s hard, and it’s not about money.  But if you get it, and you love it (or the idea of it because you’re not quite there yet!) you can make it work!

So I’m excited to start a new series The Dollars and Cents of Starting a Small Farm.

We’ll be talking about the biggest start-up expenses and realistic tips and ideas of how to reduce costs. Land, Buildings and Shelters, Food and Water, Health and Wellness, Choosing Livestock, and Keys to Organizing. We’ll be sharing farmer profiles to give you real-life perspectives on the decision-making you’ll face. And we’ll be sharing some of our best and worst learning experiences. We want to be honest, but encouraging. And we hope you’ll share your own thoughts and experiences too!

To start with, here are my TOP 5 TIPS for Starting a Small Farm…

1. Know YOUR Purpose

Are you homesteading…meaning just focused on raising your own food and being self-sufficient?

Are you a small farm…raising your own food and food specifically for commercial sale?

Are you really interested in being a cottage industry…such as raising your sheep for the wool and creating wool products?

You don’t have to use my terms or definitions, the point is that you sit down and define what you’re doing for yourself. If you want the farm to pay for itself, you’ll have a much different decision-making strategy than if you’re doing it as a semi-productive hobby. You need to know what you’re about when you get into this. Write down some general goals, and some basic boundaries to get started with.

2. Compare Apples to Apples

This is probably our biggest challenge area. You see what someone else is doing, and it seems like it’s working great and you just want to do that. But it doesn’t work for you and you end up disappointed and discouraged. So often, you have to look past the surface of a farm and give hard attention to the underlying system they’re working with.

Do they have someone home at the farm full-time? That’s completely different than our situation where we both work off-farm full-time.

Do they do all their lambing in the barn or in jugs? We’re going to lamb mostly on pasture–that’s a totally different system!

Do they have a beautiful, predator-proof chicken coop with hardware cloth, sand flooring, and cinderblock foundation? That’s completely different than our philosophy of everything being mobile and our crazy free-range flock.

Animals act differently, produce differently, and grow differently in different systems, different climates, and different routines. You can learn from anyone, but be careful when you’re comparing methods to make a decision that you’re really comparing apples to apples. You’ll save yourself a lot of frustration! {smile}

3. Be Brave and Know That You HAVE TO Keep Learning

This one’s for all my fellow book-lovers, planners, and Type A friends…you don’t have to (you can’t possibly!) know everything before you start. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to change your mind. Things are going to go better than expected and worse than expected. The key is to keep learning, and try not to make the same mistakes twice! {smile}

Some things you’re only going to learn by getting out there and doing it. You have to just be brave and dive in!

And when it starts to feel too familiar or boring, there’s always a new skill to learn. A new project to tackle. A new ideal to investigate. Honestly, I’m usually more overwhelmed by how much there is still to be learned than I am ever bored.

4. Filter Opinions

People find this farming, homesteading, and livestock-raising lifestyle fascinating. Disturbing. Dirty. Loud. Confusing. Upsetting. Beautiful. Peaceful. {snort} CRAZY. You’re going to run into so many opinions about what you’re doing! Some nice, some not-so-nice. Some helpful and constructive, some just plain ignorant.

You have to learn to filter the opinions coming in at you. Start by reminding yourself about your purpose. If your purpose is to raise animals for your own food, then you might not put too much stock in a vegetarian’s opinion of your operation. Then ask yourself if they’re comparing apples to apples. If you’re trying to run an organic, sustainable operation, you might want to brush off criticism from your local commercial-farm operators. They’re working on a system TOTALLY different than yours. And then remember that you’re still learning–because we’re all still learning! Always be open-minded, but don’t be fooled into getting discouraged by opposing voices. Weed through the words, take what was helpful, and toss the rest.

5. Have an Exit Strategy

This sounds horrible, but it’s so important!

Look, this lifestyle is not easy. There is NO REASON to keep up with enterprises you don’t enjoy. Before you get into any farm venture, know what your exit strategy is if it doesn’t work out the way you expect. I don’t necessarily mean the whole farm–I mean you buy goats and they’re a pain in the neck and you can’t keep them fenced and it turns out you don’t like goat milk…have an exit strategy to recoup your investment and get out of it. Try something else instead.

Everyone asks us why we don’t have goats. {shrug} We don’t like goats. It’s nothing personal, we just don’t enjoy goats. We don’t eat them (which is our basic exit strategy for any livestock) and we don’t drink goat’s milk, so why raise them? It’s too much work for none of those intangible benefits and a whole bunch of aggravation.

Here are two basic exit strategies we try to use (after some trial and error!)…

One–only try something you’ll eat. That way no matter what happens, you’ll be able to get something out of it. Folks ask why we don’t have any alpacas…we don’t eat alpacas. What would we do with them if we couldn’t sell the fiber?

Two–always start small! It’s much easier to re-sell your dairy goats if you only have one or two. It’s much harder to get out if you don’t like it if you started with a whole flock! Pastured broilers…start with one pen, 25 birds. Don’t invest in building 3 pens and ordering 150 birds your first summer. Oh yeah, and know what “small” is! {smile} Everyone wants a “few” chickens to raise their own eggs and don’t realize that 5 hens can mean 2-3 dozen eggs a week in the summer!

To have any sense of success, farming has to be a long-term choice. And it has to be made for all those reasons you can never put into words.

Because there will be a lot of days when you don’t have success by any worldly measure.

Not the bottom line at the bank.

Not appreciation from your customers.

Not understanding from your family. You might have neighbors complaining about the noise at weaning time. Or about the roosters at dawn. Or about seeing you processing meat in the garage. There will be dark winter mornings when every water bucket on the farm is frozen, the sheep try to eat you, a weasel breaks in and kills half your flock of chickens, or you have to be out doing chores in a hurricane.

Sometimes there are no dollars and cents when it comes to finding new babies in the grass, coffee at sunrise, or crazy snuggling chickens.

Our series continues with links below–And be sure to sign up below for our newsletter and receive your FREE copy of our Finding Land Worksheet, to help you in your homestead planning!

You’ll also find an updated version of this worksheet in our Starting Your Homestead Printable Pack!

Starting a Small Farm: LAND

Starting a Small Farm: BUILDINGS and SHELTERS

Starting a Small Farm: FOOD and WATER

Starting a Small Farm: HEALTH and WELLNESS (with printable!)

Starting a Small Farm: CHOOSING LIVESTOCK (Part 1) and (Part 2) and (Part 3)

Starting a Small Farm: THE HOMESTEAD GARAGE

Starting a Small Farm: SMALL FARM TAX BINDER

Starting a Small Farm: USING GOOGLE CALENDAR FOR MAINTENANCE RECORDS