Buying the farm - your experiences with taking your life in a totally different direction

In My Humble Opinion
1

I work in IT, where I help automate reports that nobody will ever read, and hate every minute of it. My fiancee is a Java developer, which she studied for the sake of the money - she’s now badly paid considering the work she does, and pressured into unpaid overtime. The only positives of our jobs is that we are 100% remote-only. We’ve both been talking about changing up our jobs, but… now she has an opportunity to study agricultural engineering in a very rural area out in Western Brazil. I was looking for a change, even joked about ditching it all for a camel farm, but didn’t expect we’d have such a big one! I’ve moved continents on a whim, but this could be a complete about-face in my life path.

I have the funds to acquire a small farm/ranch, heck, liquidating some more assets I’d have the funds for a medium-sized one. I have never been a farmer, I lived most of my life in 3rd world agricultural economies but always in the cities. However, I fell into IT rather than seeking it out as a career, and I think I’d have been happier working with my hands anyway. I’ve also been moving towards a more self-reliant and less grid-dependent lifestyle - some of my daily use things I make rather than buy, I built my motorcycle from parts, I’ve started brewing my own beer, we were already gearing up to have solar power and our own well and water filter in our next house… And my impression, from an economic perspective, is that I could perfectly well have a fully sustainable/autonomous bit of land and some income from e.g. artisanal chocolate and rum, maybe some eco-tourism (which I worked with yonks ago). Being Brazil, health (and other) insurance isn’t a significant issue, and the cost of living for my frugal expectations is low. Still, I’m sure I’m idealising the move, I just don’t know by how much.

I should note that we’re not jumping in totally blind. Obviously we’ll start out in an apartment near the university, I won’t just buy a farm on the first day of university. I could obviously also start small, some hobby farming and moving to part-time IT work to maintain an income. And the SO is also reckoning that there are career opportunities where agro meets software so we don’t need to dive right in, and of course we don’t need to live entirely off a homestead.

I think I could go for it. I’m terrified, but it would be hilarious. Dealing with literal rather than metaphorical sheep could be a lovely change. Have you ever made a complete and total 180 from your life path, and if so, how did it go? Am I nuts, is this just a midlife crisis?

2

Like a Pauly Shore movie?

I would suggest that you get some practical experience in farm life before you cash your chips and buy a homestead.

Stranger

3

The wife and I were in Silicon Valley management positions when we decided to bail. We bought an historic home in central New Mexico and opened a Bed and Breakfast Inn. It was a great success. But in B&B that means break even. It was lot of fun for 10 years and then we just lived a big historic building in New Mexico.

We were able to fund it so we didnt face any financial crisis. An advantage of the only upscale facility in town (our rates were 3X the local motels) is that you get a very interesting clientele. The breakfast chats were our social life. We did miss the restaurants of the big city. But it sure beat attending meetings.

You seem to have a plan. What do you see as a location? Anything near to draw a crowd for your products?

4

Some considerations:

Do you need to make money, generate income from the farm project? Profit margins are usually quite thin even if you know what you are doing. Have you researched the market for the things that you hope to produce?

Even if it is just a hobby farm are you up to all the physical work it will entail? Particularly if it involves animals, there are no days off, no weekends, no sleeping in in the morning. Always planning ahead for the next chore, the next growth cycle, the next season. Can you really do all the work or need to hire workers during critical times like planting and harvest?

And if it is just a hobby farm can you afford to subsidize its operation? Like many hobbies, a farm can cost a lot of money to keep going.

Want to work all the time for little or no income, or even a new source of debt? Then a farm might just be right for you.

5

Ah, you’re making it sound too good.

Stranger

6

Yeah, he left off the part about no vacations, no time off, and back-breaking labor.

7

I was thinking more of 3 am veterinary emergencies, infections that require you to cull an entire heard/flock of animals, adverse weather wiping out an entire season’s crop, and the highest potential for occupational injury outside of mining.

Stranger

8

That sounds awesome. My fiancee floated the idea of doing something similar, but having known some people who run businesses in hospitality, I’m a bit scared off the idea.

It’s fairly close to the state capital (Cuiabá) which is close to both the Amazon, the Pantanal (swampland, amazing for eco-tourism, better than the Amazon in my opinion, and I’m going there next week), and also close to Bolivia. So part of my thinking was that a lot of farms around the Pantanal are profitable only because they take in visitors or tour groups, but they can set their own schedule.

For products - in Brazil there’s a market for everything. But specifically, starting with just rum (well, cachaça) has a low barrier to entry and can ship anywhere since it doesn’t really spoil. I recently visited a cocoa plantation in Colombia, so my other line of thinking was chocolate-coated cocoa seeds from fruit to package, since it worked there, and is again something that’s simple enough to ship.

I want to, just not sure about how to go about it here. As a teenager I volunteered with Willing Workers On Organic Farms (if they’re still around). In my (European) home country I’m not aware of any sort of any internships or similar for agriculture, it’s too urbanised and farms are entirely mechanised - the opposite of here.

Nah, I don’t really need to make money off it. I can always do something else part-time for money. Plus I’m pretty close to being able to subsist off the returns on investments (it’ll be tight, but it can cover expenses). Would do more market research once I’m physically in the area, before buying anything of course.

Why yes, I’ve owned a hole in the ocean into which I threw money, i.e. a boat :smiley: For the first years I’m expecting it to be a hobby farm that will (hopefully only just) cost more than it brings in.

That’s a concern, but I’m 39 and healthy. I need to get a lot more exercise outdoors, but I’m fully aware that this is like thinking I’m too sedentary so I’ll go run multiple marathons.

I wouldn’t want animals to depend on me for the first years. So to begin with I’m just thinking sugarcane, maybe cocoa since it’s common in the region, perhaps something where there might be a niche market here like nuts, and then for food for ourselves, the sort of things that grow here like weeds (pineapple, manioc, etc.)

That’s fair. I can’t deny that one of my motivations to get out of the area is that all my friends in the IT world and myself are seeing therapists, most of us also medicated, to be able to keep functioning, apart from the guy who’s unemployed half of every year. So at first glance it’s a choice between being burnt out mentally, or wearing out one’s body (or why not both?).

And yes, adverse weather and climate change can/will wipe out crops, but it’s also layoff season in IT, and both my fiancee and I have worked the last years in companies that were already understaffed before layoffs, and what with inflation I would have been better off putting my savings into land rather than other investments. I’m grateful for the reality checks here, I’d enjoy a bit of a compromise position if I find one.

9

Fun! In a throat-slitting sort of way, I mean.

10

Toffe, given the additional context you provided I’d say go for it. At 39, now is the time, not at 59.

If you do take the plunge and things don’t work out after all, it’s not like there’s no coming back. If you don’t take the plunge, I think you’ll have What If’s rolling around in your head until the day you die. We only have this one, short life.

I’m presently in the city wasting away in meaningless toil, and taking the plunge in a year or two, at most. I’m not going for a farming existence per se, but still buying a bit of land out where not many people are, and growing / catching a substantial portion of my food etc.

11

Not a farmer but I’ve been listening to the No-Till Market Garden Podcast and the finished Current Cucurbit podcast.

One thing that I might suggest would be to figure out funds, government groups, research groups, etc. that might be willing to help you out with the farm, in terms of things like building tunnels, laying in irrigation, etc. The more infrastructure that you have, the less labor intensive your operation will be, the higher the yield, and the smaller the losses.

Knowing how to farm best is a big interest of lots of government groups, charitable groups, and universities and there might be some willing to help you in return for data - or just because they’re a charitable organization. As an English speaking techy, you have an advantage in trying to find such groups and they’ll like you because you’ll be good with numbers and spreadsheets. Several of the farmers on the podcasts have talked about getting help funding projects from local government and special groups.

If you can’t find anything available or interested in helping you, you might consider giving it a pass unless you have enough money to invest in infrastructure yourself.

By the way, cocoa husks have a pretty reasonable NPK ratio to serve as a mulch. Might be useful to know for either your own use or to sell as an additional product.

12

Take an internship, first, if you can. For one thing, you’ll learn a lot of useful stuff; and for a very important other thing, you’ll learn whether you in particular are happier working with your hands and/or working outdoors. Many people are; but the only way to find out for sure is to try it.

I don’t know what’s available in Brazil; but there may well be something. And whatever you’d learn in Brazil about specific crops/livestock/techniques would be more likely to be directly applicable to farming in Brazil than what you’d learn by farming in the USA; though the general ideas of getting your hands in the dirt and learning to use tools will be useful in any case.

Ah – so you did get some idea!

They’re still around.

I didn’t find a chapter specifically for Brazil; but there may well be Brazilian farms listed anyway. And googling “WWOOF Brazil” brought up at least a couple of Brazilian listings with other organizations; so there may be other groups listing internship opportunities in the area.

Yes, but you might well love it anyway.

No commuting time; and you get to do for a living what other people do for recreation, and often to live full time where other people pay to vacation.

And some people really need to get their hands in the dirt; and to be out in the weather, adverse or not.

– livestock are optional, and risks can be reduced. A lot depends on the particular type of farming you’re doing; there’s massive degrees of variation in both the work and the equipment involved. If you are doing livestock, I strongly recommend a backup person who can take over if you’re sick or just need to sleep in once in a while.

Part of what I love about small-scale farming is that it uses both mind and body. Most lines of modern work use only one or the other; which I think isn’t really good for most people.

This is also true.

Go for it. We need more good farmers.

13

Glad to hear the OP means “buying the farm” literally— I was a bit concerned exactly what direction they were planning on taking their life when I read the thread title.

14

Don’t do it. If you really want the taste of farm life invest in a working farm that you can go visit.

15

On that note, in the US at least, the are farming cooperatives where you volunteer time and get produce back in return.

16

Both true. But somebody’s got to do the farming, or neither of those would exist.

It’s best done by people who love it. Maybe @Toffe is one of those people; maybe not. But it’s worth finding out. (Though I would recommend more farming experience before actually buying, if that’s practical.)

17

Buying a farm in Brazil certainly qualifies as ‘taking your life in a totally different direction.’

But speaking as somebody who grew up on a farm, and who’s been around farms and farmers all my life, I would hesitate to give approval to your proposed venture. As others have noted, farming is a high-risk and hard-work occupation with very little guarantee of success.

18

Not a total turn around like the OP is thinking. Not at all.

I moved from 5200 feet in elevation to 11200 feet in elevation. 100 miles from home. Had a job I was going to. I like rural remote living.

Had the 4x4 truck and a car with studded snows on all four tires. Well, started pretty well, but I had to learn a lot, real fast about living at REAL elevation.

Had no TV, heated with wood for years. This was pre internet or cell phone so it was me and my dog. Did have a land line though.

Got rid of the car. Bought a used CJ7 Soft-top for transportation (kept truck). Chilly, but worked. Drag when you do a lot of hi-way miles though. My dog hated the Jeep.

Also bought a newer truck for plowing snow and a Kubota tractor that I use for lot’s of stuff. It’s a life saver.

I really thought I knew what I was getting into. I was young and strong. Had been on a mountain search and rescue team. I had skills. Tools and knowledge of the environment. But I was faced with challenges around every corner. Still am really.

Met my Wife up here (27 years now). Wonderful job, make plenty of money and have a great life. But am always looking around that corner when you know that something is going to happen and help is not on the way.

I’m not trying to dissuade the OP. But remember this. When you don’t get what you want. You get experience. If you make the move. You may make the same mistake twice, but the third time… can be the last time.

19

Thank you all for your feedback and experiences! I’m taking it all in.

That’s actually a really good tip, thanks! All the funds and interest groups I’m aware of are inherently political (e.g. MST, the movement of landless agricultural workers), but (a) that’s not necessarily a problem and (b) there must be others that I’m just not aware of. The fiancee’s university will certainly have more (and more locally applicable) information.

Similarly, as thorny_locust suggested, we’ve confirmed that the university does help with internships. I can’t enroll in the uni (bureaucratic reasons), but there are other paid courses available I could enroll in if it’s a requirement for an internship. Some of those are very specific to the country and region, e.g. one just about planting sugar cane. I’m glad WWOOF is still around, will give them a look again.

And goodness, those cocoa husks sell for more per kg than the Colombian farm I visited sells cocoa beans (harvested, fermented, dried, roasted, and de-husked) for.

20

You’d probably need to do more searching than I did, for both beans and husks. A quick check showed beans as selling for more, but I didn’t look for wholesale. (Note that I’m looking for products being sold in the USA - so that includes transportation, tariffs, etc.)

That said, mulch is generally going to be bought by growers who are trying to be more eco-friendly, so they’re also more likely to try and buy a local product. The market for mulch purchasers who missed that bit advise or who don’t care is probably fairly small and most will go for wood chips or hay, here.

The best use might be to farm with it yourself, rather than trying to sell it. But, certainly, it might just be a matter of getting a wholesaler lined up in the US so that it can be sold at a more reasonable price. I don’t know.