So, I basically woke up one day and realized that I want to be a farmer. Some context: I’m leaving my crappy corporate job this week, and think it’s time to actually start looking for a career. I’ve done some light farm work before, but not in a long time. I’ve been known to wake up before with some pretty startling (to me) revelations, and I’ve always figured that’s how I’d know what I really wanted to do one day. I’ve never really had a whole hell of a lot of ambition before, but I’m feeling pretty enthusiastic about the farming bit. I’m 25, and it really is time for me to decide what I want to do. I guess what I’m really wondering is how realistic of a goal this is, and I’d love to get some advice from anyone with some knowledge in this area. I figure that since I live in Tennessee, surely it can’t be that difficult to get started.
Bufftabby - It’s a tough business to be a small farmer. You might want some agribusiness classes and see what you could do. Do you have an idea about what kind of farming you want to do?
You remember last year’s drought? My neighbor, who lives off his haying, didn’t put up a singe bale last year. He said it didn’t pay to get out the tractors. And that was before diesel hit $4.70/gal. People had to sell off their cattle because they couldn’t afford hay and couldn’t water them. And land in Rutherford County is very high. Of course, you don’t have to stay here. Of course, the corn looks good this year, barring any weather changes. I think you need to have a government okay for tobacco. I don’t think cotton did well last year, and it’s too early this year to know how it’ll do.
StG
IANAF, but I grew up living and working on one (albeit not for a living), and it’s damn hard work that never ends. You’ll have to get land, equipment, seed, fertilizer (or livestock, chicken houses, etc.), and unless you’re sitting on a few hundred thousand, you’ll have to take out massive loans. There’s no guarantee on your returns, but it is guaranteed you’ll have to make some hefty loan payments. You’ll have to compete with corporate and foreign farms, who have distinct advantages. Not only that, you’ll need to have a pretty big farm to make it work (see the massive loans part). It also depends on what you’re farming.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s difficult, for damn sure.
I’m most interested in organic farming, and I’ve contacted some local organic farms, looking to work for them first. I do plan to look into classes at MTSU, because I do realize that I can’t just decide one day to be a farmer, and open a farm the next day (as much as I might like to!) I’m not afraid of hard work, as long as it is toward a worthwhile goal. I’m not looking to be rich, just as self-sustaining as possible. I seriously could not be more excited about working my butt off all day, and being filthy and exhausted at the end, and having to turn around and do it all again the next day. 
Geesh, I haven’t even decided to grow up yet and I’m…well older than you.
Congrats though on finding something that really excites you, that seems to be a rather rare thing.
I know some folks who have done it on a small scale. They live on small acreages and raise cattle, pigs, and chickens. Some of them have huge gardens and sell the excess at a farmer’s market.
But they’ve all kept their regular jobs, because none of them make enough to keep up the payments on the land, machinery, livestock, fuel, etc.
I gather farming is a bit like owning an airline - it’s a great way to become a millionaire, if you start out as a billionaire. But good luck!
My in-laws have a 300 acre hobby farm in New Hampshire that they spend every weekend at. The place was obviously a money suckhole so my FIL got the bright idea to do organic cattle farming. He maintains a herd of 50 organic beef cows and I am certain they just accelerated the rate of money loss.
Your situation isn’t 100% hopeless. Some people eek out a living with specialized farming. There are certain things the giant farms aren’t very good at. Those are things that require lots of personal attention. Some herbs (or even herb :wink :wink) can be grown as niche crop. You may want to browse the archives of the Mother Earth News. It is very hippyish but you can get some good ideas on what will work if you read enough of the relevant articles.
I own the farmland adjacent to my house.
My smartest move is to rent out the cultivable fields to actual farmers, and let them pay me for their use of my land.
I generally get paid in strawberries, as the current renter also has a strawberry farm. He takes hay off of my property.
I also get to say things like “I’m out standing in my field”.
This sounds like a good approach. Talk to as many people in the business as you can, though I wouldn’t be surprised if many farmers will be reticent about admitting their difficulties or giving away the secrets of their success and setting up a competitor. But it is a tremendous gamble. Keep clear eyed about the realities of the business and the lifestyle and don’t let the romance of the idea blind you to the realities.
Just a philosophical side note: Be cognizant of your high probability of failure, but don’t let it stop you from trying. Anything you do these days that’s interesting or worthwhile is going to have a high probability of failure. If you truly want to avoid the possibility of failure, stay at your boring corporate job.
Good luck. 
how do you feel about baseball?
d&r
That’s the secret to successful farming. Find a niche. I’d do research locally and find out specifically what is in demand. The corporate farmers produce tons of low-medium quality product, and you’ll never survive competing with them. You have to have a better product, and a market for the product that is willing to pay for the quality. The first is easy, the second, not so much. I know a dairy farmer who could not compete anymore who switched to water buffalo, and loves it. I started raising hogs + chickens this year (as well as a large garden), but I’d never try to live off it.
As long as you are prepared for the long hours, back pain, callused hands, and relatively little pay, I wish you well in your endeavor. Outdoor jobs can be very fulfilling.
Yes, this. A lot of smaller operations in my area have gone this route. Organic vegetables, organic eggs, that sort of thing. Many of them work with the local grocery stores, go farmers’ markets, etc. to sell their products.
I’ve always thought it would be cool to have a pumpkin farm.
Here in the suburban Boston area, there are number of farms that sell to the general public directly and the way that they do it changes with the season. Many of them sell pick-your-own fruit like apples during the fall. Other fruit is sold as well and the total season lasts for a couple of months as they switch over to selling different fruits as they mature. These are very attractive farms that are meticulously maintained and some of them are at least many tens of and some are over 100 acres. People pay a hefty premium for the privilege of harvesting your fruit themselves. There are lots of different things you can sell that way including pumpkins. Combine that with other things spanning most of the year and you could do Ok. Farmers must make money selling that way because the farms that do it are very well maintained and most have been open for a very long time.
I’m sort of in the same boat as you, though maybe a few steps ahead on the trail. I quit my full-time job a year ago to bring my successful hobby business into the realm of full-time employment, and am working on using that as a launching pad into a small farming enterprise in a niche market.
It is hard as hell in a million ways you might not be able to imagine if you have no prior experience in the world of agriculture or agribusiness.
It may or may not be difficult to get started, depending on how much money you have at your disposal at this time. If you’re looking to get financed as a business, then you’ve got a world of things to do before you even decide what it is you want to farm.
Are you imagining yourself as a homesteader–you want to build a self-sustaining farm purely for supporting your family? Or are you actually looking to make a cash income from a business enterprise? You can feed a family of four on two acres or less, if it’s well-organized and managed, but if you’re looking to make a real cash income, you’ll need significantly more land and will be taking a significantly bigger risk.
As with any new business venture, I would encourage you to spend some time thinking about what you want to produce and how you’re going to make money doing it. Look at the available property in your area and the crops others are farming. Figure out what else you need to know–do you have any experience raising crops? Or handling livestock? Figure out what you don’t know, then seek out resources for knowledge. It helps to find a mentor farmer in your region. One good way to go about it is to find an older farmer who’s considering retiring in the next few years, and “apprentice” as a farmhand with him for a couple years as he teaches you how to manage the land and crops. At the end of the agreed time-frame, you buy out the farm and business from him and step into the role of owner.
One of the hardest things to appreciate about farming, is that you don’t just need to be an expert on bringing marketable things out of the land, but you need to be skilled in business management, human resources, accounting and finance, marketing and sales, and physical labor. You need to know how to build, fix, and repair things. If you’re going to keep animals you need to know how to safely handle livestock. You also need to learn to be a good steward of the earth so you don’t strip your land and leave it barren when you’re through.
Anyway, there’s a lot to think about in the pre-venture stage. I think a good place to start is to write a business plan. There’s also a ton of good information for young and beginning farmers at the Cornell Small Farms Program website.
Good luck!
Seconded. We know these people: Vermont Shepherd | Award-Winning Mountain Cheeses
They started out very simply, but really researched and got to know their stuff before they started (trips to Europe, internships in cheese cooperatives, etc.) and now they are very successful. They also work really, really, really hard. All the time.
Back when I worked with farmers on a daily basis, one of them told me something I’ve never fogotten.
“You make money one year. You lose money one year. Two years you break even. Everything depends on what happens that fifth year. And that depends on the weather.”
My advice, take business classes, a lot of them. You can work as hard as humanly possible, but unless you can estimate your expenses and revenues well, you’ll be bankrupt before you know it.
Start with your state Extension service. A lot of them have extensive economic studies that look at the types of crops grown in their states, production costs, marketing returns, differences between organic and conventional production and much more. All that stuff is free.
The other thing to remember is that farming is a very seasonal business. You get know money until the crop comes in, then you have to get it out of the field as fast as you can before it rots. Then you’ll be selling it at the exact moment all your competitors are selling their crops. Then you have to figure out how to manage the money you earned until the next crop comes in.
Bufftabby, yeah, it’s hard work, but look into it, work for a local farmer and get some connections with the local scene. Here’s a website by a good Ag friend here in NC; she’s one of the 1st Extension agents in the country hired by request of local farmers to have specific expertise with sustainable Ag. Lots of good links and education on that site.
The Piedmont area of NC is a hotbed of sustainable small farming, and, it’s working here. The local community college offers one of the few programs in Sustainable small farming in the US. If you are apt to move to attend it, it would be a good education.
I work in ornamental horticulture, and it is very hard physical work, requiring being outdoors in every permutation of weather. This is the main aspect that I see starry-eyed seasonal assistants melt away. Yep, when it’s raining, you still work; when it’s 100 degrees in July, you still work. Good people who sign up often wilt under those conditions. “I didn’t know it would be so Hot…” So, if ya can take that, out in the weather all the time, you can make a start at it.