I Don't Want To Be a Hobby Farmer!

I want to be a farmer!  Not a hobby farmer.

What is the difference?  Well, one is real, and one is pretend.  As in, one actually makes money for their endeavors, and the other spends more money rather than makes it.

We bought the forty acres of this little place here so I could be the first, a farmer, someone who makes money from their land.

Unfortunately, I have been the second, the hobby farmer, one who has done more playing around than serious farming, and who has definitely spent way more money at it than the amount of money I've brought in.  Selling extra eggs and hay now and then is great.  But it doesn't pay the taxes, and doesn't get anywhere close to touching the difference between our mortgage for this little place here (40 acres) and our old home (not quite 2 acres).

Even more unfortunately, I have spent ten years piddling around with 'farming'.  Ten years and untold amounts of money.  It makes me ill when I think of the funds that have gone out without generating any sort of return.  It makes me ill when people say "oh, you have a hobby farm!"

They are not saying it in a mean or condescending way.  Having a hobby farm is cool right now.  Society is getting interested in real food, and it's not so crazy anymore to be a person who grows a garden or raises food animals.  People think I'm neat, because I grow food and have a 'farm'.  They wish they could have a hobby farm, or if they know they aren't cut out for it, at least they get enjoyment out of telling people they know a hobby farmer.

But it isn't my intention to be a hobby farmer.  I want to be a real farmer.  I want to stop playing and get serious.  I want this little place here to be more self-supporting.  To pay it's own way.  It has the potential, the potential just hasn't been unlocked.  The farmer has not appeared, just a hobby farmer.

I think it's time for the hobby farmer to stop piddling.  Its time for a transition to real farmer.  I have land, I have time.  I don't have to go out and work a full time job off farm to make ends meet, DH has been doing that all along.  What I have to do is stop being afraid that I won't do it good enough or do it right, and just take the plunge to do it.

Do It: Invest in some fencing and the materials to finish my barn, then take in boarders and students like was the plan when we bought the land in 2002, and built the barn in 2005.

Do It:  Stop renting my 'extra' 18 acres of field to the local farmer for a paltry yearly per acre dollar figure, and plant it: to hay, to pasture for meat, milk and fiber animals, maybe plant some of it to u-pick crops such as berries, corn and pumpkins.

Do It:  Stop talking about making a pastured pork area and do it.  Put up the fences. Plant the forage.  Build the shelter.  Buy and raise the piglets.  Sell the resulting pork.

Do It:  Stop wishing for a cow in order to have raw milk for my family, and get one.  Start that herd share with the people I know who want raw milk but aren't in a position to keep a cow.

There is so much potential at this little place here.  There is so much potential in me.  Time to get over the fear and go all in.  I don't want to be a hobby farmer.  I want to be a real farmer.  All I have to lose is time and some of DH's hard earned money.  But I've already lost ten years worth of both of those.  What I have to gain is my dream, and money to pay off the mortgage sooner--to get DH an earlier retirement.  So really, there is no fail in diving in and becoming that farmer I've always wanted to be.