# Growing Your Farming.



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

10 questions to ponder.

Regards, Mike

http://www.agweb.com/article/10-questions-to-ask-before-growing-your-farm-naa-sara-schafer/


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I think it is a very good set of questions to ask.

Myself I intend to grow our farm quite a bit in the ensuing years. Part of the reason is this Maine, the most forested state in the nation is losing our forest products industry. This should come as no surprise, but it sure did. Our industry was so HUGE...it is our biggest export. That being said, I watched our chicken industry plummet, our shoe industry die, and so why wouldn't our forest industry go next?

So while I have a few paper mill and sawmills to send wood too and get money, I am cutting wood. I cannot honestly cut it fast enough. This week two of the 6 mills left in the state stopped taking wood if that gives you an idea what I am up against. I am doing so by my own hands because if a hired logger comes in, I lose 2/3 of the money gleaned from logging...that is no good. Still by clearing my land of woods and putting it back into fields, I will position myself well to raise more sheep without having to buy/rent/lease additional land. With fields nearby I save on transportation costs, have better control of my fields, and have good soil in which to grow crops.

Growth is fine as long as it is kept in check with growth expenses. There is a very fine line between borrowing too much, and borrowing too little. In my life I have done both so I know both situations well. The trick is in record keeping because only YOU know what you need to get the return you are after. The Maine Sheep Breeder's Association for instance claims a family needs 100 sheep to be full-time into farming, where as the Cooperative Extension of Ohio claims it is 1100 sheep. Because I have kept detailed records of every penny we have spent over the years...everything from a pair of shoelaces to the $640 we spent along at McDonald's last year...I calculated it to be 300 sheep.

My only other piece of advice is to be wary of naysayers. My worst critic is my own father. I love him like a best friend, however he feels we should "save our forest", unfortunately despite seeing so many industries in Maine die, he somehow feels the forest products industry is going to be vibrant again. He is dead wrong and I know it. In part because we do not eat trees and the bible says...Jesus himself said..."a loaf of bread will be worth a days wages" In other words, famine in the land for sure. And because of the insane environmental laws now, no major corporation is going to build a new paper mill in Maine!

Crunch the numbers and go for it. We all need to eat.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

One thing I've learned is, "always have a 'Plan B'... You just never know what damn fool thing is coming next..."

We quit row cropping cotton and sorghum about 12 years or so ago because of the price of inputs went just stupid high, while prices are stuck with what we got in the 70's when I was a kid. We were making as much if not more off the cow/calf business with about 1/10th the input costs. No brainer.

Course, the cattle business comes and goes, like everything else. Then you got these moron tree huggers and the completely asinine ideas they come up with, like taxing "cow farts" and stupid crap like that. Sure, it's a trial balloon now, just a nutty idea. But I've been around long enough to see a LOT of nutty ideas become LAW.

Always gotta have something else on the back burner as a fallback position, I guess.

Later! OL J R


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I was always told to have 3 things going in farming. Relying on a single entity is foolish, yet any more than three really stretches you thin. I KNOW this is true.

If you look at the hobby farmers and homesteaders, many burn out after just a few years because they got a dozen different types of livestock and they do not really learn the idiosyncrasies of any one, nor market any one of them well. The other reason is just pure time. You can feed say 300 sheep in only a few more minutes than 100 sheep because it is the same task. You are on the same tractor traveling back and forth to the same place. Its when you have to constantly shift gears and do 10 unlike tasks that it burns up a lot more of your time. It is called *Efficiency of Scale*.

Me, I have three income streams. Logging, Sheep and House Rentals. They claim 3 is the ideal number too because it is doubtful all three income streams will lose money at the same time. Right now logging is very poor, with low income and poor markets, but lamb prices and house rental prices are up. So I survive...

As a side note, I track all of these income streams carefully so that I can evaluate costs versus expenses, but that is typical business stuff.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

I have several sub-businesses rolled into one corporation umbrella.
Commercial hay farming
Large acreage mowing (bush hogging)
Snowplowing
Construction

One thing I don't like is every one of them is affected by weather.


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

I have four. Turkeys, row crops, hay/custom baling, and ag sales.


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