So You Want to Be a Farmer...

We bought the beginnings of our dream farm in early September of last year.  We moved from a home on a single acre of land, to almost 13 acres, complete with a barn, a loafing shed and various other things to get us started with our own little hobby farm.  My husband and I both work 40 hours a week, and our kids are busy teenagers, so even though we've had grand visions of self-sufficiency, bumper crops and excellent show and breeding stock, we've reined ourselves in and avoided the temptation to try and do everything at once. 

As one of our friends said, there will always be plenty of projects on a farm.  Decide what your priorities are and do a little bit at a time.  If you try to do it all when you first get started, you'll never have the time or money, and you'll burn yourself out.  Great advice!  So, as a family, we discussed what kind of animals and crops we wanted our farm to have, and from there, we made a game plan of what we needed do.  Our kids are all animal lovers, so animals were at the top of the list.  My husband and I pointed out that we needed appropriate housing and fencing for the animals to be healthy and safe, so that became our first priority.

The fencing around our property was not sufficient to contain animals like cows or goats, and although we had a barn, it had no stalls.  Also, the entire north half of the barn had over a foot of packed horse manure and soiled hay on the dirt floor *yuck!*.  We might be greenhorns, but we were smart enough to know that we needed to clean things up for the health of any future animals (not to mention odor control).

We set to work clearing the manure.  Our first goal was to clear enough that we could properly close the north doors to the barn again.  I was afraid that getting the kids to help with this unpleasant task would be more of a chore than actually shoveling the manure myself, but they were all so excited about our plans, they dug in - literally - and in a short time, we accomplished our goal of being able to close the doors.  The mess was so packed down, however, rather than trying to clear out the rest of the area by hand, we enlisted the help of one of our friends, who brought over his tractor and used the front-end loader to scrape out the rest of the barn.  There was enough manure to create a large compost pile for us, as well as fill another friend's 18-foot trailer to overflowing.

I'm sure there are many of you readers who will shake your head and laugh at the fact we own a farm and not a tractor (at times I do that myself), but we don't want to accrue unnecessary debt, and so we are holding off purchasing any large farm equipment until we finish a few more projects.  In the meantime, paying someone to tractor mow our acreage and calling in the occasional favor is much cheaper than a monthly tractor payment.
 
Greenhorn Tips (i.e. things that should be obvious, but sometimes aren't):

• The right equipment makes a world of difference!  It will always save time and headaches, and it's usually safer than 'winging it.'  When I saw how the tractor scraped out the crude in the barn in minutes, compared to the small section the kids spent hours on, this really hit home for me.
• Have a variety of tools and equipment at your disposal.  As efficient as the tractor cleanup was, we still needed to use shovels, rakes, etc. in the corners where the scraper was too big too reach.