Making money with land

[wrath]

Tree farm. Works for Arends. I've bought trees from them. I think I paid $90 for 8' trees and all they had to do was plant them and wait.

You could always start a "eco farm" like these people are trying to do on the 122 acres that are adjacent to me:
greenbright

 

[pslindow]

Try flowers. If you are young and can do the work, do cut flowers. If you want something with less stringent timelines, perennial flowers. If they don't sell this year, raise the price because they will be larger next year. We started off selling veggie plants, but soon found that veggie buyers would spend $10 and take up a lot of your lime. Flower buyers would spend over $100 in less time. Flower buyers come back later in the year.

 

[NHmitch]

We farm horses, and not as a hobby. We have selectively grown a small breeding program, and we do all of our reproductive work, artificial insemination, ultrsounding, and fowling, and it has made enough money to support us the last few years, however that was 14 years in the making, lots of trial and error, and schooling. It also involves haying, farrier and vet bills, weekly grain bills, deworming and vaccinating, registry fees, meeting USDA export requirements, and daily feeding, mucking, and turn out. They also usually foal in a blizzard in -10* weather. It also means no vacations, and no days off when you are sick, or the weather is bad. I deal with injuries from the military on top of it, and that equates to lots of painful evenings icing my leg and shoulders. It is a lot of work, and if you add our profit vs the money we have spent, we have lost lots of money. I guess having that said, and not trying to discourage you, start small, and plan to supplement your income, or hopefully break even the first few years, and them go from there with your farm model. There are some great ideas here, but there is also a lot to be said about feeding your own family from a wide variety of crops, and some livestock. you can also get a lot of satisfaction by having a road side farm stand, or going to the farmers market with what you produce. There are other small ways to save money like selectively cutting timber. Through a grant from the us forest service, my grandfather made about 10k a year in the woods of his farm here in southern New Hampshire. I hope that what ever you decide to do, you enjoy your land and family.

This is our farm:
Honeysuckle Rose North | Troy, NH 03465

 

[TomSeller]

?..... a guy who leases out the land for a cell tower and rakes in $2400 a month without even visiting the place. I'd love to do that but the guy across the road from me already did it, so ixnay on that idea.
.

I would not be so sure that there isn't a competing tower company that would be interested if you have the right elevation and location to your land. You are going to really feel like crud if that cell tower farmer grows a 2nd tower. I know they co-locate a lot, but I had reason to visit a tower on Friday that had a 3 co-lo on one tower and then Verizon had its own tower.

 

[Redbug]

Great thread.

The most profitable use I've heard of is a guy who leases out the land for a cell tower and rakes in $2400 a month without even visiting the place. I'd love to do that but the guy across the road from me already did it, so ixnay on that idea.

I guess he's a cell tower farmer...

I would wonder about the health consequences of these towers if you had one really close by. It may not be worth the money in the long run.

 

[motownbrowne]

I would wonder about the health consequences of these towers if you had one really close by. It may not be worth the money in the long run.

I'm with you. Wouldn't be worth it to me. No way.

 

[jives]

Jives,

I am both intrigued and surprised to hear you are experimenting with Osage Orange trees. I live in Northern Kentucky and these trees are prevalent. When I bought 7 acres adjoining my existing 5, all hillside facing west, the land hadn't been bush hogged for four years. There were over a hundred clusters of saplings of OO, called Hedge Apple trees around here. And these dang things have nasty thorns! I spend months walking down there and clipping them off as low as I could to the ground. Then I dragged 'em to a nice spot in my forested area and piled the branches up. I consider them my prime nuisance, but if they didn't have thorns then perhaps they could be grown and marketed.

Not to hijack the thread, but I read up on Osage Orange trees. They were a natural tree in America, but only grew in the Red River area where Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas come together. No farm animals will eat the fruit, and birds don't like it, although horses may taste them a bit after they fall to the ground according to my neighbor. Some scientists surmise that with the heavy fruit evolution would not have favored the tree unless something ate it and pooped the seeds out in different locations. Some think that might have been the giant ground sloth, which went extinct about 12,000 years ago. It was used as a hedge to contain livestock before barbed wire. During the depression the federal government created a dual purpose work program to plant the Osage Orange all over the midwest. Created jobs and the idea was to create wind barriers to cut down on soil loss during those dust bowl years.

Another name for the OO tree is "Ironwood Tree". Really hard wood - will dull chain saws fairly quickly. Native Americans used the wood to make bows - and early French settlers also used the wood for that purpose. It is a very pretty cream color with the bark stripped off, with a green/yellowish tinge, and the mature trees around my property don't seem to have quite the thorns the younger saplings display.

If you know more about marketing these, and about the thornless variety, please share. The dang things grow GREAT on my property!

If you search A LOT you can find folks who sell some thornless osage orange (yes, most folks just call it hedge), named OO Whiteshield, OO Park, and a couple of others. These were
"mutant" OO trees found without thorns and then propagated by cuttings. They are also male and thus don't have hedge balls, meaning they must be
propagated by cuttings. Check out Sunshine farms. We are in the northern range (Zone 5), but so far so good. I've got 50 of the regular, thorny kind
growing to check their growth rate. If these work they will make up the outer boarder of the tree farm to serve as a fence. I'm experimenting with
pruning to attempt to grow the tree straight and with little branching.

If this works, and I may not know until I'm ready to retire, then the tending of the trees may not take too much time, though harvesting the
trees may require some effort.

Jeff

 

[TomSeller]

I'm with you. Wouldn't be worth it to me. No way.

For $2400 a month and probably increasing over time, I would have to seriously look at it as long as I did not live under or close to it. We are bombarded by cell signals all day, every day anyway. Can't get away from them. Back when I carried a Nextel brick I developed an instant headache every time I turned on my phone. So what you are saying is a concern

 

[ROUNDBABY]

I AGREE FARMING ESPECIALLY ON THE SMALL SIDE YOU'LL BREAK EVEN ..I DO IT FOR A LIVING DURING THE SEASONAL GROWING SEASON AND YOU DO BREAK EVEN. I BELIEVE THAT THE ORGANIC FARMING IS THE NEW CITYFIED KIND OF FARMING THATS CAUSING MORE ECOLI OUTBREAKS THAN IT USE TO BE. IF YOU DON'T KILL THE BUGS AND DISEASES WITH COMMON SENSE MEASURES YOU'LL GO HUNGRY. JUST THE COST OF STARTING OFF IF THE LAST TIME YOU GOT ANY INCOME CAME FROM THE LAST FROST AND YOU DON'T HAVE A GREENHOUSE, STARTUP COSTS OF SEED AND FERTILIZER WILL BE TOUGH--BUT A COUNTRYBOY CAN SURVIVE.
THE MAIN THING IS ENJOY YOURSELF AND IT'S BOUNTY BECAUSE YOU HAVE GROWN IT YOURSELF AND IT TASTES SOO GOOD!

 

[OldMcDonald]

This guy is a sustainable farmer. He has 200 acres but his model is scalable. I believe this is the future of farming, not the factory farms that dominate now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIbXU5iR2P4

See the second paragraph of my post #46.