jimmyj,
We make a small living farming but it has taken us five years to get to the point where we do not depend on outside income. From my observations of other farmers I will say this. Most people want to jsut have the idylic life of farming and all that you imagine it to be. Most farmers do not want to sell, they don't like it. In fact my hsuband told me before we bought our farm that he did nto want to do any sales work and I agreed, so I do allt he sales work and he does the tractor work.
The key to being able to survive is not just in the farming but it is the sales and marketing. So I think you should ask yoruself would either you or your wife be satisfied with basically a "sales" job? Growing it to me is the easiest part, selling it and making money is the hard part. I am not one for the farmers market concept, it may suit other people but it does nto suite me. You gotta get up early in the morning (which I hate) load up the truck, load up your tables, get to the market early, set everything up, then if you don't sell everything you have got to re-pack it up and take it all home again. That loading and unloading and setting up and dismantleing is not my cup of tea. What you might do to get started is to buy directly from a local farmer some produce and try it out with a boughten crop and see how you like it. No investment on your part and you get to try it first. See if oyu like being int he ot sun or cold rain week-end after week-end and not being able to participate in family activities becasue you ahve to be at your fruit/produce stand. It's not that fun at all IMHO.
My husband and I had no experience with agriculture and never had thought of it as a career at all before we did it. He wanted to move back to his country (France) and we had to come up with something as we were in our early 50's and were to young to do nothing all day. We tried to figure out what we wanted to do and could never come up with anything because we could never overcome the negative points. Finally I came up with the idea of thinking of instead what we didnt' want, in IT we called this identifying the restaints. His restraints were only 2. He didn't want any employees and he did not want to have to deal with customers all the time (hence his no sales work requirement) . My 2 restaints were, I didn't want a boss and I didn't want to have any particular hours such as having to show up to work or be in a market or open a store at specific times. When I analyzed his 2 contraints and my 2 constraints I came up with no animal agriculture. Once we agreed it met our contraints then we selected the most expensive agriculture int he area we want to live in.
In summary i would advise that you really consider that one of you two will ahve to do sales work for yourselves at least half time, will you be good at sales work? Second if you do go for it then pick something that is the highest selling thing to grow. Third have a backup plan because it is really going to take like at least five years before you are making a go of it. We had financial problems and had to tap our backup plans but we got throught it. We also decided five years before we made the move what we were gooing to do and got our life and finances in order and launched our plan.
A five year plan for you might be to develope rental properties. Keep buying houses at low prices, move in, fix them up for tenants, and then buy another one and put a tenant in place int he last place. If you can get about 5 to 6 rental units going with cashflow then you will have a backup plan to start into agriculture. What we did is we made a five year plan, and we worked our plan and here we are. I don't think unless you inherit a lot of money that you can just go into farming and make a go of it. Plan to do it in five years and in those five years set yourself up for success. Keep your eye on your ultimate target and don't give up your dreams, but spend five years building up your back up plan for when you make the move. AND good luck to you, I hope you do it. My shuband and I are very happy on our farm, we are now looking at installing a mill for pressing olives. It is the next level fo the plan. We press our own to save the 10,000+ euro fee that we pay to other mill owners and we make money from pressing for others. It is a step by step to self sustaining in agriculture, but everythign ahs to start with preparing your backup plan. Even if you cna't go out and buy a farm today you can be busy working on your investments that will allow you to go into farming. Again GOOD LUCK! I say follow your dreams.
