Im a farmer. I’m not a big timer, but enough to make a living. I gross about 200K in farm/year crop sales. I don’t have any more than I say, and don’t waste time posting pictures of millions of dollars of machinery I don’t own.
I’m a moderate size farmer, and I’m proud of my worn out machinery and the crop I make each year lol
I find more farmers go under because of poor business decisions on top of an already risky way of life to begin with.
Even with good decision making, you can still get whacked. I worry about it all the time. Keeps you awake and on your toes. Although I did fall asleep once while laying on the ground under a tractor fixing a sensor.
My secrets to staying in the game and also growing in size every year are the following:
1. Resist temptation to own too much new equipment & keep overhead low.
2. Off farm income to add stability.
3. Marry well.
4. Believe in The Lord
Some good stuff there, but looks to be upside down on the prioritization, compared to what has worked for my family. Our kids are the 8th generation, who have lived on our farm. It was first homesteaded by my great great great great grandfather.
He was born in Europe, in the year 1790, according to his headstone over at the local cemetery. That cemetery belongs to the church, down on the corner, and that is about a mile to our east.
That is the oldest legible date, on any of the headstones or monuments, at that cemetery. One of the largest monuments there is his grandson’s (also my great great grandfather). It has a big marble sphere on top of it. I still remember when local nitwits knocked that off back in the 1970’s. Grandpa and I drove our Allis Chalmers D-14 loader tractor over there and used it to lift that big marble sphere back up in place.
The Church there is a Christian Church and it has mostly been very strict in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Based on the dates visible in the cemetery, it’s a pretty safe assumption that my oldest known family member was one of the founding members. I am the current “chair elder” there.
It certainly appears that keeping our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in that top spot, has worked for many generations, as far as keeping the taxes paid on this farm and keeping it in the family.
There’s something to be said for marrying well. One of my old “long gone” farmer buddies, from over in the next town, always told me: “If I had it to do it over again, I’d have married a rich woman”. He also told me, back before I met my wife, to “check their teeth, and look out for student loans”.
“Off farm income” is also important and more so almost every year it seems. This here farm by itself likely only supported our family on this continent for the first generation or two. I know that my great grandfather took a factory job, as did the next three generations and myself.
“Resisting the temptation to own too much new equipment and keeping overhead low” also makes some sense. That said, I’m pretty thankful right now, that I followed the lead of my grandfather. When the added income of his factory job allowed him to save up enough money to replace his team of horses with a tractor, he bought a brand new 1950 John Deere model M.
That tractor is now parked in a barn on my parents farm, over in the next town. It hasn’t run in about 10 years (dad’s been long retired), but probably would fire right up if I put some gas and a 6 volt battery in it.
I got by a lot of years running various grey, red, blue, and orange tractors. I can’t say that any of those ever made me much money but all of them kept me busy with maintenance and repairs.
Only my green John Deere, that I saved up enough money to buy new back in 2005, is running right now. My old grey Ford and red Farmall are both broken down in the barn, waiting for me to have the free time to fix them.
