Where do we start?

3 posts
Sat, 09/29/2012 - 22:16 #1

Member for

11 years 6 months
Darryl
Last seen: 03/08/2018 - 21:05
Joined: 09/29/2012 - 21:39

Where do we start?

Hi all.

My wife and I are 31 and 33 respectively.  We are both working full time. We have recently purchased our second house after renovating our first one over a period of 3 years and making a profit of 45k.  Our new house is near new and we are doing a lot of work on the landscaping.  We are both from New Zealand and enjoy animals and gardening and a very keen on sustainable living.  

We are planning on moving again in approx 2-3 years time (depending on my work). We want to move onto a farm or acerage. We are currently living in NSW Southern Tablelands but may end up in Victoria just north of Tullamarine area.

We are looking at having large veggie gardens, numerous fruit trees, chickens (we already have 7) and possibly alpacas.

What we don't eat ourselves we will share with family and friends or sell at the local farmers market.  We would like to eventually breed the chickens and alpacas. We may even look at other stock, beehives and gardens of lavender or canola or something similar.

If we have enough land we may choose to use a few acres for fun (dirt track for bikes, go-carts etc). That may or may not be used as a commercial venture.  If there is bush we will try to keep as much of it as possible and work with it.

Everything will be done at a gradual rate, adding as money allows - with the aim that by the time we hit retirement, there will be enough of an income to supplement our lifestyle.

What we would like to know, is what do we need to do now to be prepared to do this in 2-3 years.  

Is there any reading material that anyone can recommend?

What sort of qualities/requirements do we need to be looking for with the land?

What size land should we be looking for - we are thinking 50 - 150 acres.

Will our idea even work? 

Does anyone have any other suggestions or recommendations of any kind that they would like to share?

We look forward to your replies.

Cheers

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Wed, 10/03/2012 - 11:10 #2
rogermartyn
Last seen: 03/08/2018 - 21:05
Joined: 10/20/2011 - 16:16

Hi Kiwi

Welcome to the forums. It's great to see such enthusiasm and vision!

Answering your question is a bit like telling someone who they should marry. I always was a bit of a meddler so here's some thoughts for you.

With you having spent time landscaping and gardening, you will have at least some idea of the time and effort, and no doubt money involved when it comes to working with the land. Any thoughts of making money out of veges and fruit tree production requires some thinking outside the square. You will never economically compete with the commercial farms using their production and farm product distribution and selling systems, the margins for you will be too small. You will need to look at ways of differentiating what you produce so that you can ask for and get a higher prices and perhaps look ways of cutting out the 'middle man' by selling more directly to end users. I would for example be attending farmer markets and looking for ideas and talking to those selling there. Depending on your interests, exploring niche market opportunities such as buy/sell local, low carbon miles, sustainable/ethical producted food, nutrient dense food, organically produced food etc are all possibilities. One of the important things to realise, is that you will do better if you can work with others. Setting up of grower co-operatives, marketing co-operatives, farmer markets, working with local restaurants and resellers, organising coperative delivery to customers and so on are all measures to consider. You can quickly see much of this will be about establishing good relationships with people. If this is not your cup of tea, at least find someone who can act as 'an agent' who can do this sort of thing. For the present, getting out and talking to people who are attempting these sorts of things would be on my 'to do' list.

Later next year, Farmstyle will be holding a small farms conference in the Hawkesbury region, where speakers will address many of just these issues, if only to give inspiration to others that it can be done. Watch the Farmstyle website and newsletters in the next month or so for more information on this upcoming event.

Have a look through the Farmstyle 'books for sale' section - there are several 'how to ' texts across many of the farming disciplines to be found. Also have a look through the many articles on the Farmstyle website. There is alot of good information there, and all has been well researched by people who know what they're doing.

Regarding what to look for in a farm, this will very much depend on your anticipated activities. For example, your potential commercial dirt track venture will have locality and local by-law considerations. For other ventures, topography, availability of water, proneness to flooding are obvious considerations. Proximity to where you intend to sell might be another consideration.

One of the very basic and very important considerations though is the soil type, but this is often an overlooked one as so very few people even know what to look for. At the very least, take a spade with you and try digging a hole or three. Common sense observations will give you a lot of correct answers. If you want to get more specific, I can highly recommend a book for you, "Visual Soil Assessment (VSA) – A quick, simple and effective method to assess soil quality and plant performance" by a fellow Kiwi, Graham Shepherd, who is a highly qualified soil scientist but who is also an extremely practical one with real world hands-on farm experience.

This book can be used by ANYONE;  it is highly visual and straight forward to follow and can give a decisive indication as to the health and suitability of a soil for whatever venture and it has been proven for Australia conditions and elsewhere internationally. Farmstyle hasn't a copy yet but if you're interested, simply email Farmstyle and we'll look at getting one in for you. Costs around $60 from memory.

Regarding working with the bush, you couldn't do better than to work with a local landcare group in the area of where you are now. The principals you'll learn will transfer readily and there is a bit to learn when it comes to bush care.

In summary, I think you will need narrow down what you want to become mainly involved in fairly soon. For example, livestock and horticulture aren't a very good mix! I wouldn't worry too much about your present state of practical knowledge on the crop or animal husbandry side of things at this stage, this can be learnt and learnt reasonably quickly with the right advice. More important is to identify where you want to focus and 'focus' from there. It is the market and income opportunities that are probably more important to figure out than the 'how to's". This I realise is very hard, but unfortunately, only you can make this decision. Good luck and keep us updated. Hopefully others will add their 2 cents worth here as well.

Roger

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Tue, 10/09/2012 - 09:52 #3
Darryl
Last seen: 03/08/2018 - 21:05
Joined: 09/29/2012 - 21:39

Thanks for the great ideas Roger.

I should clarify what I meant by large veggie gardens was gardens that we can use to produce year round crops, that will provide more than we need so we are able to share with friends, families and either sell or donate what is left over.

The fruit trees will form a small orchard that will hopefully produce the same results as the gardens.

After doing some more research and a bit of thinking, what we would like to do is concentratre on alpacas, llamas, chickens and maybe the odd other animal as the opportunity comes up.

With the alpacas and llamas we will probably start small and breed them, selling some of the cira to cover part of the costs and keeping some to build up our herd over time.  Eventually we would like to offer agistment for other people so they can enjoy the experience as well.

With the chickens, we will use them for eggs and breeding, again sharing/selling/donating the eggs and selling the chickens.

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