Farm Land

[Randy]

Hello Everyone!! Anybody got any money making idea's??? Here is what I am dealing with. They took the tobacco contracts away this past year so my farmer that was planting my fields is selling out. No one else wants the land for corn, soyabeans etc, because there is no tobacco poundage on it now, so I am setting here with 15 acres of good farm land with no idea what to do with it. I already have a Mobile home park, don't want that bigger, Thought about planting tree's, but I really would like to keep the fields clear, not let them grow up. I already got over 35 acres of tree's anyway. Don't want to sell any of it. Only got a small older tractor so planting it with something would mean I would have to buy a larger tractor. There is so many produce stands in my area any how. I got a portable saw mill, but I don't need all this space for a log deck. A hay field maybe? What can I do with it?? Any Good Idea's out there?? What would YOU do with 15 acres of farm land? Keep it legal!! Thanks Randy

[DanG]

Virtually endless possibilities. ;D    U-pick veggies, hay, cattle.  Most anything that grow's in your area can be done with a small tractor on 15 acres. You may need to buy implements to do some of them.  It mostly depend's on how much work you're willing to put in it. One of the more lucrative plans would be to plant it in good Bermuda hay. Take 3 cuttings and put it in the barn, and plant winter grazing. Buy cattle in the fall when the price goes down, feed/graze them through the winter and sell high in the spring.

If you don't want to work, plant perinneal peanuts for hay and let someone bale on shares.

[Tom]

Don't know what kinds of entertainment are on the property, pond, creek, etc.  But, you are already dealing with the public and apparently know how to do that.  One option may be cabins for Urban types to get away.  They coujld rent a cabin and have their own 1.5 acre garden.  That would bive them a hideaway to take their family and become farmers. if they wanted.   Something along the line of the Urban Gardening craze that comes and goes where neighborhoods get together and grow a garden on a vacant lot.  They wouldn't even really have to have a cabin.

How about raising special animals.  My grand dad bred registered Herefords and sold the calves.  He had a fair amount of property envolved but you wouldn't really need too much.  

How about raising Meat Goats.  Lots of the "new" citizens of this country are anxious to find goats for their ethnic meals.

There is also a need for firning ranges.  15 acres could make a good skeet range or sporting clays. An operation like that could support a "pro shop" selling clothes, ammo, guns, etc.  It could also support a resturaunt or outside dining facility/bar-b-cue.  Hmmmm goats might fit into that too. :D :D

Do you have a pond?  Catfish can be raised in small acreage ponds. Ken's Fish Farm in Georgia sells a system that allows the fish to be raised in baskets.

How about a storage facility.  Lots of city folks have boats, trucks, campers and all manner of stuff where they need some kind of storage, especially out of season.

How about a Camping facility.  It would require plumbing, roads, power and stuff like that, but lots of folks camp now and don't even care that there is entertainment.  They bring their own.  Lots of country music, blue grass types have get togethers on the weekends and look for camp grounds.

Truck farming is always an option too, just a lot of work.

[Randy]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Some Good Idea's!! Got anymore!!! Thanks Randy
PS I do have joining this land about 10 acres of swamp--beaver made--good duck hunting, if you bait them

[Brad_S.]

U-pick pumpkins or strawberries.

[Don_Papenburg]

Pasture for horses. People pay big for a place to keep there oatsmobile.  Sporting clays would be good  with the swamp and ducks . Do you have inciminating  pictures of  the game warden ? ;D

[ScottAR]

Hay works pretty well.  We've got about 20 acres in hay on some land.  A local farmer cuts and bales it on shares.  His share is all the hay and our share is smaller fuel costs by not having to mow it.  We are waiting for town to catch up for a development.

A mini storage complex would be pretty easy to keep up and would fit in the mobile home lot biz pretty well.  I'm half way looking around for some land to put a mini storage on myself.  

[Roxie]

This scares me, but I agree with DanG.  Cattle and hay.  If you don't want to buy any equipment or do the farming yourself, then contact some neighborhood farmers and let them know that you're looking to have the acreage available for lease or barter haywork.  

[Arthur]

We have a small Rare Breeds Farm half built using only 5 acres at the moment.  Eventually we will have 40 acres dedicated to the farm.

We have local schools and families visit.  No charge to get in but $1/bag for feed.

Plenty of small pens with a few large fields attached.

Currently we have friendly small meat goats, a variety of chickens (top prize winners), a few varieties of duck and Large Black Pigs.

The pigs are very docile, produce high quality of lean meet which we smoke and sell to the locals at good profit.  

The Large Black Pigs are endangered and are good grazers.

Another bird we have is Geese.  a Flock of 100 will keep a 10 acre field well cropped and should produce 6 to 10 young each year for your locals for Christmas.  Dont know aboout America but we get $50 per bird.  Not much work but you need very good dog/fox proof fencing, a good watering system and somewhere to house everything at night.

We lost half our gosling this year to eagles.  We also lost one piglet to the same eagle.

got lots of pics of the animals if you want

[Roxie]

I'd like to see the pic's!   8)

[Furby]

Me too!

[Norm]

Cattle on rotational grazing would work well if you don't mind working with beefers. The new thing around here is meat goats. They are not as hard to work with as cattle but you must have good fences to keep them in. We have a fairly large hispanic population and most of it is sold to them.

[Hokiemill]

If you go the pick-your-own route, I think it's best to focus on the total entertainment package to draw lots of people.  The pumpkin patches that do the best around here have large areas dedicated to letting the kids play.  Costs $1 per child to get in.  They have inflatable jumpy things, mazes made from huge plastic sewer piper buried in hay bales, etc.  One other thing that I've seen lots of is the corn maize craze.  You hire a company to come map out a picture on a field and it gets planted in  corn, then charge per person to enter the maze (or maize).  Check these guys out: http://www.cornfieldmaze.com/

One of my dad's best friends owns and runs a dairy farm.  Recently he's been making some good extra money by running a mud bog on his property on the weekends.  Basically he makes a huge mud hole and then charges guys with 4x4s to try to run through it.  He sells off the concession rights, but you could run the concessions if you choose.

[DanG]

I tend to be careful when putting money into enterprises that may not pay for themselves.  The mud bog idea could well make a bunch of money, but it also may get shut down before it even opens, making the entire investment a loss.  Two of them have opened, and been shut down by the County here, within the past year.  They were extremely noisy, tended to run all night long, and were a magnet for underage drinking and other unacceptable behavior.  If I were gonna do that, I'd place some strict rules on it. Like nothing runs if it has to be hauled in on a trailer. Street-legal noise levels.  Shut down at dark. No alcohol.  Sound like a formula for failure? Probably, but it's better than making an enemy of every neighbor within 5 miles.  Just my 2 cents worth.

[SwampDonkey]

Sounds like alot of good ideas. I wish you luck in whatever path you choose for your 15 acres. My area is not a high population and mainly large farms and woodlots and its almost impossible to make a living or a profit on 15 acres. Can barely do it with 400 acres. As far as running mud derbies, we have enough folks that do that on their own in the spring time without permission and no fees, just their own personal expenses. Raising animals is risky too, it's gotten too high here for most hobby farmers to afford enough feed for farm raised turkeys. My uncle and others have tried that and they gobbled up the profit. :D

[MULE_MAN]

SwampDonkey


  Turkeys gobbled up the profit !!!  Now that's a good one  :D  :D  :D

[rebocardo]

Seed it with wild flowers or clovers and start a bee farm  ;)

I think the pick your own fruit and stuff is the way to go. I know I take my four kids picking for pumpkins and apples and it certainly would be cheaper many times just to buy the stuff at a supermarket. I don't think you could do watermelons without a lot of attention to the field.

[Larry]

Depending on the rental rate and if they open another sign up CRP is an option.  Might be worth a call to FSA to see if they have any advice.

I also have a base...haven't seen a thing in writing yet as to the details other than the tobacco companies trying to welch on this years payment.  Suppose they will let us know sooner or later.  Somebody is still going to grow tobacco.

[Randy]

Sure there is going to be tobacco growers, but the poundage allotment was taken away that was on my farm, so that means I have no poundage to rent, therefore the farmers can grow All they want to grow now on their land, but unless they have a contract with the tobacco companies---they have no guarantee that they can sell 1lb. So I am not going to grow any myself and you can't make any money with a one row tractor planting corn or soyabeans, so back to the main question---What am I going to do with the land------Got a few Ideas, but haven't decided yet. Thanks Randy

[Knot_Dunn]

How about a 3-D archery range. Definately have to look at insurance issues. The swamp could be incorporated into it.

[DanG]

Randy, success in farming, these days, takes a certain amount of creativity.  Take, for instance, the guy up the road that grows thousands of tons of tomatoes, twice a year. He doesn't grow the two crops on the same fields. Most folks just let all that plastic and irrigation tape go after the crop, but not ol' Kent. He plant's watermelons after his spring crop is done, and harvest's them in October. Last count, he was making 11,000 lbs per acre!  He doesn't even have to fertilize them, since there is plenty of zip left in the soil after the tomatoes are gone. You can just imagine what US grown melons must be bringing in Oct, eh?

Just keep your mind open to new ideas, and you'll come up with a winner. ;D

[Don_Papenburg]

How about renting it to the local FFA chapter?  One of the implement dealers has 80 acres that he rents to the FFA chapter here .  He felt that it would be more fair than to rent to one of the local farmers and then p.o .the rest of them.

[1953greg]

usda nrcs crp (conservation reserve program) wil b your simplest bet.  rental rates are from bout $50-150/acre depending on soil type. its a 10 year deal and if there are waterways its more for that area.   if you can get $100+ then that will b your best deal w/o additional investment.  there is also a wildlife habitat program maybe others.  because you r n the immediate area of a wetland thats really a plus.  since you had tobacco quota you know where the fsa office is.  monday the 31st is a deadline for some programs.   keep us posted of the outcome.
 sincerely  nrcs employee  1953greg

[sawguy21]

Liability insurance might be prohibitive for mud bogging, private firing ranges etc. Seems to be a major stumbling block here.

[Tobacco Plug]

The CRP would seem to be a good option.  Around here, some people are planting fescue grass and then selling the hay off it, in addition to getting the government payment.  However, I don't think that fescue is a good choice for your area.  Check with your extenstion people and they can tell you what you can plant.  You might otherwise consider planting longleaf pine and expect to begin raking pine straw a few years after you stop getting payments.

[Corley5]

Of our two hundred acres half is arable and the other half is northern hardwoods.  The hundred acres of open ground is all in hay that is baled in small squares for sales to horse people.  It pays pretty good but the cost of fuel and labor hurts.  My best crop is pumpkins.  Last spring I decided that my then 2 year son Zach needed a big punkin patch so I RoundUpped a bit less than an acre of the barnyard, worked it up, put on 300lbs of 19-19-19 and planted a 1/2lb of Connecticut Field Pumpkins and a half pound of Big Max Pumpkins and stepped back.  They're pretty maintenance free but this year I'll need to spray for powdery mildew and will rotate them to a different spot next year.  My expenses amounted to $250.00 with half of that being for electric fence supplies to keep the deer at bay so that's something that will be used over and over.  My gross sales of pumpkins from this patch were just short of a $1,000.00 for a net of almost $750.00.  That's a pretty good return on an investment.  I learned a few things and have researched a few more to make it even better this year.  I won't bother with the Big Max variety again.  They don't have a uniform shape, the stems aren't real good and people want the traditional Jack-O-Lantern style.  The Connecticut field is of this type but now I know that there are several varieties of this pumpkin.  I just jumped into this without much planning :.  I'm thinking that I'm going to plant Howden Biggies this year that are supposed yield 30lb fruit with some going over 40lbs.  There are also some good hybrids of field pumpkins that available too. https://www.johnnyseeds.com/  is a good site with a good selection of all kinds of stuff 8) 8).  I sold everything on the honor system.  I bolted an old toolbox with a hasp and padlock on to a wagon rack for a cash box and for the most part people are honest.  I know for sure of one instance of someone not paying.  I was coming home from work and there was a women loading at least three pumpkins into an old white Ford Aerostar mini van.  I'd recognize it if I saw it again.  When I went over before dark to collect the money there wasn't any ;).  This year I'm going to allow some U-pick too.  We picked them on to wagons this year.  We had people stop and take pics of their kids with all the pumpkins.  One guy even stopped and painted of picture of the wagon loads of pumpkins with the barn in the background 8)  It also created competition.  The local store had to drop their prices and a big farm market over towards Petoskey lost some sales ;D ;D  This all started because Zach needed a pumpkin patch. : ;D ;)

[Mongo]

Since you refer to it as farm land, do you prefer to keep producing something on it, or are you open to other ideas like recreation?

How about a paintball field? You could use old/salavaged lumber, hay bales, etc to set up bunkers etc for people to hide behind, and then incorporate the swamp into as either an extension of the field, or a seperate field so that there would be 2 games going at any particular time.

I imagine liability insurance might be pretty high, but the fields usually have a pretty large admission fee.  Set up a concession/supply store selling ammo, CO2 tanks/refills, etc.

I know of many fields that are open only on weekends. Also since the guns use CO2, and it's pretty tough to play after dark, shouldn't bother the neighbors too much.

I'm not a lawyer, everything from here on is pure speculation... if I were going to do this, I'd set the business up as an S-type corporation. That would allow you claim the business income etc on your personal taxes. I think you can get the paperwork pushed through for an S-type corp. pretty cheap, and that would give you at least some protection from liability suits etc if someone were to get hurt.   But then again, most I've been to make you sign a release that ranks up there with the ones on the back of ski tickets, so you should be in the clear on that anyway.

[Andy Mack]

Great ideas guys

Look forward to seeing your property Arthur. 

[asy]

Yeah, Arthur, didn't you say something about photos?

Where are they? or do I have to come take some myself ???   :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D

Oh, and Randy, what DID you decide to do???

asy :D

[Daren]

What about a 9-hole golf course? Depending on the lay of the land, just push out a couple water holes and a sand trap or 2. There is the mowing part >:(. I don't golf, but there is a nine holer on the way to one of my fishing spots and it is full every time I drive by, and it is in the middle of nowhere. Get a couple min. wage employees to mow and sell golf balls (I think the one I am talking about has a liquor license, but I bet the insurance eats up that profit) It is about 15 acres I think, he just has a couple porta-pots and a place to pay.

[OLD_ JD]

PS I do have joining this land about 10 acres of swamp--beaver made--good duck hunting, if you bait them

have u think about buckweet,good duck (and deer) food,u won't have to bait them ;)

[UNCLEBUCK]

 A golf driving range is simple to do and alot of interest. Hey Corley tell a bit more how you planted your pumpkins in the ground ok, I am tired of hilling and was thinking of broadcast spreading the squash and pumpkin seed this year and then lightly discing the seed in.  :P

[maple flats]

If you don't come up with a better answer buckwheet is an excellent option for this year until you decide on something more profitable. You only need a broadcast spreader after tilling or at least disking. A local farmer might till and plant for you for the straw. Buckwheet also builds nitrogen in the soil and needs no fertilizer nor weed control. Another option with it is till it back in as a green manure crop to build the soil but do this before the seeds mature if you go that route.

[Corley5]

Last year we marked out the rows and used a 4' stick as a spacer for between the plants.  We didn't hill them
just dug a shallow depression with a hoe and dropped 3 or four seeds, covered em up, and lightly stepped on them.  This year I've ordered a Seed Stick Planter from www.johnnyseeds.com to simplify the process.  If I plant a larger patch in the future I'll get some plates for my Ford 309 planter ;).  I planted mine in rows last year with the intention of cultivating them.  One evening we got the AC G out and put the cultivators on it but by the next evening when I went to do the job the plants were too big   Pumpkins grow fast ;D ;D.  As long as you don't want to cultivate them broadcasting and light disking should work fine 

[UNCLEBUCK]

Thanks for the info Corley . I like your new tool ! Good luck with pumpkin patch this year .

[redpowerd]

how did this thread get to be so wide and impossible to read?

[tnlogger]

lol i would say some one put a very long link in it

[Corley5]

OK I fixed it ;) ;D   If you want to see what a seed stick looks like go to johnnyseeds.com and run a search for it :D :D

[redpowerd]

:D i didnt want to point any fingers! :D

[Quartlow]

Not to be morbid but I though up the perfect answer today

Cemetery plots

Hey it was just an idea