After reading this post several weeks ago. it was my opinion that there was a lot of wishful thinking going on apart from the realities of the real world.
I grew up on a 320 acre farm, my folks raised seven kids. We never had any extra money, but we never went hungry and always had clean clothes. When my Mother passed away seven years ago, the seven of us ended up with the land and a house in town where my mother lived where she moved when she retired from farming after several years of running the farm after my Dad died.
My whole point of this is that I am agreeing with the others that there is no money in farming, when you are done you are lucky to have what my folks had and that does not take into account the need of good health insurance so you do not lose the farm, no pun intended. Not much has changed in farming, since the sixties, when my family farmed, other than the operating expenses and the ability to produce more from a given area of land. The prices of raised goods have not gone up that much, which a trip to the grocery store will prove, the portion given to the farmer is quite small and most of the meat is not raised the way it used to be, but in like factory type settings.
To answer the question of why do I farm. it is because I can afford to. My rental properties pay for our living expenses and my day trading pays for the farming. Someday when I truly retire, when the equipment and land are sold, there will be a profit on paper, but it will not take into account the countless hours of soil preparation, planting, weeding, picking and the seven days a week selling at the farmers market.
My wife and I have been on the cruises, taken the trips with the motorhome and the Harley, but there was always something missing. Even though it is only 46 acres of which 40 is garden, it is highly intensive farming, which takes us both back to our roots. It is truly a labor of love, to produce something that people need and not just want.
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