By Randall Upchurch of SonUp Realty

Today’s landscape of the “American Farmer” changed. We see large acreage owners that plant thousands of acres across America and large ranchers that operate large livestock operations, but we often forget the thousands of small hobby-size farmers and ranchers. This is a growing segment of land owners in many states.

As baby boomers are reaching retirement age, many of them are choosing to move back to the country, having left the farm for industrial and white collar jobs in urban areas. As retirement age approaches, they feel the need to return to their roots.

Young families are another growing community of land owners that recognizes the benefits of living in the country and owning a small farm. Most of today’s rural landowners are far from what our grandparents would have considered a “farmer”. Many just want to purchase some acreage and raise a few horses, goats, sheep, or start a small cattle operation.  This type of landowner is often referred to as a “hobby farmer”.

I grew up living on a beef cattle and poultry farm operation in East Alabama. My wife and I are raising our sons on a cattle operation and I would not have it any other way. Living on a farm instills some key qualities in you for a lifetime. I have been involved in livestock and agriculture my entire life. In a previous career, I covered 15 states for a livestock supplement company. In my 10 years of traveling the Eastern Seaboard and Southeastern States, I learned one thing- you can find all shapes and sizes of livestock farms and hobby farms.

It is during my travels that I met many interesting people with unique livestock operations. One fall day in the Piedmont area of North Carolina, I went to visit a very influential goat producer in that area. It is here where I had my first experience with Fainting Goats. Take it from me, you haven’t lived until you walk into a paddock with about 20 goats running around. I took a five gallon bucket and beat on it like a drum. In an instant, 20 or so goats fell to the ground like you had shot them all with one shot. The Fainting Goats laid there for about 5 minutes and finally jumped up like nothing every happened. This producer owned 24 acres and sold his fainting goats as a novelty, for $200 each. That goat producer was a unique individual with a unique livestock operation.

In the past 10 years, we’ve seen an increase in the number of meat goat, dairy goat, and sheep operations. Due to our ethnic diversity, there is an increasing demand for goat meat here in the US. Goat meat is the number one consumed meat in the world. Small hobby farms are the leading supplier for goats and sheep. A land owner with 10-15 acres of pastureland can operate a profitable goat and/or sheep farm in most areas of the United States. You don’t have to have 15,000 acres in Texas to operate a small ruminant farm. Often, I receive calls from buyers looking for a small acreage tract to start a hobby farm. Most are only looking for around 20 acres or less, which is just enough land in Central Alabama to begin a hobby farm with about 40 head of goats or sheep.

Another group that can survive on a small acreage is equine owners. Horses are a passion. If you don’t agree that they are a passion, just ask a horse owner. Horse owners make large investments in their livestock. Many times when someone with horses is looking for real estate, they prefer a small 5-20 acre piece of land with suitable pasture. Unlike production livestock owners, many equine owners have horses simply for pleasure or companionship. Of course, there are exceptions for trainers, breeders, and those who raise working horses, but the majority owns a horse simply for pleasure.

The last group would be the cattlemen. The people that say “Where’s the BEEF?”! Unlike goats and sheep, cows are large and take up more space and acreage. In my hometown, we can run one cow unit per acre comfortably. In Western Montana, you would need 100+ acres for that same cow, so farm or ranch sizes can vary for cattle producers and the area in which you are living. My market area consists of many small producers that own 40-50 acres and have 25-30 cows. Across the Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest there are thousands of these producers. These landowners work off of the farm and have a few cows to utilize the land they possess. Much of this land is often inherited from previous generations, but the current owners have a pride in their operations and its heritage.

We are experiencing an increase in first generation cattle producers. These are people that feel the pride in land ownership and stewardship. The Cattle Industry in the USA is experiencing a generation flip at this time. Many of our older generation producers are passing the operation to the next generation or when the next generation has no interest, they simply sell the property. What happens to some of these farms is somewhat unknown, but much of the land that these cattle producers have been utilizing has a highest and best use in forage production. So the cattle industry is a little different than the goat industry. Many of the goat producers are first generation, having started their farms in the last 20 years.

Many people have discovered the tax benefits to owning a farm.  It is this fact that has driven some to purchase a few acres. Others simply want their children to experience what they remember on their grandparents’ farm. 4H and FFA clubs across the country are seeing record numbers of children with livestock projects. Most of these children live on small family farms that do not derive their sole income from the farm. Like most businesses today, small family livestock operations will not make millions. It’s a slow process that is typically cash poor and land/asset rich. It will take most operations several years to realize a true profit. In a positive light, if someone wants to purchase a small farm, livestock production can help pay for the land. Many of the acres that are in livestock production are not fit for tillable ground or residential land and grazing this land is its “highest and best use”. Sure , you could plant some of it in trees for a future timber harvest, but trees are kind of boring to some land owners.

Here are a few tips for anyone looking to purchase a hobby or small farm:

1. What are your goals for your property? Always know what you want to do with the land prior to purchasing. Make some visits with other area producers and do your research. If done properly, it will pay off.
2. Fit the type of operation to the type and size of the property. If you have 10 acres in Central Alabama, you can probably comfortably run 5-6 cows and maybe 25 nannies or ewes. In West Texas or Oklahoma, 10 acres would be a good start for a cattle operation with one cow. Make sure you research your particular market area for forage types and number of head per acre for each type of livestock.
3. How much capital will I need to invest after I purchase my land? Purchasing the land is just the first step. Subsequently, you will need to factor in the cost of the livestock, fences, water, barns or shelters, working pens, shade, and basic equipment.
4. Analyze the size and goals of your operation. Many producers may see an economic benefit from hiring out some of the work on the farm, like spraying pastures, clipping pastures, hay harvesting, and livestock hauling. Equipment costs are high today. Many times you can hire a neighbor to do that work for a fraction of the cost.
5. Livestock are very time consuming. If you cannot be there or have someone to check on your livestock, you probably don’t need livestock. It will be when you are not around the cows are out, the goats are in the neighbor’s garden, and the bull is standing in your neighbor’s heifer pasture having a good time. Owning livestock is time consuming but very rewarding to those who are capable.
6. I cannot stress this enough, do some research before you purchase a farm or pursue a livestock operation. Go talk to the old timers that hang out at the local feed store. Also, talk to the younger producers. Get out and go to some livestock sales and shows, as these are great places to meet producers. Take a little bit from what each producer tells you and form your own opinion on the direction you should take.

Owning a hobby farm, mini farm, “farmette”, or whatever term you would like to use, can be very rewarding. There will always be a need for livestock and the majority of livestock production in the US comes from small family farms. Being a land owner of any type of land has responsibility. You can control your destiny. Land is a solid investment that you can walk on and see every day. Unlike the stock market and other Wall Street investments, put your money into something that you can enjoy- land!

We’ve been in the time of hay for more than a month. This is the hot center cut of summer, that slab of days when each breath breaks a sweat.

Farmers are making hay while the sun roasts. Heat makes misery in this work. The only worse misery is too much rain, which keeps farmers from making hay when it should be made or spoils cut hay before it can be baled.

In my part of Virginia’s mountains, our hay is typically a mix of cool-season perennials like orchardgrass, bluegrass and tall fescue; native warm-season grasses; and legumes (which fix nitrogen in the soil), such as clover. Thistles and burdock turn up at this prom like obnoxious thugs from a rival high school. Alfalfa, a planted legume, is rarely grown here, since it’s a five-star meal for three-star cattle.

While our hay is made over several months, the best is put up during a two-or-three-week sweet spot when the seeds are not quite mature but the leaves of grass are fully developed.

Cut too soon, and the hay’s moisture content will be too high. This impedes curing and causes other problems. Cut too late, and it’s less palatable and nutritious.

I’ve helped a neighbor make cattle hay as late as November, which we both knew would amount to nothing more than nutritiously empty belly filler. We made it…because it would not have felt quite right to leave it unmade.

Farmers make hay as soon as the window opens and go until they’ve put up the last bale, long after the window has closed and the shades have been drawn. Stockpiles are usually a mix of different hay quality—excellent, good, fair and poor.

Hay is stored solar energy. It feeds livestock during the months when pasture plants — even weeds — are dormant. Cattle and other ruminants with their four-chamber stomachs get the lower quality stuff. Horses need better chow because they have only one stomach. Behind their backs, horses are called, “hindgut fermenters,” as are elephants, pigs and wombats.

On short-summer mountain land like ours, one cut of hay is the norm. Farmers in wetter and warmer places can cut the same hayfield two to four times each season. A first cutting produces more bales per acre than successors, but the quality tends to be lower.

In a one-cutting place like Blue Grass, it makes little financial sense for a person who only needs a couple of hundred bales to devote the land and acquire the machinery to make it himself. It makes more sense to pony up the $3 or more per square bale for the quality that’s needed and have it delivered and stacked where it’s supposed to be.

But I know farmers with small hay needs who insist on making their own. They’re particular, and they want their hay just so.

Made-hay is taken as an expression of the maker’s character. Is it weedy? Was it put up damp? Is it tightly bound? Is it a good size?  It takes skill and integrity to make good hay down to the last flake.

I’ve found that most farm jobs share two characteristics: First, they’re not much fun; and second, each one is finite. Every field contains only so many bales of hay; each fence line requires driving no more than a certain number of stakes. I find semi-self-delusional reasoning ever more useful as I get older.

Most farmers now make round bales, which are really chunky cylinders. They weigh from about 800 pounds to more than 2,000 depending on the equipment. When they’re wrapped in plastic, they remind me of giant, chopped-up Tootsie Rolls. One person properly equipped can cut, fluff, rake, bale and stack round bales from a tractor seat.

The older method made square bales, which are really rectangular prisms or rectangular parallelepipeds. Novice hay buyers should stick to haggling over the price of square bales and not insist on geometric correctness.

Once the grass is cut, fluffed up to dry with a tedder and raked into windrows, a tractor pulls a baling machine that spits out twine-wrapped square bales. Each weighs 50 to 100 pounds in the field. As they dry in the barn, they lose water weight.

Two or three people “make square bales”—one on the tractor, one or two on the wagon hitched to the baler. The job ends with stacking the bales in the barn. Square bales involve more sweat, more risk, more pain and more time; round bales involve more invested capital.

In light of the years I spent in undergraduate liberal arts and graduate school, I am always assigned to “work the wagon.” As each bale is pushed out of the baler and up its tail-like metal chute, I’m supposed to grab it with a metal hook, carry it to the back of the wagon and “build a load” of 100 to 120 bales from back to front. All of this hooking, carrying and building has to be done before the baler spits out the next parallelepiped. If I’m a slug and don’t get there in time, the rogue bale rolls off the wagon and down the sloped field like a convict running for freedom. Those with a chip on their shoulders come apart as they tumble.

While working the wagon is generally considered something that any 14-year-old farm kid knows how to do, it’s trickier than it appears. All the hooking, carrying and stack-building takes place on a rolling, pitching, lurching platform that is slicker than a peeled peach.

The bales have to be stacked tightly and interlocked or they will fall off the wagon. “Loose load” is not something that you want to find in your obituary. A tight load resists the wagon’s inevitable jostling that jiggles your stack into a mountain of Jell-O. It takes spatial sense and experience to build a load six or even seven courses high that survives turn after turn on a 30-degree slope.

If “your” load falls off, the tractor bunny takes a break, gets a drink of water, stretches and may compose a pertinent haiku to pass the time. When your load is on the ground, it’s your job to put it back on. Do this three or four times, and you will either learn how to build a load or figure a way to switch places with the tractor bunny.

At its best, working a wagon is hot, dusty, dangerous work. But it gets worse.

Once you’ve hauled the wagon to the barn, the hay has to be unloaded and restacked, which is hotter, dustier and just as dangerous.

In recognition of my extensive CEO experience and talent for telling underlings what to do, I was started right at the top of this organization—30 feet up in the hayloft, just under the metal roof. Outside, in the shade, it was 95 degrees.

To get bales to the top of the loft, they might have to be thrown upward, bale by blessed bale, in three or four lifts. A mechanical hay loader spares you only the first lift or two. Sooner or later, each square bale has to be barn-stacked individually by hand.

Making millions of square bales each summer left rural America with ruined backs and hostile teenagers. Round bales are better for big farms, but square bales will always be needed on places with just a few four-leggers.

Putting up hay is a farmer’s save-and-spend strategy. You save in the summer what you need to spend in the winter. And it’s always better to have a little left over than to run short.

This summer’s hay will be found in every drib of milk and cheese and every drab of beef and lamb that we eat in 2011. Like a few other things, it’s better that you don’t find any.

No more.

While nobody in my county of 2,500 has a Bloomberg terminal, each of us now understands that the number of dollars we have in our wallets depends on who’s doing what around the world and for how much. National and global forces determine the price of our cattle, poultry and timber; whether tourists visit; and how much money state government gives us for education, roads and law enforcement.

Some of us support an economic stimulus package, and some don’t. But most might agree on a few ideas that would help get things moving out here almost immediately and do some public good to boot.

Fence livestock out of moving water. Livestock define bathrooms differently than most people. For this reason, they pollute rivers and streams differently than we do.

Both pasture run-off and direct deposits add nutrients that cause problems from the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. Farm pollution of this type is not regulated.

The way to address this problem is to fence livestock out of running water.

This is a monumentally unpopular idea with livestock farmers, including me. “Making fence” is hard, miserable, back-spraining, expensive work. The old fence has to be dismantled and carted off. Then new posts — wood or steel — have to be driven into the ground and wire fastened from one to the next along the entire line. Tons of material have to be moved around. My rule of thumb – or what’s left of it after old barbed wire has ripped it apart — is each day of fence work is to be followed by two days of aspirin and motionless potato couching.

Since the Nation would benefit from protective fencing built to federal standards by local builders, its cost could be part of the stimulus package.

To the extent that we improve the quality of our rivers and coasts with “clean-water fencing,” we have upgraded our farm infrastructure as well as our green infrastructure.

Fence-building is done in the spring, that is, two months from now.

Plant trees. Trees control erosion and pollution, store carbon, make oxygen, provide sustainable building materials and paper products, help wildlife and are emerging as a feedstock for “treethanol,” a substitute for gasoline. Trees push money through rural economies.

Trees can be planted one by one in existing woodlands or in dedicated plantations for wood products or energy.

Technologies for converting wood into ethanol on a commercial scale are five to ten years off. Fast-growing species — like the hybrid poplar developed at the Oak Ridge National Lab — can be planted now and be ready then. The worst outcome of planting trees is good–additional forest cover, more carbon capture, more sustainable products, more money in the countryside.

Wood-based ethanol reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 percent or more compared with gasoline while corn-based ethanol reduces them by only 10 to 20 percent. Further, the energy balance (energy produced in terms of energy added) for cellulosic ethanol is much higher than corn, which some even argue is a net-energy loser.

Marginal farmland and old strip mines can be used for plantations. Much of this type of land is found in poorer parts of rural America where unemployment and underemployment is chronically high.

Stimulus funding can either pay for, or cost-share, the site preparation, seedlings, planting, fencing. maintenance and tending. Landowners could be required to repay some, or all, of the get-started costs when they sell their “stimulus timber.”

Spring is a good time to plant trees, that is, two months from now.

Run the schools through much of the summer. American students do not match the scores of kids from several dozen other countries. In 2006, the U.S. was not in the top 20 nations in math, science or reading, according to results of the world-wide test given to 15 year olds every three years by the Programme for International Student Assessment.

One reason for our poor performance is that most of the higher-achieving students are in school longer than the average American school year of 180 days. The South Korean year is about 40 days longer; Japan, about 60. Might more schooling leave fewer American children behind?

Washington could include “stimulus summer schooling” for districts willing to extend the school year for six weeks to find out.

School is out in May or June, that is, about four months from now.

Fund safety improvements on rural roads. You may want country roads to take you home, but getting around out here safely is another song.

States fund road maintenance, but improving the safety of two-lane roads seems to be a low priority. On my four-mile-long road, we have five blind turns, two of which are really bad and a third routinely causes near misses as well as the occasional hit. It’s been like this since the early 1950s.

Needed improvements are small widening and straightening projects, regrading curves, painting pavement edges, guardrails and bridge work. Local excavators could do some of these jobs.

Every state has a county-by-county road-improvement plan with prioritized projects. States could administer this program and allocate funding. Everything’s in place.

“Safety stimulus projects” could start a little later in the spring, about three months from now.

Each of these ideas would pump money into different sectors of a rural county’s economy. And more than that, tangible public benefits would be gotten for the dollars given.

Here we are: Stimulate us!

Chuck Wagon was the name we called a too-big kid over on the next block. Today, we might call him Salad Bar, but that really doesn’t convey the intended schoolyard meanness of the original.

I was not, like President Bush, born with a silver burr under my saddle.

Nonetheless, for the majority of my adult life, I’ve grazed beef cattle — about 1,500 altogether — on a Virginia mountain farm.

So how did that happen?

Twenty-five years ago I bought a country place that had fenced pasture. I was pretty sure that something in addition to mortgage debt went in there.

Almost half of America’s two million farms run cattle, about 100 million head in recent years. It is America’s largest agricultural sector and provides us with about 28 billion pounds of meat at an average of $4.16 per pound in 2007.

If you buy open land in the country and certainly a farm, you’re likely to discover your inner cowperson even if you didn’t realize you were looking for it.

Every greenhorn buyer should know a few things about the cattle business.

Requirements. Cattle need food, water and occasional shots—roughly the same things I provided male teenagers courting my daughter. It’s not for nothing that Molly announced that I was “the worst Daddy in the ninth grade.”

Cattle also need fences. States approach fence law in different ways, but assume that you are responsible for half the boundary fence line. Certain neighbors will be eager to point out that all the bad sections of common fence are yours.  In some states, you and your neighbors are jointly responsible for all fence. Ask your seller how fence responsibility has been apportioned before you make an offer.

Cattle do better on grass than trees, dirt or rock. Your pre-offer research should include walking the land with a knowledgeable person–the local cooperative extension agent, agricultural consultant or just an experienced friend — to determine forage quality. Check for invasive weeds and poisonous plants. Then estimate conservatively the land’s carrying capacity, which can range from one animal per acre to one per 100.

Consider rotational grazing. Instead of grazing one 100-acre field continuously, fence it into ten ten-acre lots and run the whole herd into each paddock for a few days each. Management-intensive grazing allows you to increase your number of head per acre, which means more total pounds of gain produced per year. Both cattle and pasture are healthier. (See www.attra.ncat.org/attar-pub/rotategr.html and www.stockmangrassfarmer.com.)

Rotational grazing requires interior fencing, water in each paddock and a cowperson to open and close gates.

Water. Grazing operations need two kinds: rain to grow grass, and water for cattle to drink.  Irrigation water may be necessary as well for the production of winter hay in arid areas. Farm buyers might consider avoiding chronic water-short areas, dry rangeland and perhaps the drought-plagued parts of the Southeast.

Act locally. Cattle can degrade their environment. Four-hoofed traffic compacts ground and causes erosion. Where their number exceeds available forage, overgrazing produces harmful effects. I know steep hillsides that have been left permanently bare and eroded from overgrazing. Cattle foul streams—but not on purpose.

Overgrazing has been an especially difficult problem on western rangeland that ranchers lease from public agencies. The case to eliminate livestock grazing on arid public land is made in Debra L. Donahue’s, The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity, University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Ranchers tend to hold an opposite view.

Cattle grazing need not harm pasture and water resources, but protection requires fencing them out of certain areas and other measures. My best guess is that farmers will eventually be required to fence livestock away from flowing surface waters to protect downstream water quality.

Care. Cattle require attention, even if you’re just grazing stocker steers from spring to fall.  You will need handling facilities, including a head catch, and an array of needles, bolus guns, applicators, bull tongs (a nose pliers), nippers, knives and medications.

Cattle do not like to be poked, prodded and punched full of medicinal holes. They complain and are not above evening the score if you give them a chance. I once had to use a needle to inject medication into the eyelids of ten steers for five consecutive days to prevent them from going blind with pinkeye. My wife, an animal-friendly person, stood next to me, helpfully shouting into my ear: “Don’t hurt them!” A good time was not had by all.

Cow-calf operations breed cows, and either a bull or a bull-substitute does the breeding. Sex and babies always complicate matters.

First-time cattle farmers should stick with steers and avoid the issues raised by arranging unprotected teen sex with older guys. Steers, incidentally, are bulls lite.

Here is a thumbnail personality guide to beef cattle. Cows are always female. They tend to be suspicious and, with calves, fairly hostile. Heifers, though virgins, are sluts. Steers can be goofballs. Old bulls are unpredictable, and young bulls are idiots.

The cattle business. Newcomers should know three things.

First, cattle farming is one of our few agricultural sectors that has not been federally subsidized, at least directly. Uncle Sam will not pay you to not raise cattle. No floor is put under sale prices, and no supplement is added to whatever you receive in a cattle sale.

Second, like all farms, the majority of cattle operations probably lose money. In the 2002 Census of Agriculture, 994,000 of America’s then total of 2.13 million farms reported a net gain, averaging about $19,000, while 1.13 million farms, about 53 percent, reported a net loss, averaging about $14,000. Profit and loss for cattle farms specifically is not available.

Finally, the IRS allows farm businesses to deduct expenses and depreciate equipment and improvements. Losses from farming can be taken against non-farm income. Losses from hobby and lifestyle farms cannot. Certain taxpayers with high off-the-farm income are not unfamiliar with these distinctions.

Cattle and horses are two common farm ventures for small farmers and those new to farming. The manual that the IRS uses to instruct its auditors on these operations is at http://www.unclefed.com/SurviveIRS/MSSP/a1farms.pdf.

It’s hard to make much money from cattle when you’re trying to, but it’s pretty easy to show a loss if you’re trying to do that.

Many state cooperative extension services will work up a financial profit/loss projection using the particulars you provide. Contact the beef-cattle specialist at a land-grant university in your state.

Information about the cattle industry can be found at the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistical Service at http://www.nass.usda.gov and Economic Research Service at http://www.ers.usda.gov/.  Useful websites are www.farm.com and www.beefusa.org.

The cattle industry has been criticized for two decades over its grazing practices, environmental impacts, winter-feed constituents (such as chicken litter), slaughter-house procedures and product safety. I agree with much of the criticism. We can and should do better.

Still, if you decide to graze cattle, know that you are doing something useful.

Over the years, I have produced one four-pound book on farming and country real estate and about 300,000 pounds of grass-fed meat. I’m sure I’ve benefited society more as a grass farmer than as a writer, certainly on pound-of-product-produced basis.

Perhaps the Farm Bill now in Congress will include a new provision that will pay writers like me to stop writing columns like this. Unfortunately, that subsidy would be taxable income. Maybe Congress can give writers a loss they can use against other income.  It is a Farm Bill, after all.