My partner, Rachel Bynum, and I were interested in starting a farm.  After several years of working for Chip and Susan Planck at Wheatland Vegetable Farms in Purcelleville, Virginia, we thought we knew enough about growing and selling vegetables to do it as our only job and enjoy it (we were right).  Unfortunately, the more we learned about mortgages and land values, the longer we put off starting our farm.  We knew there was a huge demand for fresh vegetables in northern Virginia, but the people creating that demand also raise the property values to the point where we  couldn’t afford to live close enough to direct market.

Luckily, a man named Cliff Miller phoned us and asked if we wanted to start a farm on his land with his support.

The arrangement
After several visits to the farm and lots of talking we worked out a two-year written agreement.  The purpose was to make sure we understood each other and had a way to work out problems; we all signed it, but I doubt it would have legal significance.  Initially, we were going to rent the land, house, and tractors from Cliff, with opportunities to work off the rent by making improvements to the land and house and helping maintain the tractors.  After a disagreement about whether planting daylilies counted as an improvement, Cliff decided we could maintain the spirit of the arrangement without accounting for every detail.  He agreed to waive the rent on the house and the land for two years, trusting that we’d make improvements to both, let us use one of his barns for free, and had us rent the tractors and equipment by the hour.  He also agreed to spend an additional $4,200 on whatever improvements we wanted to the house, barn, or land.  This way he knew just how much he’d be contributing, leaving us to work out the details.  This put him out a total of $16,000—20 acres at $25/acre/year for 2 years is $1,000, 24 months rent on the house at $450/month is $10,800, and the additional $4,200 spent fixing the barn and house roofs makes $16,000—though the $4,200 was the only money he was actually spending (as opposed to lost rent).  We decided that after two years we’d reevaluate, hopefully entering into some long-term arrangement that suited everybody.

With our first year ending, I thought this would be a good chance to describe our situation as a potential model for other young people to get started in farming.
 
The good parts
I’ve always been lucky but this was really something.  Basically, we were able to start our farm years before we could have otherwise (I was 25 when we moved here) and without being in debt up to our eyeballs.

While we still worried about money, not having to make payments for a house, land, or tractors really took the edge off our concerns, and affected our entire approach to the farm.  For instance, we bought a new plastic layer, water wheel transplanter, and drip irrigation system for a total of $6,500, and we spent another $8,000 hiring interns to work with us.  These were expenses we knew from working with the Plancks would easily justify themselves, and we could afford to do it (we did borrow $15,000 from relatives).

Also, at the farmers’ markets we kept our prices high and waited for the market to develop.  After several weeks selling only 50 pounds of tomatoes at our Charlottesville market, I adopted the “Farming is hard work and these are delicious tomatoes and if you won’t pay $1.60/lb. for them you can’t have them (even if the guy on the corner sells them at .80/lb)” attitude. A month later I was selling 400 pounds.  If I’d owed $300,000 on a farm, I might not have been so arrogant, and would have made my situation worse by lowering prices.

We also each took a short vacation during the summer, we started taking Monday mornings off, and followed Chip’s advice to spend money on new wood rather than spend time taking nails out of scrap wood, all because we thought we could afford it.  The whole time we knew we could leave after two years relatively unharmed.

The other main fantastic thing about our arrangement was having an instant community.  Cliff introduced us to people in the area, helped us figure out where to go or who to call, and talked about us to his friends.  His farm manager, Eddie, lent us tools, told us which soil was best, and plowed our driveway when it snowed.  We got all of our mulch hay from the farm, three or four round bales delivered to each roadway between blocks, and when Eddie saw four of us trying to unroll the 900-pound bales by pushing (!) he brought over the unroller on the tractor.  Our situation prevented a whole series of difficulties we might have faced had we moved to a farm where we didn’t know anyone.

With these advantages and our experiences at the Plancks – we started out with the knowledge they gained over 25 years – we hit the ground running.  We signed up 60 CSA shares, joined a group of farms selling to restaurants, sold to locals off the farm, and went to two farmers’ markets (including a great one we were lucky to get into in Takoma Park, MD).  We grossed $99,000 and will net $34,000 in our first year (about $5-6/hour).  That’s about $34,000 more than we expected to make, and we think we could do better in a similar year with what we learned this year.

Our situation allows us to get started, work things out over time, and capitalize our farm gradually rather than all at once.  Over the next five years or so, we hope to build a better greenhouse, get our own tractor or two, buy a small spader, and so on.  We’d still like to own a house and land at some point, but not yet – we’d rather put whatever extra money there is into improvements that will make us more efficient and profitable.

For Cliff, our arrangement meant that part of his farm could be used in a way he wanted, without having to do everything himself.  His approach to the environment is wise – putting ecological practices into an economically viable business run by someone else with his support.  This way, we combined his land and capital resources with our knowledge and sweat resources to create something neither of us could have done alone.

Also, the farm as a business was completely ours.  Cliff came by occasionally to see what we were doing, ask questions, see if we needed anything, or to pick up his CSA share, but he never tried to tell us what to do or make any money from our farm.  This approach was central, I think, and helped create a trusting relationship.

Difficulties
The main daily problems in our arrangement came from the tractors and equipment we rented from Cliff.  While the equipment meets the needs of Cliff’s farm (Eddie makes hay and maintains the grounds), we struggled to accomplish the specific and timely needs of growing vegetables efficiently with his tractors.  Cliff, understandably, didn’t want to make expensive improvements he wouldn’t otherwise choose to do, and we couldn’t afford (or didn’t choose) to pay for them either.  I’d anticipated some of the difficulty – the tractor we use to disc is way too big for our needs, for instance – but I should have learned more about the condition of the two smaller tractors before we started.  As it happened we were surprised, and too committed to using them to look for alternatives.

Equipment was especially a problem because we had a wet, short-handed spring, so if we missed an opportunity because of equipment problems it really caused delays.  Still, everything got done eventually, and our total tractor cost (rental) for the year was $1,000.  Next year will be better, partly because we’ve learned more about how to share the equipment and get everything accomplished.

The main long-term problem with our farm is that, even after one year, we’ve become quite invested in and attached to a situation that is uncertain at best.  Our future depends on a person we’re still getting to know who has all kinds of different ideas about what to do with his land.  We may never be able to afford to buy the entire 75-acre section of his farm we’re on, even if he would sell it to us.  While we don’t mind renting the land we’re farming as a business decision, we would like to own a house.  It will take some creativity to figure out how we might own some part of our farm somehow, or to find some kind of long-term lease that makes economic sense and couldn’t be challenged by someone 20 years from now. 

If we (you) want to inspire a new generation of farmers we have to come up with new ways to get young people started in farming.  I admire everyone who bought land with a rundown house and created a farm from scratch with their bare hands, but land costs make that model increasingly difficult to emulate, and either way it’s too much work for it to happen very often.  We enjoy our situation here, and I’m sure there are plenty of other landowners who would support something similar. Ultimately, though, we’d rather be dealing with a farmer we knew instead of a landowner we’re getting to know, and we’d rather feel more secure about our future.  But we don’t know many farmers who happen to have an extra house, barn, water source, and 15 acres we could use for a few years, and we’re too impatient to wait. 

Still, I think there’s a lot of potential for cooperative situations as older farmers begin thinking about their replacements (housing everybody may be the biggest problem.)  It’s hard because we don’t have many models to follow, and it’s probably going to take a lot of coordinating, but we’d better think of something.