What a great forum! I found it when I was looking for places to post my farm to get a partner. But, you can bet I'll be back to mine thru all the archives!
I need a partner to run my 50acre, organic, natural, humane farm. (Yes, you can raise livestock humanely. Every living thing will die. Our animals die w/ while eating a 'cookie', knowing how wonderful their lives have been. The people who are here now have been transfered back to California. There isn't really that much to do, most of the time. The hardest work is banding the calves/lambs & fixing fencing. I put in the fencing, all you have to do is keep the hot wire hot & fix anything that gets broken if it isn't hot; or if you have an animal that breaks it.
What you get:
I have a lot of livestock here. All I want is
enough to fill my freezer, & my children's (who don't have freezers/families now but will someday.) That takes one beeve, (we have 9 cows), a couple lambs (we have 50+ ewes), 20ish
chickens (we have over 100 each for meat & eggs), a few turkeys (previous people let them all die, but I'd like to have a breeding population of 20 or so), couple ducks (we have 'bout 30 Muscovy ducks), couple geese (have 8 out there now), some
rabbits (I'd like to have 20 or so breeders.) After a few years, I'll probably need more, but remember.... I have to haul it back to them, so it's never really going to be a lot. You get everything else! Well... nearly. We will have to hold some back for breeding & the sale of any
cattle goes toward upgrading & maintaining our facilities. I try to get at least one major
project done a year. This year is fixing the cross
fence the current partners let get destroyed & the cross
fence to separate the
pond from the pasture & transplanting the
trees for the orchard. We did have pigs, but found that our fencing wasn't adequate for them. We'll try them again later when we can have hotwire every place that it's needed.
I am also establishing an orchard, w/ standard sized
apple, peach, pear, cherry, mulberry, apricot & some other trees. The best fruit goes to you, to eat/can/sell. I get to do canning when I'm here & the wind fall goes to the livestock. But... there's a lot of fruit on just one standard size tree & I plan on 20+. There's a one acre
pond that you can fish from. You can also have your own livestock, raised Naturally & organically. I've gotten the Cert'd Naturally Grown certification already, a few years ago. You don't get to overgraze the pastures, so you're not going to run a huge cow calf operation, but a small, homestead type deal is perfect. You can run an egg business &
sell milk from our cows (but no grain to them & nothing GMO anywhere on the farm.)
What you do:
Rent the 2 bedroom farm house for $350/month. That's the same rent it was 10 yrs ago, but you get much more than those people got. They were allowed 2 outside only dogs. They were NOT allowed to step foot in the pasture or corrals, much less have any stock out there. You can have a few inside pets, outside pets & some of your own livestock, so long as you don't have so many that you over run the pastures. You can have 2 horses, if you want more, keep them in the corral & buy them
hay. Sorry, but we had a herd of 14 horses & the pastures are still recovering. Let me stay w/ you when I come to work on the farm. Basically.... I'm a hired hand. I don't order you around, it's a partnership & (if you're holding up your end... you are already doing what needs doing.) I'll be building a little place to stay, but can't get that done for at least a year or so. You also have to let me eat w/ you. I work so hard out in the pasture that I'm so tired at the end of the day.... I just don't have the
energy to cook. You don't have to cook me anything special, just let me have a serving of whatever you're eating.
You don't get a salary, but it's my guess that you'll make more than enough off eggs & milk (from my cows or if you keep goats) to pay your rent, utilities & have spending money. I'll buy cheese & eggs from you. I figure I can use over 100 dozen a year. I'm not doing this to get the house rented. I'm renting you the house, at a steep discount, so that you can be on the farm, watching things. You just can't take care of things if you don't live here. I've made a huge investment in this farm & you can reap the rewards. Just take care of the livestock & the farm.
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