posted 8 years ago
If there aren't any comfrey growing at your parents place, plant 25 cuttings/root crowns. In a year or two, you'll have all the parent material you'll ever need for your own place -- you'll be able to start hundreds of new comfrey plants from those starter plants.
If you are planning on raising chickens, bees or rabbits, you can get these started on your parents' place with portable infrastructure like a chicken tractor, an egg mobile (check out Joel Salatin's operation), movable rabbit hutches and bee hives. There are a number of initial purchases you'll need to make to get a chicken operation up and running: brooder, heat lamps, waterer, food dishes, some kind of system for fermenting your feed, grit, calcium, diatomaceous earth, and a butchering station where you'll process meat birds. All of this can be purchased and you can learn to how to use it before you move it over to your place. ALWAYS THINK PORTABILITY. Start small (like, 25 birds), learn how to care for them and move them, butcher them, etc. This year can Chickens 101. Next year (Chickens 201) could be 50 broilers in two chicken tractors, with another 50 layers in your egg mobile. Once you move to your new place, you'll have parent stock, and all of your equipment—hello, Chickens 401. Start with 2 bee hives, and in the same way as with chickens, learn the ropes with bees on a small scale. Purchase your bee suit, honey processing equipment, etc.
You mention dairy: can you get a couple of heifers and graze them at your folks place? By the time they are ready to produce milk, you'd have your operation running. Perhaps it would be better to start with beef cattle. You could purchase 5 steers and start them at your folks place. Purchase a solar powered electric fence system (wire, batteries, bat latches, etc.) and begin to learn how to mob graze them and move them daily (and improve your parents' soil in the process). 40 acres is a lot of land -- more than enough land for a handful of steers, and an egg mobile to chase after them.
Of berries or trees, berries might be the more portable and more easily transplanted, but I agree with Dan Boone -- if you can find a cheap sources for 5 gallon pots, plant a zillion trees. They'll do OK for 2 years in a 5 gallon pot.
How familiar are you with drip irrigation systems? This would be a great time to learn how to set these up, buy all the tubing and drippers and such, and then set all that up on your nursery so you don't have to water all those pots with a hose every day. All of that drip irrigation stuff can come with you to the new location in a couple of years.
What about a good dog? If you don't have your dog yet, this would be a great time to start looking for a puppy from a solid farm dog family. You could go with a pure-bred or a mutt, but far more important than the breed is the training. (OK -- you need both. All the training in the world will not turn a poorly selected/ill fitted dog into an obedient and happy farm dog). Dogs take a couple of years to train and become an asset, but a good dog is worth her weight in gold. It takes a lot of time and patience to teach a dog to be an effective tool on your farm. It's totally worth it, particularly if you are working with beef cattle. Are you dog people? Have you trained a working dog? If not, there are all sorts of great videos and on-line resources. This would be a good season to learn to work with a dog, train her, and get her ready to work beside you for the next 15 years.
Finally, you may want to think of value-added cash producing products. Things like jams, honey, specially prepared meats (cured hams, smoked meats), pickled veggies, kraut, baked goods and breads . . . An economically viable farm needs to think about generating income from a number of different sources. Yes, you can sell berries and fruit. But processing them and canning them suddenly you make 3 times as much as if you sell them fresh. So this is a knowledge set that you can learn now. Canning equipment, pickling crocks, etc. . . . purchase this stuff now and start learning how to do it well. Learn to make the best chutney in your county. Become known as making the best okra pickles in town, and always bring a jar to the church pot-luck so people become familiar with your wares. What can you produce, package and sell for extra cash? Steel-cut oats? Herb infused olive oil? Dried herbs? Carded wool from an angora sheep? Artisanal cheese? Selling milk from your future dairy will make you money, but selling cheese will make you 4 times as much. Now is a great time to get the skills and equipment you'll need in a few years.
Those are just a few ideas that come to mind.
"The rule of no realm is mine. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, these are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything that passes through this night can still grow fairer or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I too am a steward. Did you not know?" Gandolf