- Location
- West Wales
Private message if you want. I know of some good places not far from me in your budget.
Smallholding advice.
- Thread starter WelshSmallholder1404
- Start date
Doing it for the kids
Member
Buy what you want to look attractive when you come home from work.
treat it as a hobby, not a business.
don’t stop the day job as that will fund your passion though!
your mentality seems to be rather refreshing which will do you well! Good luck
treat it as a hobby, not a business.
don’t stop the day job as that will fund your passion though!
your mentality seems to be rather refreshing which will do you well! Good luck
- Location
- Ceredigion
I may know of a place that would suit near Aberaeron
Send me a pm if you like
Enough to pay the bills +/- working one day a week is all I'm after. Treating farming as a vocation, not a route to be a millionaire. I'd be setting up a medcial locum agency if I cared about money that much.
I'm just a hobby farmer with 40 acres but a few comments about an equipment shopping list if you want to be self sufficient,
Tractor - if hilly you might need to consider 4wd and definitely want a front end loader
Hay making is very kit intensive. If making small bales, mower, tedder, bale sledge, bale grab and trailer are all required. Although you could dispense with bale sledge and grab if you dont mind hard work and dont make too many. Also somewhere to store them! Making square bales needs a different snd more expensive baler snd probsnlt a more powerful tractor.
Note mower for hay making different from a topper which you need to keep fields cut.
Also need roller and chain harrow.
Finally, if the budget stretches, a small mini digger.
Regards
Alchad
Tractor - if hilly you might need to consider 4wd and definitely want a front end loader
Hay making is very kit intensive. If making small bales, mower, tedder, bale sledge, bale grab and trailer are all required. Although you could dispense with bale sledge and grab if you dont mind hard work and dont make too many. Also somewhere to store them! Making square bales needs a different snd more expensive baler snd probsnlt a more powerful tractor.
Note mower for hay making different from a topper which you need to keep fields cut.
Also need roller and chain harrow.
Finally, if the budget stretches, a small mini digger.
Regards
Alchad
- Location
- Ceredigion
Ask around before you buy , land varies a hell of a lot in Ceredigion, easy to get caught out
Exfarmer
Member
- Location
- Bury St Edmunds
I dont mean to be rude or a killjoy, but smallholdings can be a huge amount of work and zero or negative return if you are not on the ball.
I would strongly urge you to keep your day jobs, if you are that keen on work I am certain the NHS cannot afford to lose you.
Yes buy your small holding play with a small area with a few sheep cattle etc. let the rest out to neighbours, until your dabbling has established in your mind what you are doing.
Sheep in particular have little foibles like trying to die every time you turn you're back, cattle like to get out. Get your fences and probably ditches sorted first, and expand into the land you have bought. Sheep are easy enough to breed and keeping the lambs a flock of 10 soon be comes 50. Cattle are a little more problematic since you will not want to keep a bull. Keep in with your neighbours and these can be borrowed or some other arrangement , movement licences allowing.
There will also be many contractors offering services like topping hedge cutting etc. playing on a shiny tractor is a great boys thing but a very expensive toy if not careful, find what you really need before you purchase, most likely a quad bike will do all you need and can be just as much fun
good luck
I would strongly urge you to keep your day jobs, if you are that keen on work I am certain the NHS cannot afford to lose you.
Yes buy your small holding play with a small area with a few sheep cattle etc. let the rest out to neighbours, until your dabbling has established in your mind what you are doing.
Sheep in particular have little foibles like trying to die every time you turn you're back, cattle like to get out. Get your fences and probably ditches sorted first, and expand into the land you have bought. Sheep are easy enough to breed and keeping the lambs a flock of 10 soon be comes 50. Cattle are a little more problematic since you will not want to keep a bull. Keep in with your neighbours and these can be borrowed or some other arrangement , movement licences allowing.
There will also be many contractors offering services like topping hedge cutting etc. playing on a shiny tractor is a great boys thing but a very expensive toy if not careful, find what you really need before you purchase, most likely a quad bike will do all you need and can be just as much fun
good luck
Luckily partners dad is a local farmer with a very, very good knowledge of pretty much all the local farms. We've already put a couple of places to him that he wasn't too keen on haha! Thanks very much for the heads up.
- Location
- Limousin, France
Just be aware with cattle TB can be a problem.
- Location
- Scottish Highlands
When I was at college I was taught to consider "units of production". You can't increase output from a fixed acreage unless you increase other inputs to compensate. That might be more fertiliser, more cultivations, more labour, etc. so you use the skills you have. For the good doctor, I'd be looking at growing herbs traditionally used in medicine, processing them, and setting up a mail order business. 'Natural' is today's buzzword. Forget trying to compete with your neighbours because they are already ahead of you in terms of experience and knowledge. Use what you have -- and buy your hay if you need it.
- Location
- Aberdeenshire
I mean no disrespect when I write this to the O.P or others breaking their backs to succeed. I worked five days a week for what a doctor may earn in a day to fund my wee bit of paradise and I will not give it up.
Coming home to my wife who is as content as could be, my dogs that never wear a collar or a lead that I can open the door and let out without a care, my sheep that like an ear rub, seeing roe deer on my lawn, watching trees I've planted grow and countless birds round my feeders and in my fruiting hedges and uncultivated corners makes me complete. If you can fund what others laugh about as being 'the good life' then I wholeheartedly recommend it. There are sure to be days when you lose a lamb and feel down but there are many other days when you watch a riot on the tv or other urban catastrophe when you will feel as blessed and overwhelmed with the joy of what you are doing and where you are doing it that you wouldn't believe was possible.
I view my place from a higher road as I approach home and rain, sleet or shine I always get a wee buzz of pleasure. Visitors don't want to leave. It's a thrill every day to be me, doing what I'm doing, where I'm doing it.
Final bit of actual advice. Build sheds, you can never have enough sheds.
Coming home to my wife who is as content as could be, my dogs that never wear a collar or a lead that I can open the door and let out without a care, my sheep that like an ear rub, seeing roe deer on my lawn, watching trees I've planted grow and countless birds round my feeders and in my fruiting hedges and uncultivated corners makes me complete. If you can fund what others laugh about as being 'the good life' then I wholeheartedly recommend it. There are sure to be days when you lose a lamb and feel down but there are many other days when you watch a riot on the tv or other urban catastrophe when you will feel as blessed and overwhelmed with the joy of what you are doing and where you are doing it that you wouldn't believe was possible.
I view my place from a higher road as I approach home and rain, sleet or shine I always get a wee buzz of pleasure. Visitors don't want to leave. It's a thrill every day to be me, doing what I'm doing, where I'm doing it.
Final bit of actual advice. Build sheds, you can never have enough sheds.
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Couldn’t have put it better myself. My partner and I have spent years on her dads farm & years in hospitals on the institutionalised rat race that is the medical profession. We want nothing more than exactly what you’re describing- thanks for your comment. Very reassuring that we have a great idea and are on the right path to a simpler & more enjoyable life.
I hope you continue to see out the rest of your days doing what you love.
- Location
- Essex
Honestly? You don't need the arse ache but if you insist... Rear calves, buy store lambs, keep a few hens, you could also do a few piggies. Retail the produce and you might, just might make a profit.
Don't p!ss your money up the wall on ANY machinery. If you want to drive a tractor, do it for one of your new neighbours in exchange for help when you need it.
Get good at electric fencing. It's much much cheaper. When you get up and running and actually making any money you might think about doing some permanent. Also by then you would have a good idea of what layout you want
Don't p!ss your money up the wall on ANY machinery. If you want to drive a tractor, do it for one of your new neighbours in exchange for help when you need it.
Get good at electric fencing. It's much much cheaper. When you get up and running and actually making any money you might think about doing some permanent. Also by then you would have a good idea of what layout you want
- Location
- Aberdeenshire
Seems like a whole lot of folk are fixated on the money. The creators of this post have spent years in studying for their respective callings, have applied themselves with vigour to making a success of their lives and have saved and been careful to get themselves to a point in their lives where they can relax and they don't want to do it on foreign shores they want a piece of heaven on earth close to their family. Unless I'm mistaken this site is for everyone interested in or actually farming, it's for broke farmers with a thousand acres and folk with a bob or two with a few. Am I wrong?
- Location
- Mendips Somerset
A mf 35/135 will do most of your work with loader , and rear spike , always hold value and be reliable if kept dry , cheap pz mower and haybob , all we had for a long time , then came the 990 DB, reliable cheap donkey from a mattress factory .
- Location
- Scottish Highlands
Contentment has very little to do with money.
Exfarmer
Member
- Location
- Bury St Edmunds
Yes but never forget the Micawber principle
- Location
- North Somerset.
And the pension that comes with working in the NHS. Buy the place you want and work less hours if necessary but plan only to give up the day job to go farming when you can afford it long term. Relying on small scale farming to keep a roof over your head will be no fun.Yes but never forget the Micawber principle
If you want to buy land, don't mess about wondering what you are going to do with it.
Just put in an offer. And if your offer is accepted, conjecture becomes reality and then is the time to think about what you are going to do with it.
But there will be no rush. In the meantime there will be neigbours who will assist you in grazing whatever grass is grazable, while you can plan ahead a bit. But you will need a big mallet, hammer, fencing pliers and some new or second-hand staples to do a bot of fence repairs. And some used baler twine to allow gates to be opened and closed.
And an old 7 iron golf club to whack a few burr thistles. And some gloves to pull ragwort.
Just put in an offer. And if your offer is accepted, conjecture becomes reality and then is the time to think about what you are going to do with it.
But there will be no rush. In the meantime there will be neigbours who will assist you in grazing whatever grass is grazable, while you can plan ahead a bit. But you will need a big mallet, hammer, fencing pliers and some new or second-hand staples to do a bot of fence repairs. And some used baler twine to allow gates to be opened and closed.
And an old 7 iron golf club to whack a few burr thistles. And some gloves to pull ragwort.