by Paula Manalo
For two years this system has worked well. Investors are happy. CSA shareholders are happy. We’ve been doing just dandy as community-supported farmers.
Now, though, we’d like to expand our grain production and move toward living on the land we’re farming. (Commuting to a farm just doesn’t work.) But we need equipment. And we will have to buy a piece of land instead of leasing.
It all makes financial sense. The business plan works. But it works only if we go to the bank.
That just terrifies me.
I grew up on a wheat-and-barley farm that trudged through the farm crisis of the 1980s. For a majority of my childhood, the kitchen table was buried in bills. My brother and I knew to get as far away from the house as possible if my parents were in the middle of “doing books.” The pressure of debt — of equipment loans, of operating loans, of land payments — was palpable in my family and in every other family like mine spread across the American prairie. But to make it in the commodity-driven agricultural economy, you had to get bigger. And to get bigger, you borrowed.
We watched farms around us — mostly the small ones, but some big ones, too — crumble under that pressure.
The 1980s farm crisis was a good example of how dangerous too much, or the wrong kind of, debt can be. But it’s also true that if it weren’t for the banks that line the main streets of farm communities across the country, there wouldn’t be many farmers on the land at all. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need an institutional loan to get our farm off the ground. But I’ve watched too many entrepreneurs try to eke out a living and fail, partly because they were undercapitalized.
So, although I’m terrified of taking on debt, I know the other route can be just as risky. We recently sat down with our neighborhood agricultural-loan officer. He’s just about the nicest guy in town, but isn’t afraid to tell us how bad the situation could be if things don’t go as planned.
As we walked through those worst-case scenarios, I realized that it’s not the debt that’s scaring me; it’s what the debt means.
It’s been easy for me during the last two years to think of our farm as an experiment, something we could walk away from. We’re young, educated, experienced people. Surely we could find something else if this failed.
In fact, in convincing me to farm years ago, my husband used just that argument to reassure me that we would not end up where my parents were when my childhood farm faltered.
I’ve held an escape route in the forefront of my mind, though. That’s what gave me permission to follow this folly and enabled me to take all the small steps we’ve taken thus far. It has also, however, kept me from taking big steps, and that’s no way to start a business — or a life, for that matter.
It’s true that each little decision — each seed put in the ground and each new customer signed up — marked another small commitment. And two years later, those have added up to one big commitment. But if all we ever take are those small risks, we’re never going to get where we truly want to go.
That’s why, when we were in the banker’s office this month, I had to remind myself that whether or not we take on this debt, we’re putting everything on the line — our hearts, our souls, our energy, our time, our family, our livelihood. These loans would just be a conduit for the big leap.
And maybe it’s time we leapt.
CHAPTER THREE
LAND
Beg, borrow, steal.
Behind every farm there’s a story of how the farmers got their land, and it’s probably a story worth retelling. For those of us who don’t have land, figuring out how we’ll manage to get it becomes quite an existential topic. Land access, of course, is a prerequisite to the practice of farming. And the practice of farming has tremendous appeal, even just the act of practicing farming on someone else’s farm, as an apprentice or farm manager. Short-term access to nature, to interaction with plants and animals over the course of one season, only whets the appetite for longer-term access.
Stewardship satisfies a humane impulse, and the stewardship motive swells with the prospect of watching a tree take root, bud out, bear fruit, cast shade. Spending time in the shade of trees planted by our farm mentors in their youth, in a well-worn, well-loved landscape shaped by the lives lived there — shaped by decades of attention and careful thinking — we come to appreciate what a tremendous power we have to affect the space we inhabit, to plant the rose arbor under which our children will walk.
That opportunity — to build soil, to build infrastructure, to produce good healthy food enjoyed and valued by neighbors, to be sovereign designer of barns and pastures — what a life! Sovereignty. It’s a concept made famous by the Landless Peasant Movement in Brazil but also exemplified in smallholder farm culture in the United Kingdom. I was given a little dish from Wales with this verse painted carefully on it:
Let the mighty and great loll in splendor and state,
I envy them not, I declare it;
I eat my own ham, my chicken and lamb;
I shear my own fleece, and I wear it;
I’ve lands and I’ve bowers, I’ve fields and I’ve flowers
The Lark is my daily alarmer
So ye jolly boys now, who delight in the plough
Long life, and good health to the farmer.
But land is expensive and farming isn’t terribly lucrative, so there’s some simple math to overcome. If you aren’t born onto a farm, or married into one, finding land to farm can occupy most of your twenties and thirties. Some people spend their working lives in another career and then retire into farming. Usually, there’s a combination of farm loans, savings, off-farm jobs, mortgages, investors, family support, partnership, and hustle. Usually, it is attended by lots of paper-work and committee meetings, endless schmoozing, and essays for the land-trust newsletter. It always requires patience.
In buying that land, we’re in competition with second-home buyers and established commodity growers with a strong price-point to show the bank. Chances are the barns will need major repair. If it’s a bankrupted dairy farm we’re trying to buy, chances are that deferred maintenance is only the beginning of our troubles — there may also be water-quality standards, dry rot, barrels of used motor oil. (Thankfully, these days most of the junk has value as scrap metal.) Drama drama, hassle hassle: and yet we yearn for it.
Logistics aside, it’s important that I set down on paper an observation born out of many hundreds of conversations with young farmers. No one will tell you this in a business-planning class, but it turns out that a surprising majority of farmers who have “landed” got that way through pure magic: “pure magic” meaning luck, serendipity, an angel investor, happenstance, or other special circumstances. Karma cannot be overemphasized. If you’re doing good work, getting strong, being brave, and taking risks, a kind of magical mojo takes hold. Sometimes you get burned, but there is, in the experience of many young farmers (myself included), a particular kind of magic bubbling up at critical times that makes possible things that seemed profoundly otherwise. This oft-quoted line is credited to Goethe: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Give it a try.
— Severine von Tscharner Fleming
Landing Permanency/A Permanent Landing
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BY JACOB COWGILL
A native of rural Montana, Jacob Cowgill and his wife farm fifteen leased acres near Conrad, which has brought them home and closer to their goal of owning a diversified family farm. They raise heritage-breed turkeys and vegetables, as well as grains and seeds, such as ancient wheat and milk thistle.
* * *
Early last season I stood in the field where we were about to start building a high tunnel and I wondered how we were going to get water to the structure. We knew it would require buried irrigation lines below the frost line — six feet deep, in our part of the world. Standing on leased ground, I realized we were about to spend money on infrastructure we ultimately wouldn’t own.
A few days later, I watched as a backhoe clawed a hundred-foot-long by six-foot-deep trench into the ground. Irrigation pipe was laid, a couple of hydrants hooked up, and the long scar covered up within an hour. After a few days, an invoice for twelve hundred dollars arrived in the mail and all I could do was swallow hard, cut the check, and hope that it was worth it.
Just over two years ago, my wife and I were given the opportunity to start our own farm, close to where we both were born and raised in north-central Montana, on the short-grass prairie where the plains collide with the eastern Rocky Mountain Front. At the time, that’s all it was — an opportunity, and one not to be taken lightly or questioned too much. Though we had to live in town, a few miles from the farm, we were thankful for the chance. Over time, we faced many of the same obstacles as other beginning farmers with limited resources, including the ability of impermanence to make every decision an agonizing one.
I used to think that finding land to farm wasn’t the obstacle people made it out to be. There’s land everywhere, and there are owners willing to let you farm it. And I still believe that’s true, especially if you’re willing to squat for the rest of your farming career. I also used to think that owning land wasn’t the be-all and end-all, and to a certain extent I still believe that, too. But now I also believe that there’s true value in ownership: a plot of your own, a piece of land that you can nurture, build health and wealth on, and steward for your short life, perhaps passing it on to your children or another young, land-based entrepreneur. Finding land to land on is the true hurdle.
Because of our impermanence, our desire to live where we farmed, and our intent to develop the proper infrastructure, we pushed for a plan to purchase a portion of the land we were farming. We pushed hard enough that we drew out from the farmer what he and his wife were willing to do and what they weren’t willing to do. Also in pushing, we dug up the dirty details of buying land and doing so creatively.
We realized, for better or for worse, that long-term leases or creative (and complicated) ownership arrangements may be the only way for some farmers to commit to one small part of this earth. Subsequently, we came tantalizingly close to taking on debt for bare ground with no infrastructure and a fledgling business to defend. In our rush to own, without yet fully understanding the business of farming and our own unique enterprises, we lost track of just what we were trying to achieve.
After getting that we were trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, my perspective returned to that pre-farm time when the possibilities seemed endless and my farm vision was clear in my head. Now, that perspective has become colored with a feeling of deep disappointment that all the heart and soul we expended on this small piece of land may just blow away in the strong west wind if and when we move on. I worry that I may find it difficult to distinguish the short-term needs of the farm without knowing just what our long-term trajectory is. If we do end up leaving this place, I fear it will be a lost opportunity, perhaps the last opportunity.
Maybe the fact that this is our first shot has clouded our long-term vision. Instead, we should focus on the farm business, on making our enterprises as strong as possible, and not fret about buying a farm or even living on the farm. The farming should drive the farm; the land shouldn’t. It’s time to put our heads down, work our tails off, and hope that that is what will ultimately determine our success or failure. We need to farm for the long term, despite the short-term impermanence.
Of course, what I feel tomorrow may be 180 degrees from what I feel today. Regardless, seeds have to be sown in the greenhouse and in the cold spring ground. The organic-certification deadline isn’t waiting around, and in a month, 150 day-old heritage-breed turkeys aren’t going to care about my internal struggles. Ultimately, we live in (and must deal with) only the present. We can merely offer our hopes and dreams to the future.
I Figured We’d Buy a Small Piece of Land
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BY LUKE DEIKIS
With Cara Fraver, Luke Deikis runs Quincy Farm in Easton, New York. After eleven long months, they finally closed on their farm in spring 2011. They sell high-quality, organically grown veggies at three great markets, and have plans to expand.
* * *
Initially, I figured we’d buy a small piece of land in the conventional way — real-estate agents, mortgage, all that. I’d continue my freelance work for the film industry; my partner, Cara, would waitress; and we’d teach ourselves to farm. We’d go to a couple of farmers’ markets, establish a local CSA, eventually haul produce to the city. Why not? We’re both hard workers and we had a garden so lush that our friends were calling our Quincy Street apartment “Quincy Farm.”
I spent all summer looking for land in an ever-increasing radius. We wanted fifteen tillable acres with a house for under three hundred thousand dollars. We were committed to finding a place big enough to grow into rather than out of. Looking back, I can’t even remember how fifteen acres became the magic number. The three hundred thousand was based on some online mortgage calculator and an optimistic view of our future off-farm earnings. We blindly assumed the farm would eventually be able to take over the expenses. We started a “business plan” that today makes me a bit queasy.
I combed the Internet obsessively, cross-referencing real-estate listings to the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) soil maps. I’d ride out on my motorcycle to stalk possible properties, peering through the windows of houses or letting myself in through unlocked doors, poking around barns and sampling fields, trying to envision each place as Our Farm. Thankfully, some combination of the inflated real-estate prices and our small amount of good judgment kept us from pulling the trigger on any of those properties. It would have been like teaching yourself how to swim by jumping into a whirlpool with an anvil in your arms.
The new year found us still in the city, just beginning to grasp how difficult this search would be. We struggled to expand our business plan from a bad joke to something we could actually rely on, but everything we learned shed light on a hundred things we hadn’t realized we didn’t know. Rather abruptly, we changed tactics and decided to apprentice. This buying of property was obviously going to take awhile, so why not learn how to farm in the meantime? We looked into where we’d learn the most and somehow talked our way into an apprenticeship at a great farm. As a bonus, the people there were flexible enough to let me go back into the city for a day of freelancing here and there. In March, we boxed up all of our stuff, said good-bye to our friends and beautiful garden, and drove away from any chance of ever living in Brooklyn again.
Apprenticing for good farmers who are committed to passing on their knowledge was probably the best choice we’ve made in this whole process. As we learned more and more about farming, we continued to search for land. We also gained a clearer grasp of what exactly we were looking for, and of the options out there for finding it. For brevity, I’ll let three years of our life blur into one sentence: Year one faded to year two faded to year three as we left the first farm, spent a year working for another grower, then returned to the place where we’d started. The whole time we were looking, looking, looking.
We’d long since given up the concept of traditional land purchase — that quaint idea of seeing a listing, an agent gives you a tour, you make an offer, you do some negotiating, and then leverage your entire life into a mortgage. First of all, when you’re looking at farmland in the Hudson Valley, you’re competing with Joe Finance from the city, not other farmers. Joe Finance wants a weekend home to keep his pony, and he has big savings, big equity, and a large, steady, predictable income to qualify for that inflated mortgage. No bank in the world is going to lend that much to us — even with our excellent credit and sizable down payment. Second, even if some bank were that bold, we’d never be able to pay off the debt of a six- or even seven-figure mortgage.
We gave up the American Dream of owning land, instead separating it into two complementary goals: affordable long-term tenure for the farm and equity fo
r ourselves. We’d schooled ourselves on alternative land tenure and could hold our own in conversations full of jargon and acronyms that would make a real-estate lawyer woozy. Our goal became forty good, tillable acres with room for infrastructure, plus a good irrigation source. Everything else was negotiable — we’d live in the greenhouse and burn sheep dung for fuel if it came down to it.
We wiggled our fingers into every nook and cranny of the alternative land-access scene: registered with Farm Link in multiple states, posted ads online with the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) and the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA), contacted every land-preservation organization we could track down, forced ourselves into sit-down meetings with the ones too polite to turn us away. We crafted typewritten letters and mailed them, put out the word to everyone we knew, from bartenders to CSA members. We put up a web page selling ourselves and our search, and baited it with words to catch some needle-in-a-haystack Googling landowner with fifty prime acres and a commitment to ground leases. We even perused Craigslist regularly. The game was long-term leases, and we were in it to win.
Meeting landowners and seeing their land is like being set up on a blind date with someone’s son . . . someone’s unemployed, somewhat homely son. These are smart, successful people taking time out of their lives and showing immense generosity by offering something of what they, blinded by parental love, think of as having incredible value — their land, sometimes hundreds of acres of it — sometimes for an extremely long term, and often for next to nothing. After a short first date we sigh and say, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t think things are going to work out between us. It’s not you, it’s me. Really.”
The first time we went to see land through a linking program, Cara and I spent several hours sitting in a beautifully remodeled living room talking about our farming experience, what kind of farm we wanted, what relationship we wanted with a landowner, our business plan, the weather, and so on. Then we went on a walk of the property, which proved to be mostly heavily wooded and very hilly. Where it wasn’t wooded, it was wet. It might have made a nice homestead, but it was a far cry from a vegetable farm. We learned a key lesson: Walk the land before having the conversation.