Advice for a young farmer

[Fixingfarmer]

We have done some of the non gmo organic every year in popcorn and sweet corn and then there was this green and yellow Indian corn stuff my wife likes and feeds to chickens and we burn the rest in the pellet stove

A cultivator is required if you want to try it even half an acre will burn you out I didn’t have one at the start

Time is required as well what gets me is when it’s cultivating time on the fun stuff I need to be in a sprayer

Managed right conventional hybrid corn is capable of the same yields as you are getting.

Capreno herbicide will cost you more than the roundup seed

The desire to save the seed is as old as farming I think that explains the initial cost of the non hybrid corn without delving into that rabbit hole. We don’t. We did when I was a kid pulling it out of the gravity wagon by the 5 gallon pail they had a catch drum on the hopper. Neighbor had a cleaner would do a wagons worth of beans. Would assume corn would also need cleaned.

I do get a kick out of the non-gmo label I haven’t seen much teosinte this far north.

Are you planning on feeding the oats or just getting it into rotation?

You could practice with some sweet corn if you plant an acre in the oat area and see how you like it with a low population and then the nitrogen requirement wouldn’t be out of this world the oats still will uptake N some it’s not like soybeans

 

[Whistlin200]

Wow. That’s a good side business if you can sell the wool. This year we are getting $4.50 a lbs for lambs under 80 lbs right now. Never been over $3 before.
Looks like sheep might make some money this year. Problem is I sold all but 2 ewes. My children have 40 and I feed

We have done some of the non gmo organic every year in popcorn and sweet corn and then there was this green and yellow Indian corn stuff my wife likes and feeds to chickens and we burn the rest in the pellet stove

A cultivator is required if you want to try it even half an acre will burn you out I didn’t have one at the start

Time is required as well what gets me is when it’s cultivating time on the fun stuff I need to be in a sprayer

Managed right conventional hybrid corn is capable of the same yields as you are getting.

Capreno herbicide will cost you more than the roundup seed

The desire to save the seed is as old as farming I think that explains the initial cost of the non hybrid corn without delving into that rabbit hole. We don’t. We did when I was a kid pulling it out of the gravity wagon by the 5 gallon pail they had a catch drum on the hopper. Neighbor had a cleaner would do a wagons worth of beans. Would assume corn would also need cleaned.

I do get a kick out of the non-gmo label I haven’t seen much teosinte this far north.

Are you planning on feeding the oats or just getting it into rotation?

You could practice with some sweet corn if you plant an acre in the oat area and see how you like it with a low population and then the nitrogen requirement wouldn’t be out of this world the oats still will uptake N some it’s not like soybeans

Ok I may have to try that I’d just be feeding the oats I grew some last year and it worked out good

 

[Loosehandle]

Good afternoon everyone
I’m new here and I wanted to get some people’s opinions on things. Ok so I’m a 6th high school aged dairy farmer we are still milking 60 head in a stanchion barn and we still fill the loft every year so I’m not new to farming by any means but over the last few years I decided I would rent some land and buy my own equipment at the moment I have a Allis 200 a Oliver super 77 gas and a Allis d15 and a ih 730 4bt plow and Oliver 4340 3bt and a 14 foot disk and a 10 foot moline drill and jd 290 corn planter and I have a Oliver 18 combine being delivered tomorrow and a new idea two row picker. Ok for my question so last year I hired my dad to plant my 9 acres and he used his 12 row and he had bought extra seed and it yield 175 or so and this year I’m spilting my 9 acre piece in two and planting one half oats and other soybeans and then I’m planting my four acre piece corn and then I’ll keep most of the grain for feed for my sheep and I wanted to try to do open pollinationed or non gmo corn and bean seed like they did back in the day I’m curious of anyone has had experience with doing that and what I should look out for and I curious what I should do with my combine what I should look for or anything
Thanks for everyone’s advice

Starting out at your age I'd learn as much as I could about computers and tech and forget about farming.

 

[rrlund]

That’s what my dad was telling me and that kinda what I was thinking to maybe I will just plant regular seed but I might a test plot bag just so I could try a couple rows out and see what it’s all about. Also thanks lot for the advice

Instead of buying a whole 'nuther bag of non GMO seed and messing around with that, why not just leave a couple of rows without spraying them and see if you can keep the weeds out of that? If you can't, you'll have the option of cleaning it up with Roundup and not risking a total failure.

 

[rustred]

It’ll only going to be 4 acres of so I was just gonna row crop cultivate then and then I guess if I need to I will just walk them and pull the weeds

you listen to Stompin Tom's song Tillsonburg ! first thing i thought of when you said your gonna hand pull weeds. i get enough of a sore back keeping my 30'x 40' garden clean. my back still aches when i hear weeds!

 

[1948CaseVAI]

curious to see how long this lasts actually, 5-10 years? then what

My heart kind of breaks for the OP as I also had a farming fantasy many years ago when my dad and grandfather cut 6000 acres of wheat about every year and had that much in summer fallow and I could probably have gotten ahold of that. But my dad talked to me realistically about the furure. Reality set in so I went to college and moved to Wichita to support a family. I have learned that small operations are doing great if you can feed your family on it, but you will never "feed the world" as the saying goes. Small operators from airlines to railroads to food companies are going away as consolidation takes hold and reality sets in. Newer elevators only want botton dump grain trailer semis now and the old farm trucks I grew up with are now only for parades. Some of the folks I went to school with are still farming but largely on some family owned land but largely land leased from the heirs of the smaller farmers of the past who live out of state now.

When I graduateded high school in 1969 we had just over 100 in my class. SInce then the schools in at least four surrounding towns have closed up and the kids from those areas now go to my old high school, but the last graduating class was less than 50. The town used to have 7 gas stations and now has two. It lost over a third of the old population. If it wasn't for a large state prison and mental hospital it would be a ghost town. Rural population is in the dumper (in KS anyway) and all the little towns I see now have antique stores in the old buildings that used to be thriving retail. I use the county appraiser web site to view the land and ownership and I see old family names on a lot of it but those folks now have addresses out of state and the land is leased to current BTOs.

The world of growing massive food belongs to ADM, Cargill, ConAgra and other huge corporations. They, along with Monsanto and other chem and fertilizer companies are the ones feeding the world.

I wish the OP well of course but I echo tractorford's question: Then what?

 

[rrlund]

My heart kind of breaks for the OP as I also had a farming fantasy many years ago when my dad and grandfather cut 6000 acres of wheat about every year and had that much in summer fallow and I could probably have gotten ahold of that. But my dad talked to me realistically about the furure. Reality set in so I went to college and moved to Wichita to support a family. I have learned that small operations are doing great if you can feed your family on it, but you will never "feed the world" as the saying goes. Small operators from airlines to railroads to food companies are going away as consolidation takes hold and reality sets in. Newer elevators only want botton dump grain trailer semis now and the old farm trucks I grew up with are now only for parades. Some of the folks I went to school with are still farming but largely on some family owned land but largely land leased from the heirs of the smaller farmers of the past who live out of state now.

When I graduateded high school in 1969 we had just over 100 in my class. SInce then the schools in at least four surrounding towns have closed up and the kids from those areas now go to my old high school, but the last graduating class was less than 50. The town used to have 7 gas stations and now has two. It lost over a third of the old population. If it wasn't for a large state prison and mental hospital it would be a ghost town. Rural population is in the dumper (in KS anyway) and all the little towns I see now have antique stores in the old buildings that used to be thriving retail. I use the county appraiser web site to view the land and ownership and I see old family names on a lot of it but those folks now have addresses out of state and the land is leased to current BTOs.

The world of growing massive food belongs to ADM, Cargill, ConAgra and other huge corporations. They, along with Monsanto and other chem and fertilizer companies are the ones feeding the world.

I wish the OP well of course but I echo tractorford's question: Then what?

I sure don't want to discourage him. I rented my first piece of ground when I was 12. Dad did his level best to try to talk me out of farming later on when I was in high school. Some of his friends told me later on that he said he didn't know why I wanted to farm, that you'd think after watching him work for nothing that I would have learned, but I was determined. Even when the time came that I either needed to buy the farm from him, or go to Farm Credit and try to strike out and buy another farm, he had to think it over for a while. This from a guy who was ready to sell the place to Ore Ida when they came in and started buying up farms to grow potatoes. About the only thing that stopped that was that he still owed Grandma on a land contract and she and his oldest brother told he couldn't do it.

They say luck is just being prepared to take advantage of opportunities. I guess the opportunities came along at just the right time or something for me. If the OP really wants to farm and is prepared when those opportunities come along, he'll make it if he wants to. I don't know if it's a matter of being too naive to know you could fail or being too stubborn to admit when you should walk away, but one or the other must work.

 

[showcrop]

Starting out at your age I'd learn as much as I could about computers and tech and forget about farming.

That is not helpful to someone at Whistlin200's stage in life.

 

[showcrop]

I learned how to shear my own and I have a few people who buy wool for spinning or whatever they use it for usually around 75 to 100 a fleece

We used to have sheep. What breed do you have?

 

[Whistlin200]

We used to have sheep. What breed do you have?

Mainly just a back yard breed I raised them all from bottle lambs I got from the neighbors and they started out being sufffolk and then I bred them with a Dorset ram so there kinda mixed

 

[1948CaseVAI]

That is not helpful to someone at Whistlin200's stage in life.

Would you prefer he gets his hopes and dreams up then finds out that he no longer fits the economic model on the world? Some say that going broke is a growth opportunity, and never having been broke I can't disagree. But from the outside looking in it looks like disappointment and heartache and serious disruption to your life.

I am quite thankful for honest advice I got in the late 60s and early 70s and as I watch the world now, it is all coming to fruition right in front of me.

 

[rrlund]

Would you prefer he gets his hopes and dreams up then finds out that he no longer fits the economic model on the world? Some say that going broke is a growth opportunity, and never having been broke I can't disagree. But from the outside looking in it looks like disappointment and heartache and serious disruption to your life.

I am quite thankful for honest advice I got in the late 60s and early 70s and as I watch the world now, it is all coming to fruition right in front of me.

Re read his original post. He's already farming with his dad. He just wants to start something on his own.