farm notes

 

 

We finally started work outside yesterday and it felt good! My anxiety about the cold and wet spring is starting to disappear. I will still be a little behind with my flowering schedule for a couple of months but I am back on track now with my seeding schedule. I did skip a few weeks of seed sowing in the basement and sunflowers will have to wait at least another week to get seeded into the field. To make matters even better they are calling for decent weather all week.

The perennials are starting to come up and I have already seen that some of them have not made it through the winter. The last twelve months have been stressful for these guys and I’m sure that I will find more losses as the weather continues to warm and there are blank spots where there should be plants. That’s OK I was hoping to start over this year any way.

The daffodils are getting ready to flower. If it stays nice and sunny I expect there will be a few flowers by tomorrow, a couple of weeks later than “normal”. These very same daffodils were all opened up by the end of March last year and the year before it was the beginning of May. It seems like there is no normal any more only extremes one way or the other.

the deal is off

I had officially come to the decision (along with the help of my husband and homebuilder of a father) that it was absolutely most cost efficient for us to buy vacant land and build a house. A small energy efficient house. All of the places that we looked at needed new roofs, new windows, new furnace, etc. We figured it was less expensive to put these on a new house. So when I finally heard back from the loan officer at the FSA that they would not approve funds for the building of a house it took the wind out of my sails. I called around and to see if there was some way that this could still work and it seems like there is not, at least not on  my budget.

I spent the better part of the day yesterday freaking out and looking through real estate listings. Someone seriously needs to stop me from looking through these listings. We simply cannot afford what it is that we want and spending hours combing through these listings is not going to change that. We have been over this so many times and revised where we are willing to make compromises. In the end it turns out that I am still financially uncomfortable moving an hour away from the city and living in a drafty old house that needs a lot of work. The dollars just are not there. They might be some day, maybe even someday soon, but right now they are not so the deal is off. We are not buying land this year. I am hoping to work something out with Grandpa. He has really been resistant to change but there has to be a way to do something that will help a little. I have decided that there are three things that I really need to make this farming operation profitable:

1. More land.

2. Some really great plants. You know the type that are a little pricey up front and take a few years to get established.

3. Infrastructure. Like a well, a greenhouse, a shade tent.

I can really only afford  two of the three, so I am hoping that a little more land will materialize in the form of a long term lease. Again, cross your fingers for me.

the ball is rolling…

The last couple weeks I have been contemplating this question:

Is it better to make the wrong decision or no decision at all?

I am not sure, is the answer but I am tired of waiting around for the right opportunity so we are going to make an offer on a nice 7 acre property a couple of miles from where I grew up. Which I have some mixed feelings about but again, I am tired of waiting around. Vacant lots in our price range are starting to sell.

It is a lot that is hilly and gravelly in parts. And I am already thinking of all the great stuff I can plant there. I am not sure where we will live or if the farm service agency will actually lend us the money or if our conditional use permit will be approved so that we can put up a shed or hoophouses. So many ways in which this could go wrong and cost us a lot of money. Also so many ways it could go right. Cross your fingers for me.

i wish the fsa was more helpful

Wow, do I wish they were more helpful. I have talked to a number of loan officers in different counties and gotten different responses from all of them. Unless you plan to milk cows or plant hundreds of acres in corn, they don’t know what to do.  One guy was flat out no help at all. He told me that he didn’t really know how to help me and implied that he didn’t really want to learn. Also he gave me the wrong loan information. It turns out that there is more than one loan out there for people like me: wanting a farm but having no money. Good thing I decided not to farm in his county.

Then I talked to some other guy and he also told me that he was not really sure how to help me but he seemed willing to try if I would have pressed him. Which I didn’t because I was still working on coming up with that down payment.

I came up with that down payment, well most of it, and called to find out who would help me fill out this ridiculous application. I had to drive to Madison, seems silly but OK. And I met with a loan officer who was actually helpful. Turns out I didn’t need a down payment at all. Fine, now I have some operating money saved. But the downside is that a few of the properties that would have been a great fit for me are sold. Alright, that’s OK, we’ve moved on. We’re getting ready to make an offer and I have just a few more questions about this application. Now the once helpful loan officer is not returning my calls.

This application is so redundant and so not applicable to my operation, see above comment about cows and corn. But I have it mostly done after months coming up with theoretical numbers and figuring out how to convert bouquets to bushels. Now I am just wondering if they will actually loan me the money or not. They don’t have any to give out as we speak so I just have to get in line, for potentially six months. That seems like a tough sell when negotiating a price for a piece of land.

calm down

Alright, things are not so bad as they seemed a week and a half ago. Lat week I was very busy catching up on my planting. And I am happy to say that I am mostly caught up, which is a huge relief. I spent an entire day in the basement seeding about 80% of what I had to skip during most of March. I was able to begin hardening plants last week and that cleared the way for lots of new stuff to go under the lights. I might still have to bring it all in at night but that is better than waiting. So far germination has been good, which is really putting me at ease, I just have to remember to keep them watered.

I also spent a glorious day at the farm last week. I was planting my anemones and ranunculus into crates, they were starting to look a little sad all cramped up in those plug trays. There is not enough room for this in my yard so that means it’s officially farm time again and I could not be happier about that. I have had to bring them into the barn for a couple of nights but hopefully after Wednesday they can stay out for good.