Western NY Future Farmer

Hello Denise and welcome.

Hard to say how to advise you. I guess I would suggest to proceed as slowly as possible. The mode of traction is a relatively minor point in your whole endeavor, you have got a lot of steep learning curves ahead of you. Best learning around is on working, for-profit farms like the one you hope to start.

I would suggest an apprenticeship. A typical apprenticeship would probably entail putting your project on hold for the time you are doing it and working very hard for little or no pay. But in the right kind of situation it is a very cheap way to learn a lot of expensive lessons the easy way. Failing that, you might offer to work for free for whatever farmers in your area are doing the kind of work that interests you, in return for being able to learn and ask questions.

Having said that I do believe that the skills required to start up and run a small farm are learnable and that it can be done in conjunction with raising a family. But not the least bit easy. Invest as much time as you can getting real experience.

Denise,
If you are around dairy people, you might consider working cattle. When we first started moving toward draft power, I was thinking horse. When I went to my first class introducing the draft animals, I found oxen much more attractive for a variety of reasons, not least less expense to keep and equip.
If you can get hold of Drew Conroy’s book “Oxen: A Teamster’s Guide” published by Storey, that might set the juices working.
Bull calves can be real cheap, relatively easy to train and fertise as they go. They come real young(we brought ours home at a week old), so imprinting and dominance are not issues.
There are quite a few ox teamsters on this forum who are willing to teach.
oxnun

Welcome Denise,

My only feed-back is that beside the animal husbandry and working skills, starting out to build your way slowly into a farming enterprise can be hard financially. Adding to that the cost of purchase and maintenance of tractors can set the tone of the operation for a long time. If you have any sense that draft animals are what you want to use, then bring that objective up to the top of the priority list.

There is no doubt that learning the farming skills and strategies can be very similar on both types of operations, and those skills are also prerequisites to successful farming, but a lot of operations that are built around tractor use have a hard time making the transition to draft animals.

If you start out with drafts from the beginning the growth will be pretty slow, but you will be blessed with an operation that does not have to be modified, but you will also benefit from a personal investment in terms of improving skills that you just can’t get with tractors.

This does equate to some financial value as well, as you become your own primary resource for training, and application, and systems development. For the money draft animals are by far the most versatile source of motive power.

Research is good, and make sure that you make do with what you have. If it is more convenient to work with a local vet, than to head off to southern Ohio for a full fledged internship, then that is an excellent first step. You definitely need to see how you feel around animals.

Anyway you cut it, I would suggest that if you truly have an interest in draft animals, then it will work best if you put your weight behind that objective sooner than later. Many of us on this board have experience with family and community members who question such far fetched ideas. It can be hard to work through, but like so many other lifestyle choices, when you come clean with yourself and focus without apology on your true mission, miracles happen.

This may not be a factor in your case, but I just wanted to throw out the encouragement.

Good luck, Carl

A couple of things come to mind in reading your post and the balance of this thread. Not sure how expensive land is in your area, Monroe County, NY if I remember where Rochester is located, but you might look into leasing at least some of the land you will need first to help knock down the upfront costs associated with taking on something of this scale. It would also give you the opportunity to get your system down pat before being saddled (no pun intended) with long term debt; unless of course you are in the position to purchase your land outright, which, if so … never mind the debt issue.

Relative to using part of your land to stable animals for others; that could be an extra income stream for you, one which we have considered ourselves in the past. Your situation may be different in New York State, but in our state the liability was so horrendous that we couldn’t afford the incremental insurance. This is in a state where there is a specific law exempting “equine practitioners” from liability. That turns out to mean that the people who would board with us could not sue us if they or their animal was injured or killed on our property, but virtually anyone in the general public could if they were injured or killed while on our property and were impacted in any way by our or other peoples horses. That is why we don’t allow visitors on our property when we are doing anything besides just feeding the horses. Insurance agents looked at our business plans and proposals and said “no thanks” when asked to provide a quote on liability insurance. Investigate this carefully before committing to anything.

Finally, I am not trying to pour cold water on your plans by saying the following. That said I want to be honest with you. You are proposing something that is very doable, and it almost directly mirrors our dreams. Yet, I don’t get the sense that you have a real passion for the “horse drawn” aspect of your dream / vision. That in my mind is a real red flag. I think you will complicate things greatly by introducing another aspect of the production process that you will have to master in order to succeed in your endeavor. If you had a lifetime of experience and deep love of horses or cattle, but not draft horses (or oxen) … then I would say yes go for it. If you didn’t have much experience with animals, but had “always dreamed” about working with them; then by all means get the experience and proceed. In your case, I would be very cautious before investing in animals and equipment before determining if you would even like working with them. One thing about a small tractor is if you don’t like the farming deal after all, you can get out from under your equipment fairly quickly and easily … probably without taking a financial bath. If you pursue draft animals and decide to bail out you will be faced with deciding the fate of a living, breathing being that did nothing wrong other than not being the answer to your traction needs. To me that is a fairly significant issue. Proceed cautiously (but do proceed), and good luck.

Denise, I would still try to visit some farms before you get too invested in any plans. Maybe animal power is not for you, but maybe sitting on a tractor is not for you either. If you decide that animal power is for you, I would be cautious about planning on starting with tractors and then switching over to animal power later. When you hit a rough spot with the animals (we all do), it will be extremely tempting to just go get the tractor. The result of that will likely be animals that are less used, less trained, and less conditioned, and the temptation to “get the tractor” will be even greater. This is why I have shunned the tractor, but there are plenty of people on this board who mix animals and tractors without seeming to abandon thier animals. I know I don’t have that sort of discipline when the machine is just sitting there and time is ticking away… In checking out animals, you might want to check out work mules too. I have heard alot of people say thier attitudes are somewhat “doglike.” Again, you will definately want a well trained one.

PS. Another animal to think visit and think about, especially if you are not working much ground, is a donkey. I have read that they can be useful for guarding your sheep too, so he/she might not be out of a job if you don’t end up using him/her much.