How many acres?

Different world here Denise. I run on a total of 1400 acres (some years 2000 depending on a section of forest having some rain). I ranch it full time and run 150 of my own cows plus 135 on shares for family members. It makes up the larger share of our income, but it would be extremely hard to do without my wifes town job with benefits, as well as my kids providing labor (sorry Mr. Obama, my kids ride horses herding cattle, drive tractors and teams, lift bales of hay, etc. before they are in middle school).
Even with all that help and extra income we are not very well off financially, but love what we’re doing and spend a lot of time together. Good life.

80 acres, 5 tillable, flood irrigated. 10 sheep, 250 free range chickens, two great pyrenees, 50 layers, 4 drafts, 4 saddle horses. goat, and a milking cow.
Main crop has been weeds, though we are irrigating our first crop dedicated to establishing long term turf grass.
5 % of our income has been from the farm, 4 % of that is agritourism vacation rental,
but it makes a great legal and viable tax writeoff for the construction company.

Have you looked into the land link programs at all to help you get on some land with infrastructure?

I have 12 acres, 4 in an evolving tillage cycle and the balance in pasture of some sort. My animals include ~50 layers, ~25 young chickens, 2 oxen (will add 2 more this year), 5 goats, 17 geese, and 3 dogs. The most lucrative animal/crop for me has been the chickens, which I raise for thier eggs and sell the cockerels and old or cull hens for meat. They produce about $200-250 per month. The rest I am still working on. This is not a big part of my income, but it does help (rather than hurt) my finacial situation.

What you do with the land probably has more of an effect on how much land you will want than anything else. Market gardening 4 acres is a lot more work than grazing 40, for example.

I make more money of of eggs than meat chickens. I only ever have a trickle of chickens for meat. I sell these almost exclusively to friends that happen to be immigrants for China or Korea. They are happy to get unplucked, ungutted chickens and they process them at home. They show up, buy a chicken, then I (or they) cut the head off, put it in a bag and go home. These cultures are used to buying chickens like this and seem ti appriciate the feshness of the chicken. They are also used to cooking techniques that tenderize and bring out the flavor of older birds. Americans, for the most part, have lost this knowledge and expect their birds to be cleaned and plucked for them. I have sold to some Americans too, but I’ve always got people waiting for meat birds and you can guess who I would rather sell to. The kegakity if the arrangement is suspect, but really they bought the chickens live and then did what they pleased with them. I keep this on a small scake, because there is some trust involved in this. By the way, those seemingly worthless silkies are known as “black chicken” by the Chinese and you can get a premium price for thier meat. This is a niche within a niche, however, so investigate you market well.

I am not sure I what the heavy investment in oxen refers to. Bottle bulls of major breeds make good oxen and are dirt cheap. If younwant to work oxen eventually there is going to be a big investment in you time no matter how you do it. You are going to spend money on feed for cattle whether you work them or not, and they are beef no matter what. It kinda like hearing someone say ” I want to learn to drive a truck, so i am going to buy a truck and let it sit in my driveway for several years. Then i’ll sell that truck and buy a second truck that i will actually drive.” Why not just drive the truck? It’s just sitting there… I believe there would always be potential work for a team of oxen on 20-40 acres, but if you are going to be doing it all with a tractor or something else, perhaps the effort isn’t worth it. Perhaps it would be helpful to think about what exactly you want to do with 20-40 acres. Depending on how and what you do on this land, this can be a bigger bite than you can chew. I will admit I sometimes struggle with 12.

I am not sure how different the taste of a lightly worked young steer is from a young non worked steer. I am sure I would eat either one. That us the wonderful thing about oxen, they are both livestock and working animals. I won’t be eating either of my oxen for another 5 years at least (they would be 10+ years old then) but i am not committed to eating them then, either. At that point, they might be good starter team for someone, but who knows? The prospect of eating both if them is daunting just from the point if view if the mountain of meat that this is. I might sell them for meat too, but again thus is speculative at this point. What I will definately not do is sell them for less than beef price. There was an old English model of working oxen where two were calves were worked lightly, for a few years, then worked heavily in thier middle age, then fattened for slaughter in their old age. I think there is alot of wisdom in a system like this. Lots of beef and lots of power.

I am still very new with oxen, and i bought the yoke I use now. This was not the most economical choice, but i wanted to do heavy work right away and wanted to make sure it was built right as it will be the model for everything else i build. The small one for calves look especially easy to build.

Good luck no matter what you decide.

The biggest thing, is to have a plan on how much you want work, grass etc. I just inherited 640 acres and another 160 of bush. The farm was run as a tax write off for my grandfather who worked the oil industry. While i have lived and worked here since 97 i haven’t had a say in how things were done now i have to turn the farm around while dealing with the mentality of it not making money so don’t put money in it lmao strange I know. It is a daunting task when i look at the 640 acres trying to figure out what to plant what rotations etc I would so like to have started with only 20-40 acres. A good but dated book to read is Ten Acres Enough he makes the point that it isn’t how much land you have it it is how much land you can manage and properly fertilize so for me that would be two acres to start lmao.

here is a link to the book http://books.google.ca/books?id=KjsMAAAAYAAJ&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=y in the top left corner there is ebook -free put your mouse over it than click which version you want to download. I prefer PDF they are savable once they come up and easier to read.