Why Not Lease?

[drafthorsey]

One of the topics that come up quite frequently seems to be “How do I get a loan for the farm I want”?

Had a young guy who’s a the son of a friend come out this week and help with the haying. He loved it. Looking for a little direction in life, welding is his current trade, and thought about taking a turn at farming. I take this as “how do I get to where you are”? Well where I am is paid for by my business and I am nowhere near set up to go it alone without the income from my other life. That’s how I got here. Drought would have knocked me out of business last year as the place’s bottom line is just too small (as a part time farmer) in terms of profit too make it without another income. No hay, no income.

Why not lease and see if you like the business? Why not see if you can manage a little profit from 6 acres and see how that goes before jumping into this grand scheme of what I call being “land poor”? Got several neighbors hanging on by a thread and the bank doesn’t stop sending you monthly payment envelopes because you’re short in the savings account.

I’m leasing 6 acres of vegetable garden from myself in hopes of growing the kinds of crops some of the local chef’s tell me they want. I’ve given myself 3 years of growing to get a product they want year after year. Six acres of vegetables is plenty of work. So for the new folks who would like to one day farm, with only a welding background, why not lease and see if you like the work?

[PhilG]

Lease is good…
I just leased 30 acres for hay, low water year around here for sure, any advise on the normal split for leased land hay, 80-20 ? or dose this make me a share cropper? my improving the land covers this year, but next year I have to do a split on the hay.
i’m doing all the irrigation and cutting out a lot of willows and wild rose, and going through about 100 rounds a day on the critters right now also, it hasn’t been hayed in 4-5 years so parts of it needs some work to get it back.
Around here leasing is the only way for the vast majority of us to get on land, we have 40 acres of dry land that would have been literally 7 to 10 times more if it was pasture land in the valleys. I agree with all that you said, it would be nice to start some networking of getting unused land into the hands of the users affordably, cause as we all know- monthly bills Suck!

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