Can you make a living from a smallholding?

[contadino]

Contadino/a is there other things you 'could' do to make a more lucrative operation?

I know small holders who are quite happy with the status quo but many of them are aware they 'could' open a farm shop, raise more livestock to sell, make deals with local businesses, etc, etc...

What I am suggesting is that there is a way of making (possibly a healthy) income from small-holding, but it might involve doing things that you don't want to do, or perhaps they feel to much like playing the corporate game, and a heavy percentage of small holders have escaped the rat race for that very reason.

There are probably things we could do to generate more income, but there aren't enough hours in the day. Keeping a smallholding is, IMHO, more than a full-time job. Dawn to dusk, 7 days a week. Yes, we could concentrate on, say selling more olive oil, but we'd just blow all the extra income on getting someone to help with the veg plot, or fencing work, or home improvements, etc..

[Thomzo]

We went to see a plot of land at the weekend and it really re-inforced just how difficult it would be. The plot was a little over 2 acres of steep slope, heavily wooded and no chance of planning permission and it was still up for £15k. Any sort of sensible land would just be far too expensive. I think he's gone off the idea.

Thanks for all your input.

Zoe

[ellesherwood]

had three holdings from one acre to forty. so i really can speak from experience. i am in no way being negative i think its a great life and the more people do it the better but i would not be doing your friend any favours if i was not honest. hopefully i can be honest and it wil help them , not put them off, just warn them honestly , of the pit falls.

We have a 'true smallholidng' we grow veges and eggs , breed chickens , sheep, produce wool and some craft products , ( herbal cosmetics) and work at it 24/7 literally, there is no such thing as a day off. heres the rub, as shakespear said if you have no mortgage no car no phone no additional bills you will still need a large capital fallback because when you start up your feed bills and bedding costs worming , vets bills, registration of bodies appropriate to the area you work in will all need paying before you have any money coming in . also bear in mind that if you have a water meter the cost can be truly phenomenal. especially if you intend to grow any covered crops .

the paper work and legislation involved is complex and changes all the time , take ear tagging, it changed from a single tag / tatoo to a double tagging system only jan of this year, but later this year the plan is to implement another system of electronic data tag . this change alone for many sheep farmers will make the difference of their already minimal financia margins to such a degree that it could see a great many of them go out of production . this may sound like a detail which doesnt concern you, but all these things are worth knowing about especially as margins will be small for the first two years. or there abouts.

make sure you have your holding number in place before you go any further as if this was someone elses holding before, it has to be cleared for transfer , if they have any outstanding problems with the holding this can hold things up for you.

i love the idea your friend has , and wish them all the best with it, but the best way to get the most from it, is not to expect to mluch from it , not for a while at least . dont but put off . but dont expect an easy time . but then part of the fun is triumph over adversity. its what humans are all about. if i can be any more help or if your friend takes up the holding and needs a quick guide through the maze that is farming legislation and i can be of any help just let me know

all the best , i hope it works out and i hope the advice has been some use to you


kee smiling

[bodrighy]

We got hooked on the idea of a smallholding back in the early 70's and even found a place we could afford in Shropshire. When we looked at all the pros and cons including all the things that we would have to buy in we realised that we just didn't have what it takes. The idea is still there with us, we aim to be as self suffucient as possible but at the end of the day it isn't possible to live in this country at least without money. Taxes, rent, things that you can't make or grow yourself. Theoretically we could do a lot more more but at the end of the day the work level goes so high it stops being enjoyable and becomes work and defeats the whole purpose. Now we make and grow what we can but still need to 'earn' money as well.

Pete

[Mal]

Isn't this why people moved off smallholdings in the first place - if you look at 1600/1700s, lots of people subsisted on the land, but as soon as you get hit by anything you weren't planning for - crop failure, animal sickness, your own illness, hordes of soldiers burning your buildings and crops, etc. it all falls apart and you have to move to the city and sell your children to survive. Thus people moved to the less healthy/appealing/sustainable option of waged labour because it affords some predictability of income.

That's how I understand it anyway, at least at an abstract level.

[Eigon]

Enclosure had a lot to do with it too in England - the land owners wanted a work force that were reliant on them for wages, rather than self reliant, so they'd only work for the land owners when they needed to. If you have a small holding and the common to graze your cow, or flock of ducks or whatever, and perhaps a loom in the cottage, and the local farmer is offering a really low wage, you're not going to bother with the farmer unless you're desperate.
Hence the rhyme about stealing the common from the goose.
And only the land owners could vote, of course, which made it easy to get the Enclosure Acts through Parliament.

[Stonehead]

You can't make a living off most smallholdings and especially not a lucrative one, but then you never could. Smallholdings and crofts have traditionally been a way of making limited incomes go further by providing a family (or families) with food, fuel, clothing and the like. Most traditional smallholding and crofting families relied on one or more sources of off-farm income to provide the things their holding couldn't and vice versa. So, they worked on bigger farms, on fishing boats, in fish processing, in mills and mines, on estates, etc.

It's only relatively recently that people have begun to expect a smallholding to be able to meet all their needs and make them "self-sufficient". For semi-retired or retired people without a mortgage and children, this "dream" is probably achievable although, strictly speaking, pensions and investment income are still off-farm income.

For families like ours, with young children and a mortgage, we continue to maintain the older, and more realistic, tradition. The Other Half's salary pays the mortgage, buys clothes, and meets the "modern" bills (insurance, car, phone, etc). My work on the croft feeds us, maintains the buildings, tools and limited machinery, and generates small surpluses that we can barter or sell for things we need.

One of the key aspects to living on a smallholding in the long-term is being able to live on much, much less than most modern Westerners. The less goods you finance from your off-smallholding income, the better off you are.

Unfortunately, many people don't seem able to cope with having far fewer modern "necessities" and having to put in the relentless hard work in all weathers that a smallholding or croft requires. I know from speaking to estate agents and solicitors up here that most people who try it give up after three years or so, and I read a recent Australian newspaper article that suggested the same thing was true there.

They also don't realise that you can't generate a lucrative income from a smallholding. We get a constant stream of people who, in the process of buying pigs from us, tell us of their grand plans to create a very profitable business out of their newly bought holding. Their plans range from organic farm shops to bio-fuel production to weekend "holistic" retreats to charcoal making to essential oil production to woodland crafts to bee-keeping to artisan cheese making and more.

They're all nice ideas, but few have sufficiently large a customer base to generate a decent income and those that do often require a such huge investment in time and money that they may never be recouped. (And most people don't usually cost their business properly and hide the true cost from themselves, which is no way to run a business.)

We've found it much better to concentrate on running the croft for ourselves, with the various income/barter opportunities coming along after that.

When we started, for example, we didn't intend becoming pedigree pig breeders and just wanted a couple of pigs a year for ourselves. However, we found few people were producing the pigs we wanted and we also learned that other people wanted the same pigs, too.

We started breeding pedigree pigs and they now make a useful contribution to the croft, although they're not conventionally profitable. (They cover their costs, provide us with pork, and generate a few hundred pounds a year to invest in tools and implements.)

But people come to us, see what we do, see the price we ask for pigs, and think "Aha! There must be good money in that" or "Wow! I could sell gourmet pork!". They're after the lucrative income but can't see there isn't one to be made. They race off to copy what they think we do and 12 months later their pigs are "free to a good home" in the local paper.

Meanwhile, we're still plugging along, working hard and enjoying what we do because we're doing it for us and have no intention of seeking the every elusive "pot of gold". We believe that while you can't make a living off a smallholding or croft, you can manage to live on one quite well.