Our farmers’ market experience was that people were more concerned about “no spray” than “USDA Organic.” To be fair, we didn’t sell cow or goat, just produce.
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I may need to clarify here. I’ve done all this before. I lived on my parents farm for 7 years in south-central Kentucky, and we tried our hand at all of it. Strip grazing cows, organic market gardening, meat chickens, egg chickens, dairy cows, sheep, pigs. It was a good life but the income wasn’t keeping up, and savings slowly ran out. Eventually the decision was made to shut down the farming operation and move to town. In my experience, it is very difficult to make a living selling food directly from a farm unless you cater to rich people in a large city. At this point, I have no interest in doing that.
Although we have a fair bit of land here, my goal is to provide mainly the food we need to eat and a mild surplus for family, friends or possibly to sell. A garden, couple beef and milk cows, egg layers. Possibly goats and sheep. The environment is ideal for raising my family, and I won’t risk burnout trying to make it pay. To me this is the crucial distinction between a “farm” and a “homestead”. Farmers primarily grow crops for sale, homesteading is more about self-reliance.
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Chris, the last time I saw your family was at Argus in 2023, and then you had 6. What is the update now? Inquiring minds would like to know.
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My youngest brother lives here with us now, and we’re expecting again. That makes eight, come July.
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This is true, most farms at 80 acres aren’t profitable for it to be a ‘job’. I was thinking 20-30 head of beef, and just sellling them on the market. I wouldnt do direct to table, that is a pain in the butt, but I do know farmers that will sell 1/6th of a cow and just keep track of buyers then take them to the slaughterhouse and such. I would just stick with one animal and get good at it. I might add chickens just because our egg prices skyrocketed due to the ‘free range’ laws but they are both relatively easy.
It would give you extra money and food for not a whole lot of time.
For the kids our county fair through 4h and FFA clubs for the show the animals, they can sell their animals and businesses buy them at a premium.
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Farmer Jesse is dropping his organic certification and no longer doing market sales, I guess because he is a soccer fanatic. One of my daughters played soccer in High school so of course I had to sit through the matches and pretend I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else including the dentist office. I’m not good with boredom. Anyway I mention Farmer Jesse because he is in Kentucky, so applicable to Chris’s homesteading situation. I think Jesse can give up part of his operation because he has the youtube channel revenue and a patreon channel and crazy people just send him money. Otherwise making money as a grower or doing livestock is long days and more risk than the average person can deal with and not find themselves with a jacket that the sleeves are tied in the back. As far as organic certification goes, I have been on a homesteading site for many years with up to a dozen growers doing week end markets. None wanted to hassle with inspections and didn’t opt for being government certified but placed notices on their tables that all their produce was grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides and their base customers understood that it was in fact organic. I think i was going somewhere with this post when I started but now the oldtimers disease has kicked in. I’m going to post it anyway. Maybe someone can decipher it. i’m pretty sure it was going to have something to do with worms though. That’s were I usually end up.
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If you sell less like 5k and do direct to consumer, you don’t need certification to call it organic. I don’t think Chris wants to deal with the direct to consumer market. I don’t think veggies are worth it. The idea is really to break even while getting tax write offs for tractors, mowers, sheds, tools, etc. Doing the whole farmers market stuff is another level of tedious.
My philosophy is, if you have 1 cow, you might as well have 20 and then you can afford get better tools to make it easier. What I don’t know is where you can wholesale organic cows. I know there is a market that takes them, but i don’t know much about it. I know the sheep go to Detroit.
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Yup
Thanks for graciously putting up with those of us who like to be helpful, but don’t have much to add 
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