Our land will not support a living off of cows- not enough land (less than 50 acres in pasture)and the soil is terrible(crawdad soil)
Feeder Calves need inputs to grow enough to make money on our grass/land
Inter seeding is VERY hit and miss. We started with rented pastures and that worked good- till they got ripped out from under you over and over. Thats when we bought the 100 acres- we have 100 more acres but its in woods and hubby wants it to stay that way.
We have always been the ONLY full time farmers in the county without an outside income. And I have no long term debt(I do have money borrowed to buy calves and feed), we paid as we went on everything but the chicken houses(I took from the cattle to pay them off). I know how to live on next to nothing
We made choices based on making of living for both of us-- cows would not do that here with what we had available.
Once into the chickens we were stuck- had to ride that one out
We started out making REAL good money preconditioning- all the others choices were so we could do it easier(labor was killing both of us) and to do more(expenses were going up)
Each choice led to the next- each made good sense at the time.
We always made money and it seemed we were progressing. Counted on building assets and selling timber for retirement.
Economic meltdown makes the Assets and timber not enough to retire on.
We hopefully will make great money this year as we had storage and I had most of my feed bought cheap before it jumped. And I managed to buy most of the calves at the low end of the fall market.
what kills me is that next spring it starts all over again trying to squeeze water out of a rock. Unless feed prices drop and the only hope of that is if demand drops, if demand drops the cattle market tanked.
Thsi is a bad time of year for me
I get the winter blues
I have to do the year end records
Hubby buries his head in the sand....... again
He keeps telling me patience it will get better- I'm still waiting
If I could have a do over............
No chicken houses
Hubby would have gotten a job with benefits(he easily could have)
One fenced pasture (for bringing in new calves/cows/bulls, if I used bulls)
No working pens, feeding pens, catch pens- custom hire someone to bring in portable system to work up and haul cattle
Sm Tractor, bushhog
Rent local no till drill
Enough temporary hot fencing to build two rotation pens- Out of one into the next-
A trailer to haul water to where they were
Contracted hay - maybe a canvas hoop storage building(no property taxes)
Cattle high, sell most- cattle low, buy back
If I couldn't feed them they would leave
If it couldn't be loaded up and hauled off the place do without it.
Oh I forgot another good one- we cleaned up some old timber tracts 30 years ago and spent very dear money to replant heavily. We counted on being able to sell a pulp thinning to send the kid to college-- then the tree huggers "saved the trees" and killed the pulpwood market.