Thank you all for the input but it isn't my first venture into renting and although I am not looking to get rich off of someone else's ground, I do want to make a decent profit. Jan, of the bad experiences that you have had, did you contact them first about leasing or did they contact you?
I don't think that I will or would be dealing with unseasoned city folk on the local pastures, maybe though, who knows?. I have been flat busted before in my life, so I have been educated extensively. The worst deals that I ever made were mostly my fault so am very thorough in calculating my decisions. I have built up or brought back to life about every place that I have ever had so I very well know the inputs, pitfalls, and disappointments.
I have considered buying another place but haven't found the right one. Most have houses and outbuildings that add to price considerably, but I don't need or want another house, slum lord I ain't. I also would like to easily pay for another place before I retire and with the interest rates as they are now, I'm a little reluctant to even try.
Over the years, the bad experiences have mostly been on places they had originally asked us about renting. Many were older farmers that said so and so said we might be interested in renting some land... and we used to rent alot of places... Anything we could, to be able to build cow numbers and have places to run 10-20 head type of thing. Some got sold as farmers passed and heirs did not want the places, places got subdivided up things like that. Some we kept with new owners, but then the prices went up. Yes, new fences are definitely worth something... but cattle prices were not where they are now...
The ones where we had the most trouble lately are where the heirs have the parents in nursing homes and such, the older ones can't take care of the places, and the heirs are doing what they want until they inherit and can sell off... nothing gets taken care of, and when we try to keep things up, it gets looked at... oh, this place is worth more than what xxx is paying... and they lease it out to someone that has come in and offered more... there are a couple of younger guys who have been known to do this and it has caused some real hard feelings among farmers that have always respected each other's "rented land"...
In fact, we turned down one place a couple years ago, because the owner said that they had been approached by someone wanting to rent their land, and could we increase the amount we are paying blah blah blah... we said no, that what we were paying was fair for what we could get in return without destroying the land... and that after 20 years they could see how greatly improved the carrying capacity was, the better grasses they had, and that the cattle we ran did not overgraze or we would move some out. They said well, they needed to make some changes and we said we understood, and no hard feelings and good luck. In 2 years of being overgrazed, never being bush hogged to help keep down the trash in the fields, the place looks like he//.... and when they approached us about taking it back, and still wanted the elevated rent, we said we weren't able to take on any more places since we had bought the farm where we had been the past several years.
Have another one that the demands keep increasing little by little.... we have done alot there for them, when these people bought the place it was so run down that we fed hay the first year all summer to help build up some soil/organic matter and sprayed and mowed it off to get rid of some of the trashy brush .... they asked some neighbors about who could they get to rent it since they too wanted the ag exemption... although they have enough money to pay taxes 10 times over... and it was bad. We have had it for over 20 years, and last year a friend with cattle came to my son and said, hey, are you giving up so and so's place... what's the deal, you've had it forever... seems the owners were putting out feelers for someone else to maybe rent it... and turns out they want to do all this rotational grazing they have been "educating themselves about" with planting some of this switch grass in a 3-4 acre section through some grant .... and it needed to be managed better... it has been a thorn in our side since the cattle don't like it, it only grows good in the heat of the summer, and you can't rotate in and out of it without having to run water to it since there was not water access... and we make 1 cutting hay on the adjoining field and then use it in rotation for the cattle for the remainder of the season...
This friend said they had talked some, and that he told them up front that he was not willing to move the cattle every few days, that they would not cut hay off the one section where it was being hayed now, as it was too steep for them to even consider working on that hillside, that they would run 20 pair on it and they would not move cattle in and out.... he told son that they were totally off the wall with what they wanted and if we did all that for them, they ought to be glad. This friend remembers the guy who rented it before us and what it had looked like when we started it...
The problem is they have been doing all this reading and educating themselves, and have "decided" what this place needs.... but are too busy with their own lives to want to commit to the day to day of actually doing it themselves. We have given them a place that is nice to look at, and restored the ground to where it produces some nice grass...and now they think they know how it should be managed. It is some of the steepest hillside we have, and they have their very nice house at the top of the hill.... they have put in new fences on part, new gates because the old ones "looked bad".... and probably we will be giving it up if there gets to be more demands next year. It just isn't worth the time and trouble anymore... And some of the things that they are asking for are getting a little unreasonable... but we think the wife is getting some dementia type problems now as she seems totally fine one day and then the next time she is not acting or talking right.
We had one that we just lost due to sale of the place... the guy was wonderful, we paid a rather bigger rent but he did everything... bushhogged , checked the water, would go out and rotate the cows , he was recently widowed and at a loss with what to do with himself... he was not happy rattling around in the huge house, and we knew it was for sale... sad situation for him. It was set up for horses, but worked with waterers in each field and such...
I do not want to have to travel around to 10 different places checking cattle all the time anymore... and doing work on places that are not our own.... especially the fencing and such that I do not like to do with the instability of the knees on some of this ground... it's the getting older thing too.... let these younger guys do all this grunt work like we did years ago...plus I am tired of having to go put cattle back in at places where the fences are "wish fences" and doing another "patch job" . I want gates that swing on the hinges, and fences that don't need basically to be "re fixed" every year.
Here in VA , if you put up gates yourself, because they are non-existent, or totally rotted away... to close off gateways etc... and you buy the gates because they will benefit your operation... you cannot hang them on the gate pins OR they become a part of the farm and you cannot take them with you when you leave.... So... all the gates are attached with baling wire, baling strings, and chains around the posts and have to be "drug" open and closed... it is stuff like that, that gets to the point that it just is not worth it sometimes.
