Farming Benefits

Was doing reading recently about agrarianism and stumbled across one of those 'duh' statements but for some reason it seemed more profound than I normally would have thought. The same principle also applies to being self employed in many cases so do with the quote what you will :)

A farmer does not sell his labor but the fruits of his labor, and as such is able to retain many of the benefits of his labor for himself—land he has improved, tools he has made, skills he has developed, along with the fruits he chooses not to sell. But a wage laborer can only sell his labor, which is mixed with materials he does not own to create fruits which he does not own; the benefits of his labor accrue to his employer, not to him.

This quote is from a series of blog posts discussing how far Christians have moved from their agrarian roots, it is a good read.

Texas Veterans Land Board (TVLB) Program

This post is to help individuals considering using the TVLB for purchasing their rural property. To give a little background our journey started with wanting to buy some property for our primary residence. We were looking at 15+ acres in most cases and finding a company to finance that amount of property is difficult. We have decent credit (750+ FICO without any derogs) and our biggest limitation was a significant down payment since we wanted to pay cash to get everything set up on the property. We have purchased a home before and this was our first rural process but I did enough reading on the front end to get an understanding at a macro level what was necessary to get into a piece of property.

The TVLB website will provide a lot of information to get you started but one area where the website is explaining the post closing process. After some discussions with a manager within the TVLB it became obvious they are there to close the deal on the property, not assist you after closing except in approving easements. This is probably one of those things in life where you can only learn by experiencing however I'm hoping to help people in the future who wish to utilize the TVLB and live on their property.

We finally closed on the property within the 'Chronology of a Land Loan' discussed on their website. One thing to keep in mind if using the TVLB is that it can take a long time for the title company to get the paperwork to the TVLB to process. If you wish to expedite this process you, the landowner, needs to put pressure on the loan company to get it to the TVLB in a timely manner. It is my understanding the chronology page will be updated in the future but again, it is your responsibility to know when and where to put pressure on people in the process.

In conclusion we might use the TVLB again however my wife and I have both agreed that the we would use the TVLB again is if we have 6 months of lead time once we extended an offer or we're just buying the land for investment purposes and not to live on.

How To Build Your Own Home

My wife and I have been discussing for awhile the benefit of building our own home. Since a home purchase is one of the largest purchases you'll ever make saving money on the cost of building a home can have significant financial rewards in the future. We will be closing on our acreage soon and have been looking for a temporary structure while we build the home we've been wanting.

In the quest on the internet to find a good book covering all aspects of home building there were so many options I isolated the search using the following criteria:
1) I want someone who has done it from start to finish as an individual, not a builder who is writing it as he hired out most of the work as I want to see all the good and bad.
2) The books needs to be balanced, not some pump me up publication that side steps the pain and realities of doing it yourself.
3) It needs to provide plenty of pictures and I am a visual learner. I can read thousands of words of text but a picture helps me to reverse engineer some things that might be missing from the explanation.

With those basic criteria and more time than money I zeroed in on a couple of books but finally settled on Sweat Equity by Larry Angell. When the book arrived I devoured it in about 2 days and must say after finishing it I feel confident that I could handle the process and issue that come up along the way. The nice thing is Larry has provided a mini ebook to read that is really just the first few chapters of the book, it helps discuss the why more than the how and I think does a decent job of helping you understand the long term benefits of doing it yourself but also providing enough pain to help you realize you might want to walk away if you have a aversion to working hard.
Sweat Equity, Building a House at Half Cost

Visit Larry's site and look around, he provides a lot of good, free information as well as a mailing list although he doesn't send out things very often.

Home Based Business

Being a work-at-home Dad for over 3 years has brought an interesting perspective to my life. Without going into too much detail it has caused me to rethink many of the things I took for granted before: job aspirations, employment, seeking out the best career/job, commuting and the list goes on. These are just the job side of the equation and I'm not including the personal though process that has led me to realign how I do many things in my family life. To say it has been a wonderful opportunity would be an understatement.

Ok, personal blathering aside if you're looking for ways to generate income from your farm there are so many resources to help out there it isn't doing them justice to just mention a handful but I'll try. One recommendation which I've mentioned here before is to look at ways to maximize your time, why sell eggs for store prices when you can get more US$ from them? Find a niche market and leverage your experience to take full advantage of the market just begging for your goods & services.

Here is a article on the Countryside Magazine website by Ken Scharabok, he has an ebook that has good reviews that I haven't had an opportunity to read yet however from what I'm seeing on this article it should be good. Some of the books he recommends we've either read in the past or heard good things about, unfortunately there is only so much time in the day to cover the plethora of material floating around out there.

Best wishes

Hatcheries

If you're looking for a place to buy newborn chickens I'd recommend you take some time to visit Ideal Poultry. Where we live in Texas it is a short enough drive where we can visit and be home in time for dinner. They've been in business since 1937 and are located in Cameron, Texas. There are a few other hatcheries out there that do a decent job however they're local and have a good reputation.

If you're not sure about the process of raising newborns you should read some of my previous posts as well as visit some of the websites provided below before purchasing the baby chickens.

Beginner's Guide for Raising Baby Chickens
Care Tips for Baby Poultry
Grow Healthy Chicks
Tips for Incubating and Raising Chicks with a Mother Hen