It might take you a few years but if you are really interested, I say go for it. I currently am no where close to making a living, but I am learning a lot and am much happier than when I was in the corporate world. This is my first year at market.
Winds dry out everything and I have never been to Texas but have heard you have droughts. Native plants might be a big seller for you, and trees that create a wind break around the gardens would really help. If you wanted to sell veggies, I would start with 1/2 acre or less at first. It is alot to take care of, maybe pick 3 or 4 items that you know will grow well for you and sell that. I think if you try to grow and sell everything possible in a garden you may get spread to thin, especially in the beginning. Organic eggs and chickens sell well.
Don't let some government hack discourage you. Good luck!

Are any of you, especially you women, actually making a reasonable living off a small piece of land and what would you suggest I do or raise to do so?

I raise a variety of vegetables and a few fruits. I run buying clubs, supply an inn and a restaurant and have a farm stand on the farm. I can financially support my family on a 1 acre intensively grown market garden. We use unheated hoop houses and greenhouses to extend our harvest through the winter ala Eliot Coleman style. I'm including a link to my farm's website below.

If you google Women Who Farm you'll find a board specifically for woman in various stages of farming.

You can go to Local Harvest, enter your zip code and see what others in your area are doing to earn a living in farming.

What are you interested in trying?

Here is a link that might be useful: Seasons Eatings Farm

Thanks so much to both of you for your encouragement.

Women Who Farm is a great website! Thanks.

In answer to your question, Robin, I'm still in a pretty rough planning stage. We currently still live in our city home near Dallas. The farm is 110 miles from here where we hope to move if we can ever sell this place. I am beginning some timid experiments here toward that goal of having a working farm when we make the move.

Here I have two bins of European nightcrawlers going, not enough to market them or byproducts yet. I am running a very small experiment with hydroponics veggie growing vs the same veggies in potting soil, both fed primarily with vermicompost tea. That experiment is also just started to see which is better for production/cost.

Our problem here w/greenhouse, which we do plan on, is more the heat of summer than the freezes in the winter and also very high, damaging winds.

My final vision, which could change tomorrow, is an integrated and/or aquaponic system. Tilapia fish in tanks, the worms and rabbit hutches over the worms, producing a good organic material to use in either a hydroponic or traditional greenhouse for the production of either veggies or floral products depending on which promises to be more profitable. Free-range chickens restoring the worn-out farm land and adding to the compost pile. Of course, all these critters must be marketable themselves as well as their byproducts.

I keep looking at Mike McGroarty's course, but wonder if it would work in our situation. We are centerpoint in a box created by Mexia, Corsicana, Hillsboro, and Waco, Texas, 30-36 miles from every one of them, all small towns except Waco which is 100,000. I understand his nursery orientation works better near a large city(????)

I do plan to get the Salatin and Coleman books on chickens and farming, but am forcing myself to wait till I finish the house here and get it on market.

Keep the ideas coming, and thanks.

Connie

Hi Babalubird - though I've been emailing you off-forum I figured I go ahead and post this message here.

You don't need to spend a ton of time thinking up a crop right now because no matter what you start out with 99% of the time it will change and you'll be in business growing and selling something else.

The main thing to explore is what are your options for marketing whatever you grow or produce on your property. There may be no farmers market nearby but if there is any sort of community there is most likely enough people that would want to buy fresh stuff. You may find yourself opening up a farmers market and running it as a business. How close is the nearest city, the nearest town? Will you have internet services? what about shipping services like FedEx?

I would not worry too much about what traditionally has been grown in your area - lord knows I'm growing stuff in my home garden that no one has ever tried to grow here.

I would look at what type of soil you have, what types of water systems? And look at what type of work you enjoy doing. Farming out in the middle of nowhere is not much fun for a real people person. There's nothing wrong with being a little of both (hermit vs belle of the ball).

The internet is a wonderful tool but most of the grower/nursery business I know only make a third of their income from it, and the people I know that sell hobby type stuff only make extra money selling on sites like ebay. So it isn't going to solve all your problems but there is nothing else out there that even compares to what you can do at home with good computer skills.

And appreciate those emails, John.

Well, I am probably more hermit than people person at this late stage in life. I love our weekends at the farm and can't wait to be rid of the big city once and for all.

The marketing is my biggest challenge because I am not the poeple person I was in my youth. I did sales work then and am burned out on it. Our ext. agent, result of our meeting, was supposed to send me some generalized marketing information. Like his other promises, I'm still waiting.

My computer skills need much improvement, but I would like to market through a website when the time is right. I did do a little mail order at one time and love the absense of face-to=face to get a sale.

I make my living on a 9 acre farm with around 3 acres in cultivation. Granted, I have been at this for over 14 years and have developed a nice customer base and have learned how to market my stuff. 3 years ago after renting a farm my husband and I bought a 9 acre farm on a busy federal highway and opened a store. the store is not yet supporting itself but sales are already up 400% over last year (this is not as good as it sounds but since we planned on giving the store 6 years to support itself and it is nearly there at year 3 I think this will work). marketing is key to making a living farming. if you do not have good markets you cannot survive financially

My husband and I work 10 hour days 6 to 7 days a week 2/3rds of the year. We do not make a whole lot but enough to pay all bills and put some into savings. Other than a mortgage we carry no debt. If you carry debt you will not survive. You have to be incredibly thrifty and inventive.

I do two farmers markets, have a on farm store and occasionally supply a local university with food as well as some restaurants. I sell year round using a combination of unheated hoop houses and growing a lot of storage crops in the summer to sell during the winter.

It can be done but it is not an easy life. But I would not do anything else.

Here is a link that might be useful: Boulder Belt Farm Blog

Incredibly long response, as usual w/ me.

An "armchair" "expert" here w/ a tiny bit of real life experience.

I wanted to be a flower farmer. Others did, why couldn't I? A neighbor offered a small parcel of land, maybe a quarter of an acre, maybe smaller-- or bigger. I hired someone to mow down 6-12' high weeds left to grow by the owner, hired someone to til it and make rows for me, and then I started sowing seeds or transplants. The weeds popped up overnight to 3-4' tall. I couldn't weed and sow at the same time. When I turned around, fresh transplants were baby greens to the grasshoppers. I had low money, very little family support, not enough product at any one time to go to a farmer's market, poor time management skills, and surely a dozen other maladies plaguing me and my efforts.

I was using the borrowed field because my home garden had too much shade, and yet, the borrowed field ended up having quite a bit of shade, too. Still, between both locations I usually had plenty of flowers for the occassional baby or wedding shower, or school event, and every once in a while, enough daffs to sell to a florist.

We found out we were moving to a different state about the time the grasshoppers ate my fresh tray of sunflower transplants, and I gave up.

I loved the adventure, and would still like to try again, but we don't have the land yet, not sure if we will. I'm also in my late 50's (egads, already? lol) and have arthritis in my hands and knees, and can't kneel and bend like I used to. Many fewer kid distractions, but money is still tight. I nearly cried at the local farmer's market the other day because someone else was living my dream, had a beautiful display of fresh cut flower bouquets. They are growing flowers and vegies on just 1.5 acres. They have another job, so the local market is enough for them, and would be for me, too, if I had that much land.

Alas and sigh. I failed for all of the reasons above, and I was only working a tiny morsel of land. Seemed huge to me.

As you start, measure out a small parcel, see how much you can keep weeded, planted, and harvested all by yourself in one season. Then make plans for the rest of the 17 acres.

You CAN find a niche, and your neighboring cities aren't THAT far away for you to attend farmer's markets, even w/ high gas prices. (I lived in TX for 34 years, and am semi-familiar w/ your area. I was in NE TX the last 14.) Someone from aprox 50 miles away from my new home comes to town 2-3 times a week for our farmer's market, and has been a regular here for a few years. Or, you could post signs/place newspaper ads that you're having a you-pick farm at your location so you don't have to travel as much.

If you haven't heard about Frank & Pamela Arnosky, get thee to Blanco and have a look around. They are the famous Texas flower growers, sell most of their stuff to Central Markets in Austin, Houston and SA, maybe to Dallas too. They may have added Whole Foods, too. They started on 8 acres, I think, and did their first flowers on about a half an acre. The rest is history. Their marketing is superb, but it goes together with their 12-18 hour work days.

Another lady near Austin does mostly weddings and events with her flowers, someone else is primarily an herb farm. There are two women in the Dallas area, Heath, that have a vegetable farm and sell in Rockwall. Another young woman S. of Ft. Worth is doing flowers & vegies up at a market near Grapevine, and an older woman is doing herbs at her home near Kilgore and then sells flowers to a Dallas or Tyler or Longview wholesalers. I knew some of these people from several years ago, some I met a year ago at an ASCFG (Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers) event at the Arnosky farm. A woman I met near Lindale had a huge 30 acre farm, mostly flowers, but her brother had a large greenhouse w/ agroponic tomatoes. Very interesting and elaborate system. I think tomatoes were the only things he grew that way, didn't have the other things you have.

However, when I was in my Master Gardener training in TX, one of the teachers was an ag expert from the "O" town, somewhere near A & M or Nacadoches, or that area. Sorry, can't remember the name. He, either on his own as his own enterprise, or, as a research project w/ the university, was doing what you're contemplating. He had tomatoes above, and some kind of fish below and was making money selling both. I thought it was the coolest idea I'd ever heard of!

The point is, you don't have to be a giant enterprise to make a living. The older lady from Kilgore said she did her herbs on an honor system. While she was delivering flowers to one of the big cities, locals would come to her farm, pick out which herbs they wanted, leave money in a box, and all were happy. She said she made $1,000 a week on herbs alone. That'd be awesome if I could do that!

Choose a few vegies or herbs or flowers, (or agraponic whatevers), try them on a small portion of land, see if you can sell them somehow to somebody, and see what happens. Hopefully you'll have better time & money management skills than I did.

Good luck!

susiq

Hi babalubird:
Being a trucker and fledgling market gardener myself,I just want to say that it takes just an acre to grow a 42000 lb tractor trailer load of watermelons.It takes an acre to grow a semi load of tomatoes,using plastic mulch and drip irrigation.When I was told this by the farmer I hauled for,I thought of the three acres we've been mowing,and started doing just what you're doing-investigating.Read" You Can Farm "by Joel Salatin.Also,if you're someone who gets motivated by being told "you can't do that",just to prove the naysayers wrong,that helps,too,I think.We're blessed to have the Amish where I live.They've created a marketing infrastructure in the form of a produce auction.They also have a fellow who is one of the auction's founders,who will sell you whatever you need in the form of drip irrigation.If your husband ever gets to Indiana,I could give you this gentleman's phone number.He's really helpful about explaining things.
Happy Farming

An important thing to remember is that it takes 7 years for any new business to get off the ground. There is just no way to shorten the learning curve. Even if you read all the right stuff, and I see lots of good advice here, you still need to adapt the ideas to your climate and develop the necessary skills through doing it yourself. I am about 5 years in myself and am just starting to feel successful. My advice would be to let your hubby keep driving, you'll need the income, while you start experimenting in a small way to see what works best out of all the ideas you have. Also, a farmers market is a good way to start selling, because you just take what you have, untill you get better and can predict your production.