Our BFF Farm Stay in Your Future?

Last night when I got home from work and turned on the local news (yes we have TV on the farm, we receive three channels from our roof antenna) I watched a brief segment about a couple that decided to give up the city life and move to a farm.  They had little farming experience but were looking for a change.  Ultimately they established a Farm Stay to keep their farm alive and provide themselves with an income.  Thier story kind of felt close to home since Theresa and I are doing basically the same thing, although, we didn't start this farm life out with the intention of it being our sole source of income.  Actually, I don't believe we ever considered farming for income, rather, we wanted to live on a farm to get out of the city and to enjoy raising animals and growing food for ourselves.

Getting here has been a long road.  We literally had shopped and were making offers on farm properties for 10 years, and went through three different realtors before finally making a deal.  During that time our hopes got crushed more than once to the point we thought it would never happen, but we didn't give up.  It's really not easy borrowing money to buy rural property because the lending industry considers it a higher risk market, and the homes available in our price range were either houses built 100 years ago or poorly constructed older manufactured *mobile* homes plopped down on a property and being sold for the price of a quality house built on-site.  Basically, places that lenders wouldn't touch.  For those close to us this is a 'broken record', replaying once again.

Now that we've succeeded in getting here, we're acutely aware that it wasn't cheap.  It hasn't been without worry or fear for our future either.  We know it's going to take hard work to keep our dream alive and we'll need to use this farm to supplement our income to sustain.  Watching that story about the couple turning their farm into a Farm Stay gave me hope for our future that we'll continue to live our own dream.  I doubt that we'll ever start our own Farm Stay as a source of income, our Farm Stay is really already open for free to family and friends, but we will do our best to produce food and crafts that will help support us.  It's nice to know though that we may have other options in the future if needed.  I've heard of dude ranches, but didn't realize Farm Stays are something that's becoming more popular.

We could use a bit of help around the farm, there's always lots of work, and getting people to pay us for their help for some 'education' in return would be even better.  I'd definitely smile more and even make you a farmer's pancake breakfast!

Related content you might be interested in:

1. From city streets to rural lanes: The story of starting Leaping Lamb Farm from scratch, KVAL, Dec 2017.