The Boring Path to Full-Time Farming That Actually Works

First, I wanna talk about the traditional farm advice, or maybe the internet farm advice of quit your job and go farm.

And if you do that, it's a financial disaster for most people because the fantasy goes something like this.

You hate your job.

I've been there.

I know the feeling.

You're miserable.

You're counting the hours while you're there.

You can't wait to leave, and you're daydreaming about just doing something else.

You start watching YouTube videos, probably at the job that you hate, about market gardening or agriculture, and you think, "Yeah, I could do that." So you put in a notice, you quit, you take your savings, maybe that's $20,000, and you start a farm.

Year one, you make $8,000 in revenue.

Your expenses were 12.

You're now broke.

Year two, you scale up.

You make $25,000 but spend 20,000.

You're barely surviving.

Year three, you give up and go back to your regular job because the farm couldn't generate enough income to support itself or your lifestyle.

Here's why this happens.

Starting a farm, or really any business, usually has a 12 to 16-month lag time between when you invest the money and when you see consistent profit.

It's not a start the farm and you're instantly profitable type business.

It just doesn't work that way, yet people want it to or believe it will for some reason.

When you quit your job that's producing income, that means you have zero income during that lag time, so you're required to live off of savings, spousal income, during that time between startup and profitability.

If you don't have that outside income from yourself, a spouse, you're just burning through savings to survive while simultaneously trying to build a business.

That, I can tell you, will be extremely stressful.

Now, you might think, "Eh, I can handle that." I guarantee most people can't with that amount of stress for long enough.

Eventually, something breaks.