How can I make money with a 1/4 section?

[unclebilly]

OK, so I have a 1/4 section. 120 acres is cultivated and produces reasonable barley and canola crops. I currently rent it out but next year, I want to start making it pay.

Some options I have considered:

Raising 40 or so head of cattle.
Boarding horses.
Getting it custom seeded and paying to have the crop taken off.
Doing crop share instead of renting.
RV and car storage.
Getting roosters and training them to be a tactical fighting squad.
Adding to the VAGEEN collection and starting a Porsche wrecking yard.

What other ideas are there? Ultimately, I might subdivide but who knows in the means time.

[porsche4life]

Rv and car storage would be your best bet....

I know very few farmers that are getting rich off of crops or cattle.... All the farmers that don't LOSE money around here grow oil wells....

You will be much better off sticking to your day job unless you REALLY know what you are doing jacking with farming....

But some mini storages or a secure storage lot wouldn't be a bad idea...

[RWebb]

meth lab

[porsche4life]

Wacky Tobacky....

[Normy]

I thought a quarter section was 1/4 of a square mile or 1/4 of 660 acres or 175 acres. I've certainly been wrong before~

N!

PS: OH! I just saw that you are in Canada. That means hectares- and sane health care.

[porsche4life]

I think he is saying that 120 acres is free for use... the other 60 is already being used...

In most of the USA a 1/4 is 180acres....

[Brian Cameron]

RV / car storage looks like it could be pretty lucrative - the closer to town / main highways, the more the facility seems to be able to charge - roughly how close to Calgary is your 1/4?

For RV storage most places seem to be charging about $600-800/year for a trailer or RV, depending on length. Startup costs don't seem that daunting - a fence, a key card access system, and maybe video surveillance.

Seems to be a real need for car storage in cowtown too, there's a guy near deWinton who has a couple of good size steel agri buildings; I used to store the 911 there until we built a house with 3rd garage bay.

Facility is very discrete - you'd never know what it was from the road - full of exotics, classic detroit iron, even a good sized "porsche only" section. Last time I was there, he was putting a lift at the end of each row, with a set of overhead tracks so he could go double decker.

I think he's charging abou $800 a year, or $150/month for storage, IIRC there were about 40 rows of cars, probably about 6-8 deep, now stacked double - that's pretty close to 1/2 mil per year. However, the building costs would be significant, and bigger op costs (heating, mainly, plus sprinkler system, insurance, security etc).

Too bad you don't have a long, skinny chunk of land - with Race City closing in 2011, there's gonna be a big need for a road course near Calgary...

[Normy]

I've just always wanted about 600 acres.

When I was 15 in 1981, I used to take my .22 WMR out in the middle of a farm field in Temperance, Michigan and shoot a bunch of terra-cotta pots. My WMR was amazing [I still own this rifle] and would crack some of those pots. In 1995 I bought my SKS and my MAK-90, both because Billy-bob Clinton tried to take them away from me.

[What a drunk idiot Bill Clinton was! I flew for the airline that was his official campaign airline in 1992. He used to "surf" a cafeteria tray down the aisle when the plane rotated for take off; He'd ride that thing down the aisle, shaking hands with the press as he went. And as he went, his "wife" the nefarious "hillary" was never more than 5 feet from her ATTENDANT. Hello?

[pwd72s]

Christmas trees?

[unclebilly]

I am 25 miles SE of Calgary.

1 mile X 1 mile is 640 acres which is a section. A 1/4 section is 160 acres which is 1/2 mile x 1/2 mile. Alberta was surveyed around the turn of the century, before the metric system was en vogue so land is still measured in acres up here. I have roughly 40 acres of marshy area that won't sustain a crop (usually too wet) and the soil is alkali (too basic) so these are in prairie grass.

Race track is out - my MD (County) is totally against this. They have pretty much shut down the track at Alderside that was built without their blessing. All of the other track builds have gone sideways because of inability to get MD blessing / zoning amended. I would love to do a race track themed housing community - sort of like the air ranch in Okotoks. It's funny that the MD is ok with air strips but not race tracks.

I am an engineer with an oil well service co so I am looking for some secondary income.

Christmas trees are an idea, a tree farm is a nice tax shelter (10 years of losses before first return). We have planted around 5000 trees so far.

I have heard that hemp can be very lucrative and the government is issuing licenses to grow it but I don't want to attract that kind of attention or run that profile.

I have neighbors with alpacas, other neighbors with elk, other neighbors with mixed farms. You need several sections to make a living as a farmer these days. If I could get a combine, a swather, a bailer and a seeder, I know I could gross $20 - $40k / year on barley and canola but that equipment ain't cheep.

[MotoSook]

Christmas trees and a race track! During the Christmas season you can have folks driving along the track to cut their own tree. Our local tree farm ---you have to hike through the trees and it's usually pretty dang cold and crappy Now if I could put spikes on the 911 and go tree hunting...that would be worth the freezing in the snow.

[schamp]

Depending on your soil PH you might want to look at blueberries. You don't have to replant ev ery year and beginning on year 5 you start getting a good return. They produce for a good 40 plus years.

[Erakad]

I like the Christmas tree idea...properly planted it could double as a nudist colony in summer!

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by porsche4life

I think he is saying that 120 acres is free for use... the other 60 is already being used...

In most of the USA a 1/4 is 180acres....

One square mile is 639.9974 acres. Everyone rounds that to 640. 1/4 square mile is 160 acres.

One section of land is supposed to be one square mile. Because of the curve of the earth and mistakes during surveys some sections are less than a square mile.

So if he has 160 acres that is 64.75 sq hectares

[Seahawk]

I don't know your local market, so I'll write in generalities about my 16 years and 65 acres and the effort to make it profitable.

My wife and I both work full time so most of our decisions were influenced by the following factors:

- Taxes. The farm has been an excellent source of reducing our taxes. You do, of course, have to spend money to lose money.

- Time. All of our planning revolved around how much of our finite time we wanted to dedicate to the enterprise. As you know, any farm requires a substantial amount of maintenance to keep properly clean, organized, etc. What we wanted in the business was a complementary set of efforts that didn't require a huge additional time sunk. If you have to either hire help or exchange work for other considerations that must be planned for.

- Equipment and facilities. Again, we wanted to limit capital investment as much as possible.

- Lifestyle. Was there a business that fit our lifestyle goals...meaning, were we going to pay to do it anyway? Is it something we really enjoy?

- Diversification. I wanted to spread the risk as much as possible. . The first 10 years here we were strictly a crop farm: corn, wheat and soybeans in rotation. Since my farm is so small, crop insurance is simply not practical so the $6k in seed, fertilizer and weed repellent for each rotation was all or nothing. We were completely at the mercy of rain and commodity prices. Is was an absolute roller-coaster.

Some of alternatives we explored are very similar to yours.

- Cattle. Not enough land to make it profitable without putting nearly all the farm in cattle. Cattle failed the diversification test as well as the time sink. Cattle require an amazing amount of work.

- Vineyard. Still looking at this for retirement. Putting ten acres or so in vines would be an excellent revenue stream and diversification exercise. We have been approached by the Maryland wine growers many times and they offer financial help to get established. I simply don't have the time now.

- Additional crops. Since we currently use, "machine hire" or share-cropping (we partner with a farmer that has all the combines, semi's etc. to get my crop off) we wanted a crop that we could do ourselves. We settled on hay, hay that works in Maryland. The market for hay has grown dramatically in the last ten years so all our hay is spoken for in advance of pulling it out of the field.

- Horses. We settled on horse boarding. It met all our criteria except the additional facilities. We had a stable built but we did all the fencing and additional infrastructure. Our start-up costs we small since I had all the tractors and rent all other equipment required for hay, which is a huge cost in boarding. My daughter is a very accomplished rider so we had the cost of boarding our horses regardless, we trade 1/2 board for help with one of the really squared away boarders, and my wife loves the lifestyle.

So, we have ten acres in hay, 12 acres in horses and the rest in the same crop rotation we had before. So far, so good. Best of luck...I know you will, but make sure you really vet all your ideas in a business plan format, get input from the local ag organizations and the local farm agents. They were invaluable to me.

[jjone20]

No money in Bison? It's expensive down here, but I don't know what the production costs are. I'm told they need a higher fence than cattle because they jump. I love a good bison burger.

[unclebilly]

Seahawk, thanks for the advice.

jjone - Bison used to be very lucrative until the BSE crisis. When this happened Canadian consumers rallied around the beef producers and the market for bison fell off considerably and still hasn't recovered. Bison are well suited to Alberta prairies becasue they are a natural species here. You don't really have to feed them much as they graze off the natrual prairie grasses, calving is a breeze. etc.

[cgarr]

worth selling the land? What would you get? What are the expenses "taxes" and up keep each year if you do nothing with it? Can you hunt on it?

[dhoward]

Shooting park.

[krystar]

ostrich/emu farm. big margin growing market.