Methods of farming

A friend got caught in this sort of system when his heifers went down with TB. He wasn’t set up for wintering, said it was worst winter of his life till he got them sold in spring. Been renting out his land since.

It'll be 82 acres altogether in 10 years wif he buys the 12 acres

Do you like money?

Do you need money?

If the answer to either of these is yes then it's not a runner.

You need a 100 more acre's than you have to think about it. Then it's milking or sheep or something skilled and labour intensive.

It will take massive capital to set up farm and cover mistakes you will make in first 5 years. Have you access to this?

At 80 odd acre's it's a nice hobby if set up right and you might get price of family holiday or car each year.

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The crux I think seems to be waiting on the 45 acres to come back in 10 years. If it's just leased you could look to come out of the lease and take the hit on the tax relief. This would leave the potential for a 57acre farm which would be ideal to get set up part time. A simple dairy bred weanling/runner to beef/store would give you great option.

On the investment side. Crush is the first. Remember this now I think can be written off against tax over 2 years. I get the feeling that you have work outside of the farm and are potentially in the higher tax band.

Secondly a simple slatted shed will be needed long term, but when working it's a must. Again the accelerated cap ex kicks in here and tams would make it a cheap shed

How close is the 12 acres to the 45acres that is leased. This could give an option to do development on the 12 acres with the option of shortening the lease on the 45 acres.

Farming see great changes every 10 year. The 04-15 was the decoupling of payments, 15-now was the removal of milk quota and the dairy expansion. What will the next 10 year hold. Personally I feel livestock numbers are going to reduce further and the biggest issue for a lot of part-time farmers will be getting access to numbers of stock. The skills of calving and rearing stock less than 1 year old is disappearing. Add in age profile to the mix and it's a ticking time bomb for livestock numbers. Could be a golden age for those willing to pivot quickly

These types of questions often have somewhat negative responses. Often from those who have experience of similar farms/lifestyles and they are probably right to an extent to offer some realism, but I'd bet most wouldn't give it up for the world either.

Here's my experience of taking over a similarly sized farm in my mid-thirties, and where I am 8 years later.

After my Dad passed away, I took over an already established suckler herd, with well-equipped sheds/yard/equipment. There are only 10 acres attached to the yard and the rest is leased, I took over the existing lease agreements and have good entitlements that cover the lease cost.

This farm was never going to replace my well-paid permanent employment as a field service engineer. I struggled for a few years trying to do both. 4 years ago, my employer, a large multinational, was restructuring, as they do every few years. They offered voluntary severance packages and I had almost 18 years of service, so it suited me to take the opportunity to change direction. I actually liked the old job, but I had a few reasons to leave, including some family health issues; it wasn't all about going farming. I was initially going to use the severance money to expand the farm, but in the end, I decided to play it safe and use it to reduce the mortgage payments. We managed for a year and a half with my wife's full-time income + my small farm income, a small mortgage, and no childcare expense, but the cost of living crisis started making that a bit tight. During my time with no off-farm work, I started a software dev course and have since taken new employment with a farm software company, working from home and can choose how many hours I do. I currently do about 30 hours a week, and my wife has cut back to similar hours in her job, giving us more family time.

So I was pretty much given a working small farm, I probably broke it for a bit and eventually restructured it to suit my own way of working - I also changed from sucklers to calf/beef. To start from scratch is going to take some hard work and it won't be all rainbows, butterflies and unicorns, especially with zero farming experience. Livestock can be very rewarding and also heart-breaking, there is a lot to learn and re-learn.

• If you want to buy this 12 acres, in the hope of replacing the day job in 10 years' time with a total of 57 acres, forget it now, it's very unrealistic.
• If, however, you plan to buy it to live on, enjoy the lifestyle and also rear a few livestock with a plan to expand/diversify later, then go for it.
• If you just hate your current job, then the above is not the solution, but change it anyway, re-train if necessary, and look at options that will suit your proposed farming lifestyle.
• It does not need to be an all-or-nothing situation; keep other work as an option, full-time, part-time, WFH, maybe start a small business from home or the yard.
• Do some courses, farming-related, maybe a husbandry micro-credential, calf-rearing course and/or other skills to change from your current career.
  

Buying weanlings and selling in the Autumn, as others have pointed out is not going to make much if anything some years. You need handling facilities, a crush and a small shed for sick animals to get the herd number. Other cattle enterprises will take more investment in both time and money, but would see better returns.

Personally, I'm an advocate of the small farm; some on here might not consider us real farmers, but I live and breathe farming. I've no intention of killing myself trying to own or farm 100's of acres but I'm happy to be small scale and work to improve on what I have, while developing software solutions for bigger farms.

Summer grazing would be a good way of learning about cattle,I would suggest that absolutely cattle should be seen twice a day & if there is any doubt whatsoever as to there health that an experienced neighbour is asked to see them & failing that the vet should be called out,missing something small can turn into disaster quickly.On a positive note my days farming have been a lifestyle I loved since childhood.

You will have very steep and expensive learning curve if you are are at starting point of not knowing the different enterprises.

I would warn the store/cattle industry is equal to the Internet for con men/fraudsters. They mask themselves as friendly cattle dealers, factory agents, salesmen. They are a blight on industry adding no value to anything but taking a cut in middle if allowed.

You don't need any of them deal directly with marts, Miller's and processor's.

Dare I say uncle Larry is one of the few good guys that will treat you equally bad to everybody else

Maybe have a look at the farming for nature website.

They have lots of examples of different types of farms as their ambassadors, from hobby to large scale across enterprises, they have videos on YouTube of discussions and q and a with the farmers.

They also host a series of farm walks every year where you would get a feel for things and meet people you could chat to.

NOTS.ie is another resource and they specialise in training. If you're thinking of hobbies or creating income, a small specialised enterprise in something your interested in might be an extra option. Eg beekeeping, salad growing. They also host farm walks.

If the house and land suit you, and the price is right, it should be a good investment anyway.

If the land is in all different places, it makes things inordinately more difficult, you'd be much better off with one farm than three separate pieces.

Also the quality of the land makes a difference to how you farm it, depending on weather etc.

Help a few different relatives or neighbour with stock for a few hours here and there and see how you like actually doing the work, you might say never again!

Lastly there are lots of books and YouTube channels from middle aged start-up small holders, hobby farmers, homesteaders etc., whose experiences you can learn from.

Good luck with it.

It's hard to quantify, we all have different entitlements for BISS and there are several different extra schemes that you can apply for most of which will require actions to be completed in order to receive payments.

If you bought the 12 acres, you may also need to purchase entitlements, as they may or may not be included in the land sale. Purchase cost is usually about 2 times their value, mine for example are worth about 300 a hectare for BISS but they also receive an additional CRISS and ECO payment so I get a little over 400 a hectare. Values are based on historical farm payments, but are currently being adjusted each year to move values towards the national average (convergence).

You will not get anything extra to keep weanlings for summer grazing.

• There is €20 a calf to rear and weigh dairy/beef calves (max €1000 for 50 calves)
• There are a few different schemes for sucklers.
  
• There are also environmental schemes like ACRES (Probably not much money to be made, but it's funding to improve the place)
• Organics is also an option (But can be very restrictive)

I've no idea about sheep, but I know there are payments available. Sheep are a lot of work, but on 12 acres, they might be a better option than cattle, it's not a huge area to fence and lambs finish quickly so cash flow would be easier to manage. But you would need to be breeding them and have to learn how to deal with lambing, dagging, dipping, shearing and all of the potential health issues.

Lot of work in sheep. I would rank it next to dairying in term of demand. If getting into livestock, look at any tech that makes things easier.

And they all have to be handled for shearing and dipping etc, very labour intensive. Difficulty getting them sheared as not many young guys interested in that heavy labour any more. Also you need 5 sheep for every one cow so 5 times the numbers of animals to handle. Foot rot has to be the worst affliction in sheep. They get lots of things big stock don't get.

Have you done much with dairying or sheep? Hard to believe 12 acres stocked with sheep is going to be anywhere near as labour-intensive as even the most modest dairy operation.