Becoming First-Generation Farmers

We are first-generation farmers, neither of us growing up in farming families — though CJ grew up doing 4H and raising show pigs in the backyard and I grew up driving down to Athens from Columbus to visit her uncle and aunt, ride horses, and fix fences.

Many people ask how we took the leap into running a farm. We certainly don’t have all of the answers, but every year we learn so much about the risks and rewards of farming. And given that only 3% of Americans are farmers, we want to share our experience in order to connect more people to the realities of running a small farm in the US.  

So here are our reflections on starting MoSo Farm and our 5 pieces of advice for other farm-curious souls, expounded upon below:

1. Work on other farms
2. Seek mentors
3. Learn from all mediums and all perspectives
4. Decide if you want to run a business or a homestead
5. Access land
6. Access capital — and be willing to risk it

Work on other farms

Working on other farms was a critical first step for both of our farming journeys. We saw firsthand the successes and failures of how to run a farm business. And we learned about ourselves — how we liked physical labor, tolerated working in the heat, enjoyed handling livestock and became fascinated by the power of grazing.

While living in MN, I interned on a grass-fed beef operation and worked on a diversified vegetable and fruit farm. After graduating, I worked for a non-profit that did youth development through urban farming., managing urban farm plots while running youth programming.

CJ’s first job in middle school was picking beans for a produce farm. Through high school, he worked on a diversified family farm planting and harvesting grains, hauling cattle manure and baling hay. While going to Rio Grande University, he spent 3 years managing a grass-fed dairy farm.

Seek mentors

When I knew I wanted to start raising cattle, I cold called and visited several farms that were farming in ways that I admired. One farm was only raising beef and had the most lush pastures I dreamed of having one day. That farmer told me that I had to jump in and learn by doing — go purchase some cattle! Another farm had cattle, hogs, goats, and chickens as well as a on-farm processing kitchen for value-added products. That farmer told me that his most valuable skill as a farmer was his ability to write. Both pieces of advice really stuck with me, as someone nervous about starting and as a writer. These farmers have become mentors through the years since I first visited them, answering my nervous emails or letting me come out to watch them load cattle onto the trailer before I knew how.

CJ’s mentors came from the farms where he worked and where he learned how to graze, bale hay, and run machinery. We have both learned from peers who are slightly ahead of us on the farming curve and the farmers from whom we buy cattle. For example, two summers ago we asked the farmer who sells us calves to sit down and share his wisdom on breeding. We ended up with pages of notes on the ins and outs of maintaining breeding cows, selecting genetics, and timing the calving season.

Learn from all mediums and all perspectives

We subscribe to grazing newspapers that are mailed monthly. I took two online courses through Cornell’s Small Farms Program when she started. We read books about grazing and silvopasture and marketing. We listen to podcasts. We watch YouTube videos to gain inspiration or learn how to build something. We attend webinars. We go to conferences and workshops around the country. It can be easy to subscribe to one school of thought or become diehard about a certain methodology, but the truth usually lies in a balance of practices. We believe in reading the conventional ag bulletins and listening to the permaculture podcasts. Or as Amigo Bob Cantisano says, “Farmers big and small, conventional and organic, are all allies.”

Decide if you want to run a business or a homestead

This is a big one. Raising food for friends and family and raising food as a livelihood are vastly different. And both are valuable! We have been surprised by how many business skills we have had to learn in order to run this farm. What’s a gross margin? How do we figure out how much we profit on one steer? How do we calculate the cost of minerals per day per animal? How much money should we invest in the business? What return on that investment should we expect? If we don’t meet that return, should we throw in the towel? How much money should we spend on marketing versus infrastructure versus pasture improvements? If we were both working day jobs and simply homesteading, we would not have to answer any of these questions.

Access land

Land access is one of the top barriers facing beginning farmers. The cost of land and the difficulty of running a profitable farm make purchasing land risky business. I think this is one of the reasons that the average age of a beginning farmer is 45 years old — it’s often folks who take up farming in their second chapter of life after they’ve built up a nest egg. We have been inspired by farmers who have accessed land creatively, renting their pastures or grazing public land.

One of the privileges of our lives is access to family land. We rent from my parents and aunt and uncle. This has enabled our farm to operate debt-free as we invest our personal capital into the startup costs and infrastructure of building the business.

Access capital — and be willing to risk it

Farming requires a lot of financial investment. As they say, you have to spend money to make money. Most of the capital we invested in our farm came from CJ flipping a house during the pandemic. He purchased a foreclosed house that was in bad disrepair, spent two years replumbing, re-routing electric and renovating it while working a job at the national forest, then sold it at the height of the housing market. Part of that was luck and a lot of it was hard work. The profits from that house are what we use to invest in the business. When we look at our financial projections, we compare our investment to the stock market. We aim for a 20% return because if we aren’t beating the stock market, then why are we risking our funds in the farm at all?

One of my favorite books to recommend to aspiring farmers is Letters to a Young Farmer. The book provided me the motivation I needed to start the farm in 2020, taking solace in the words of so many renowned farmers, writers, eaters, chefs and ecologists. Barbara Kingsolver, my favorite author, ends her letter with a few sentences that have always stuck with me. So I’ll close with her words…

“Prepare to rectify one of the most ridiculous, sustained oversights in all of human existence. When we told our youth that farming was a lowly aim compared with becoming teachers, doctors, or lawyers, what were we thinking? We need teachers for just a few of life’s decades. If we’re lucky, we’ll see a doctor only a few times a year, and a lawyer even less.

But we need farmers every single day of our lives, beginning to end, no exceptions. We forgot that for a while, and the price was immense. Slowly, we’re coming back to our senses.

Be patient with us. We need you.”