crops on 10 acres

[mth74]

Looking at a farm house on 12.5 acres.I was just wondering if I planted 10 acres of field corn what would I get in money at end of year.Now I know you can have good years and bad I just want a average.And your not taking into account gas,equipment, maitnence.Just looking to have some fun,get out of the city and make a few bucks at it.




thanks

[Eugene]

Field corn. Not any where enough to pay the expenses considering the equipment required. You might consider cash renting the 10 acres.

Sweet corn. Might do quite well. Last year, early season sweet corn was selling at over $4.00 a dozen. Sweet corn you could do with a tractor, plow, disk, harrow, cultivator, planter and a lot of manual labor. Throw in a small trailer. My opinion, if you have a full time job - the IH/Farmall Cub and related equipment will be to small.

[grunt]

We have a guy next to us that is planting his small acrage with these
http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm ... 89617B542A
He says the price has jumped up a bit. I really dont know any thing about them.

[Virginia Mike]

At one time you could make quite a profit with tobacco. That's not PC anymore. How about medical marijuana?

[Bigdog]

10 acres of any normal farm crop would be hard to make a profit on if you are trying to maintain equipment to handle the crop. A truck patch type garden or produce garden of that size could be quite profitable but very labor intensive even with equipment. Sweet corn, potatoes, green beans, etc. all require a lot of hands-on labor to produce.
I'd consider putting it into hay and selling the standing crop to someone who has the equipment to bale it. Or we used to do a lot of "farming on the halves" where one party provided the land, the other party provided the equipment and labor. Both shared expenses of putting the crop in and shared equally in the profits of the crop produced. It would be difficult to find someone to do that nowadays especially on only 10 acres. But someone may be interested in renting the ground for a crop.

[JBall8019]

are you going for a real estate exemption?

[Hengy]

are you going for a real estate exemption?

John!

Good to see you posting again!! It has been a while since we have chatted. You are one of the ones (along with Don McCombs and Peter Person) who are COMPLETELY responsible for my Cub addiction... Thank you!!!!

Mike in La Crosse, WI

[Peter Person]

are you going for a real estate exemption?

John!

Good to see you posting again!! It has been a while since we have chatted. You are one of the ones (along with Don McCombs and Peter Person) who are COMPLETELY responsible for my Cub addiction... Thank you!!!!

Mike in La Crosse, WI

Wow, didn't realize that a little snow plowing would be responsible for that!
And I let ConnectiKit plow some furrows at Cecil's and his wife Ruth drove the Cub for a while as well. What havoc have I sown?
Peter

[Hengy]

HAHAHA!!!!

I tried looking back through the archives to find out when I made that trip that took me to John's house in Ohio and Don McCombs' house in Maryland... that was all the same trip...but I haven't had any luck yet with that.

Rest assured, Peter, that it wasn't you personally or John or Don McCombs that fueled the fire, but rather the TRACTORS that did it!!

Mike in La Crosse, WI

[DanR]

One acre is plenty enough for a truck garden. I would go for the sweet corn and any kind of greens early. You should have a variety of things for the Farmers Market from June through October. The rest put in hay. Let somebody else cut and bail. Hay around here should bring $60 a bail this winter.

[CapeCodCubs]

Hay is a good choice as stated. I get 75cents a pound for yellow squash and did alright. But it is organic and gets sold as organic in Boston. I drop it off down the street and it gets shipped by someone. I also did really well one year growing pumpkins and made $6000 on a 3/4 acre plot! There were 100 pound pumpkins everywhere!!!!! Another choice would be shrubs or hedge types of plants. Arbor vitea trees grow really fat and in 3 years you have a marketable product.

[Eugene]

What is on the other side of the property line fence? If it's farm land you could cash rent everything but the buildings lawn area.

Another thought. Check with your local county extension office and state conservation office. In Missouri there is sometimes money and machinery assistance for converting farm land back to a more natural area (wild life habitat, tree planting, conservation, etc.).

[flyawa]

I've got a friend who is growing Aronia Berries on about 10 acres. The crop is very valuable but takes about three years to get to production. The berries retail at nearly $10.00 a lb. The bushes are planted about 8 feet apart and are hardy, disease and pest resistant. The only maintenance is mowing between them. Each bush when mature produces around 25 lbs.

http://hubpages.com/hub/aronia

[flyawa]

We have a guy next to us that is planting his small acrage with these
http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm ... 89617B542A
He says the price has jumped up a bit. I really dont know any thing about them.

Sorry grunt, I missed that you'd already posted that idea

[smigelski]

Hay is a good choice as stated. I get 75cents a pound for yellow squash and did alright. But it is organic and gets sold as organic in Boston. I drop it off down the street and it gets shipped by someone. I also did really well one year growing pumpkins and made $6000 on a 3/4 acre plot! There were 100 pound pumpkins everywhere!!!!! Another choice would be shrubs or hedge types of plants. Arbor vitea trees grow really fat and in 3 years you have a marketable product.

I am still trying to figure out how you make so much money on so little land. If you are selling organic, then you have the registration cost, plus inspection costs to the USDA which would be around $10,000. so that would be over 13,333lbs of squash just to cover that cost, not mention gas, seed, lime. It comes out to about 40 acres of squash to cover cost and make the profit.
Next is the pumpkins, on good ground that is irrigated we can only get 4 bins per acre, 2 bins if not irrigated. A bin is a pallet with the 3ft high cardboard sides. A bin only brings $190.
I am in the heart of vegetable farmers, a bunch of italians that their families have been raising vegetables for generations.
They are not pulling that kind of money off of an acre. I hayed just under 100 acres this year, all said and done my profit is going to be around $3,000. My equipment payments a year are $6,000. Please post how you are doing it. I could sell some of my bigger equipment, pay off half of my mortgage and make more money doing 3 or 4 acres with alot less work.