Farm Blogs?

[mississippifarmboy]

I had a guy ask me today why we didn't have a farm blog. He was talking about our chickens, asking about some of the breeds we have, talking about the progress we've made around the place. I've no idea who he was, must have bought chickens from us several times or something I guess. It got me to thinking.

Wouldn't that be about as boring as watching paint dry? Would anyone even read it? Farming is pretty boring most of the time. "I fixed the barn lot fence", "I gathered 76 eggs", "I broke my toe", I culled a friends flock for him".....

Anybody do the blog thing?

 

[punk-a-doodle]

In an urban setting especially, I appreciate when farmers I buy from have some sort of website/blog/Internet presence, even if it is just to say we'll have x product available at y date, time, and place. I do appreciate many of the pages/blogs/etc. I've run across that have helped document what is working and what isn't working for others, problems they are facing (drought, land uprooted by development, etc), what has been profitable or a money drain, and I like how the growing online and community presence is getting young people interested in farming...as our farming population ages and dwindles.

If you detail how you fixed that fence, or outline your program for managing chickens and those 76 a day eggs, then it would at least get me reading it.

 

[mississippifarmboy]

Thanks for the reply.
I guess I never thought about the learning aspect of it. I never thought anyone could be interested in how to fix a fence or what it would be like to raise different kinds of stock for different reasons. And I'm all for helping young folk get interested in farming and living simple.
I spent some time last night looking at a few farm blogs from different people around the country. It was sorta interesting. Seemed to be a lot of recipes and such on the ones I looked at though, and Lord knows I'm not much of a cook. Lots of personal family stories, trials and successes... a couple were almost like reading a good book.
I did notice that on most, although they never really spelled it out, the people's work ethic, world views, religious and political views were sorta obvious by reading between the lines. That part fascinated me. I like reading about how and why folks do things, even if it's totally different than myself.
I can also see where some of our customers might like knowing that you had certain things for sale and when they were going to be available like you mentioned. We have never advertised other than maybe a small ad in the local paper every few years or a quick Craigslist ad, but I can see people liking to just be able to click on a page and find out without calling or coming by the farm. Good idea.
I might try it, see how it goes.


any way to tell if anyone actually reads the thing?

 

[sumi]

We're going to emigrate to Ireland soon(ish) and we'd like to buy a smallholding there and do the self-sufficiency thing. We've been doing it here, raising and slaughtering animals, growing food, keeping chickens etc, but I know it'll be very different over there. So I did some research online, looking for farming stories/experiences etc. The most informative site I found was American. Since when is Ireland in America????
Sadly I found more info in books so far. It would be nice to find some day-to-day farming blogs, especially on small scale farming. The one thing that completely eluded me so far is designing a small farm. What to do with the land, how much space to put aside for this and that, examples of small farms etc.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

For knowing if anyone is reading, a lot of the blog sites have options for hit counters. They typically use IP addresses to count visitors. Sorry, would post more with links, but can't on this device.

 

[thaiturkey]

We're going to emigrate to Ireland soon(ish) and we'd like to buy a smallholding there and do the self-sufficiency thing. We've been doing it here, raising and slaughtering animals, growing food, keeping chickens etc, but I know it'll be very different over there. So I did some research online, looking for farming stories/experiences etc. The most informative site I found was American. Since when is Ireland in America????
Sadly I found more info in books so far. It would be nice to find some day-to-day farming blogs, especially on small scale farming. The one thing that completely eluded me so far is designing a small farm. What to do with the land, how much space to put aside for this and that, examples of small farms etc.

Ireland's agriculture is subject to local laws based on EU Directives. The aim of them is to attempt to develop a cohesive common agricultural policy. You need to learn about those and all of the general business laws before even putting up a fence.

Also, learn which practices are awarded subsidies.

I assume that you are going to the Republic rather than Ulster but the essence of the laws will be much the same. On top of that is the Irish way of doing things!

This might help you:

http://www.lexadin.nl/wlg/legis/nofr/eur/lxweier.htm

Good luck with your move.

 

[thaiturkey]

Thanks for the reply.
I guess I never thought about the learning aspect of it. I never thought anyone could be interested in how to fix a fence or what it would be like to raise different kinds of stock for different reasons. And I'm all for helping young folk get interested in farming and living simple.
I spent some time last night looking at a few farm blogs from different people around the country. It was sorta interesting. Seemed to be a lot of recipes and such on the ones I looked at though, and Lord knows I'm not much of a cook. Lots of personal family stories, trials and successes... a couple were almost like reading a good book.
I did notice that on most, although they never really spelled it out, the people's work ethic, world views, religious and political views were sorta obvious by reading between the lines. That part fascinated me. I like reading about how and why folks do things, even if it's totally different than myself.
I can also see where some of our customers might like knowing that you had certain things for sale and when they were going to be available like you mentioned. We have never advertised other than maybe a small ad in the local paper every few years or a quick Craigslist ad, but I can see people liking to just be able to click on a page and find out without calling or coming by the farm. Good idea.
I might try it, see how it goes.


any way to tell if anyone actually reads the thing?

I always recommend Wordpress for small business websites. The software is free to use and supported by hosts such as Bluehost. I won't claim that there isn't a learning curve but you can do it yourself rather than hand over profits to a website developer.

You can make your site as simple or as complicated as you want. Perhaps for a farm the best option would be pages that promote your products and then blog pages that enable you to keep your content fresh for the benefit of search engine ranking. I'm sure that you can think of interesting farm topics beyond 'What we did today'. Also, ensure that you make links from other websites such as BYC to increase your potential audience size.

 

[sumi]

Thank you! I'll check it out.

 

[MuranoFarms]

I like blogging, personally. I like to show pictures of my cute fluff-butts and talk about the different ways we do things around here. I get a good amount of hits, so I guess others like to read it. I also subscribe to a few blogs to read about what others do too.

I think you should blog. Post your link if you do...I'd like to read it!

 

[oldrooster]

Thanks for the reply.
I guess I never thought about the learning aspect of it. I never thought anyone could be interested in how to fix a fence or what it would be like to raise different kinds of stock for different reasons. And I'm all for helping young folk get interested in farming and living simple.
I spent some time last night looking at a few farm blogs from different people around the country. It was sorta interesting. Seemed to be a lot of recipes and such on the ones I looked at though, and Lord knows I'm not much of a cook. Lots of personal family stories, trials and successes... a couple were almost like reading a good book.
I did notice that on most, although they never really spelled it out, the people's work ethic, world views, religious and political views were sorta obvious by reading between the lines. That part fascinated me. I like reading about how and why folks do things, even if it's totally different than myself.
I can also see where some of our customers might like knowing that you had certain things for sale and when they were going to be available like you mentioned. We have never advertised other than maybe a small ad in the local paper every few years or a quick Craigslist ad, but I can see people liking to just be able to click on a page and find out without calling or coming by the farm. Good idea.
I might try it, see how it goes.


any way to tell if anyone actually reads the thing?

I would I would if you bought you land vs inhearatince why buy there? why build the buildings and the size and shape of them why plant/raise what you do how do you store or sell your animals crops? how do you obtain your parent stock seeds and sapplings? see there are about a months worth of posts right there after you catch up from the very notion of farm ing today you may only need to update 1 time a week during slow periods.