I've raised BR and RIR backyard hens for a while, and I've started getting an interest in full-time poultry (and other) farming. A family that my parents know well lives on a farm in Indiana, raising sheep, pigs, ducks, and beef cattle, and I'm probably going to take a week off sometime to head down there and 'intern' with them. I work at a library, so I've read Joel Salatin's "Pastured Poultry Profits" and "You Can Farm", but I don't want to start an enterprise based on just his input (the family I mentioned thinks of him as a bit of a charlatan).
My parents are going to be retiring in a few years, and they intend to move out to the country in Pennsylvania or nearby. I mentioned my interest in farming to them, and they're planning on buying some pasture land to retire to, with the intention that I will move in when I'm ready to run the farm. I plan to raise pastured broilers, either in tractors or rotating electric fence grazing areas with a mobile coop, pastured laying hens, and potentially beef or sheep on the rotating pasture model.
Has anyone got any advice on this sort of thing - pasture farming as sole income? Any tricks or pitfalls that I should be aware of? Thanks in advance.
My parents are going to be retiring in a few years, and they intend to move out to the country in Pennsylvania or nearby. I mentioned my interest in farming to them, and they're planning on buying some pasture land to retire to, with the intention that I will move in when I'm ready to run the farm. I plan to raise pastured broilers, either in tractors or rotating electric fence grazing areas with a mobile coop, pastured laying hens, and potentially beef or sheep on the rotating pasture model.
Has anyone got any advice on this sort of thing - pasture farming as sole income? Any tricks or pitfalls that I should be aware of? Thanks in advance.