What You Need To Know About Hobby Farming

What You Need To Know About Hobby Farming

Have you ever heard about a ‘hobby farm’ from your friends and societies or wondered why people have it?

What is a Hobby Farm?

A hobby farm is raised by someone as a self-maintainable farm, for fun or to make a little extra money on the side.

However, such farms are not to earn a full-time income.

So if you one of them who like to raise a flock of chickens or some fresh veggies or a couple of goats in the backyard or even anything else like that, then you can consider yourself as a hobby farmer.

A homestead and hobby farm can be one or the same. It just depends on your purpose behind farming efforts.

Tips for Starting Your Hobby Farm

1.       Start small, try just one or two major crops in a year, and decide on the amount of time you can devote to your farm. Learn as much as you can, this will also help you go with a lower rate of failure, and will make you feel more joyous and relaxed before you add new species and grow more next year.

2.      Hobby farming is basically to enjoy the fun of it as a hobby is to give you pleasure, not profit. So try to spend more time in farming rather than selling.

3.      One of the important rules to follow any hobby is to not to spend more than you have. Since you aim to not to bring in money from a hobby farm, don’t incur debt to pay for any expansion. You should save up for farm implement purchases and grow your farm slowly and naturally.

4.      Do some research before starting, Read some good books on starting a hobby farm and talk to your fellow farmers to acquire knowledge about whatever you want to grow on your farm.

5.      Seek expert advice if needed or you can also join a hobby farming course in an agriculture institute.

6.      Gain enough experience before starting any big project or if you planning to earn through your farm.

Farmease – Farm Equipment Rental App is Helping Farmers to Improve Their Efficiency

Many farmers in the USA, like hobby farmers and contractual farmers, own farm machinery that they do not use frequently, much of this equipment is only used occasionally or can say seasonally, like only a few days in a year. This industry-wide unproductive usage phase of capital in agriculture not only reduces profitability but also raises the effect that food production has on the planet.

Farmease aims to connect the farmers in the USA to let them share spare farm machinery at mutually beneficial intervals without friction. Owners can earn a fair rental price for the equipment or machinery, that’s an added income source for them, while the renters can get access to the machinery on demand that helps them to use the latest technology in affordable prices and to work on farm flexible and lean.

By upgrading the way farmers use machinery, our mission is to reconfigure the agriculture industry and so that it will make the process better to come across the supplies of a growing worldwide population, and maximizing productivity while minimizing impact with providing a good living for working hard in the farms.

Farmease is a revolutionary farm equipment and tractor rental app that aims to offer new or used farm implements at very affordable prices and make them reachable to every farmer in need. One can choose from plenty and different kind of farm equipment such as harvester, rotary cutters, harrows, tillers, ploughs, cultivators, tractors, seeders, rotavators, planters, discs, trailers, combines water cannons, and many more.

Everyone Eats There

I left Los Angeles at 4 in the morning, long before first light, and made it to Bakersfield — the land of oil derricks, lowriders and truck stops with Punjabi food — by 6. Ten minutes later, I was in the land of carrots.

You know that huge pile of cello-wrapped carrots in your supermarket? Now imagine that the pile filled the entire supermarket. Read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/californias-central-valley-land-of-a-billion-vegetables.html

7 Crops Grown in California

The most agriculturally diverse state in the U.S., California produces more than 400 commodities, and in 2015, agriculture contributed about $47 billion to the state’s economy. Check out crops grown in California that play a large role in that contribution:

Close-up of Ripening Almonds on Central California Orchard

Almonds

California almonds were worth a whopping $5.3 billion in 2015. The nuts are grown in California’s Central Valley, and take the No. 2 spot in the state’s list of top crops.  Read more here: https://www.farmflavor.com/california/crops-grown-in-california/

Best Farm Implements to Use with Tractor in Gardening

The greatest thing about tractor’s use in farming is its ability to perform multiple jobs in a short time. But if gardening is one of your passions, there are multiple tools you would need to make your tasks easy. Are you still wondering what types of tractor implements you would need in gardening? Here is a compiled list of the best tractor implements to use with tractors in your gardening projects that can help you a lot.

Ploughs

Plough is one of the best farming equipment or tractor implements for use in gardening. Tried and used, a tractor plough helps to break up the soil and turns the remaining vegetation over to decompose. The job is not hard for you if you have a plough to attach with your tractor. Plough is used to preparing the soil for any type of plant you want to sow.

Tillers and Disk Harrows

When we talk about to use farm implements for gardening, disk harrows and rotary tillers work a slight difference, as they get the same outcome. These both implements and attachments break up soil clods remains after ploughing. It makes the soil easier and finer to work with after ploughing.

Garden Bedders

On the top of the list as the best tractor implement for gardening, is garden bedder which is a valuable tool that helps to promptly create rows in your garden. This implement is created to cut through the soil to create multiple rows with equally spaced trenches each side.

This farm implement is worth the purchasing if you want to save your time.

Spreaders

The best tractor implement for gardening also includes spreader mainly used for fertilizing, seeding and spreading salt through the winter. You can also modify the swath width as per the material you want to use. Spreaders are incredibly useful in gardening and also help you save time as compared to the jobs done by hand. It also ensures the consistency of the material that you are spreading out.

Different types of farming or tractor implements are easy to use and also save time whether you want to use a large or small tractor on a spacious or a compact tractor or even UTV for your hobby farm.

It does not matter what type of farming or gardening you are into, right farm attachments or implements make your work more efficient. If you do not have any of these, you do not need worrying as farm equipment rental apps like Farmease has made it easy now to rent these kind of farm equipment near you at very affordable prices.

Wefarm secures US$13mn in funding to scale smallholder agricultural ecosystem

Wefarm, the digital network for global small-scale agriculture, has raised US$13mn in a Series A financing round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm True Ventures.

rice pixabay

This financing round will help Wefarm further scale its network of 1.9 million farmers, and its newly created Marketplace, to connect farmers in Africa, even those without internet access, to the information, products and services they need to be more successful.  Read more here: http://www.fareasternagriculture.com/crops/agriculture/wefarm-secures-us-13mn-in-funding-to-scale-smallholder-agricultural-ecosystem

Agriculture faces a heart transplant

If government and private estimates are accurate, hundreds of millions of American farm acres will have new owners in the next 15 years.

For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s survey takers and record keepers predict that 100 million acres of today’s farmland will be sold by its current owners by 2023.

The American Farmland Trust (AFT), a non-partisan farmland conservation group based in Washington, D.C., pegs the turnover rate even higher. It estimates 371 million acres of the nation’s farm and ranchland will change hands in the next 15 years. That’s four out of every 10 acres in private ownership today, claims AFT.

Read more: https://www.producer.com/2019/10/agriculture-faces-a-heart-transplant/

Iowa’s farmers – and American eaters – need a national discussion on transforming US agriculture

Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses bring the state a lot of political attention during presidential election cycles. But in my view, even though some candidates have outlined positions on food and farming, agriculture rarely gets the attention it deserves.

As a scientist at Iowa’s land-grant university, I believe our state is at the forefront of redefining what agriculture could be in the U.S., and addressing environmental and economic challenges associated with the extensive monocultures that dominate our current system.

Read more: http://theconversation.com/iowas-farmers-and-american-eaters-need-a-national-discussion-on-transforming-us-agriculture-114902