Last fall,
I got the opportunity to purchase my first piece of land less than 10 minutes away from our farm.
It didn’t start out great to my standards, but it really turned into a decent crop for this year. Along the way, I learned a few lessons I will remember for the rest of my farming career…
New ground is NOT going to be perfect year 1.
The fields that a young farmer like me can barely afford are not going to be the ones with tile or lots of fertility, although that would be the dream. With that in mind, it’s completely unfair to think it will grow record-breaking yields the first year. Farming is a long-term game, even though we need to make money in the short term to keep going. Building up the fertility or at least balancing the soil is something I am going to continue to work on because the dry fertilizer we applied this spring has probably barely broken down due to drought, which leads me right into lesson 2.