Our First Horse

Here’s an idea I’ve been tossing around in my head for a while. Before I post something about it, let me plant this seed and see what happens.

In the coming weeks I’ll be writing about running a hobby farm without expensive farm equipment. We have a tiny little farm here: a barn, some horses, goats and a fenced pasture. We’re no where near wealthy and honestly just can’t afford to go out and spend thousands on a tractor, bush hog, tiller, hole bore, chipper/shreader, manure spreader, etc. If we boarded other horses, maybe. But all that stuff still needs to be done. Surely there are other small hobby farms in our county with the same needs and budget. Maybe the answer is forming some sort of non-profit co-op so we could pool what little money we have, purchase some equipment and share. I know it would be more complicated than that. For instance, who gets what and when, what if something breaks, how do you keep people from abusing the equipment, where is it stored, insurance, liability, etc. But in the end, a reasonable membership fee might gain us other benefits as well, such as volume feed, hay and straw/wood pellet purchasing.

I know, we already have a farm co-op, but these benefits aren’t offered, to my knowledge. Co-op feed costs as much as feed purchased from other merchants. And hobby farms like ours aren’t contributors as much as we are consumers. Frankly, our local farm coop really doesn’t benefit us much on our tiny farm.

So again, just toying with the idea. Please feel free to offer some suggestions.

# Posted by Bill 1370 days ago

Oh man, I can’t believe it’s been 222 days since I posted this idea. This is on my long “to-do” list of things to spend time researching. I still wonder how viable an idea it is.

# Posted by Bill 1142 days ago