Lately I’ve been wrestling with the idea of buying farmland.  Several of my friends have already made the leap and are busy making the preparations I can only dream about.

Currently my wife and I live in an apartment in Capitol Hill and I feel like I’ve done pretty much all I can do in this situation.  If I buy land now I will surely overpay for it.  If I wait for land to become cheap, I might not have developed the skills needed in time.

After speaking with several friends of mine who’ve done this, it’s obvious that it takes years to learn the kinds of things required to become even somewhat self sufficient.

My other issue is that even if I found a farm that was affordable, my wife isn’t ready to live that lifestyle.  I thought that if I could find something fairly close to Seattle, I could drive back and forth to the property while my wife stayed in the apartment enjoying the city.  I thought maybe I’d purchase a small property where I could “practice” various farm-like activities.  Chop wood, build things, maybe plant a thing or two.

I asked a few friends about possibly sharing the cost of the experiment, and actually got one interested party.  Unfortunately we found that it will still too expensive to buy even a small plot of land near Seattle.  I was about to abandon the idea completely when I had a thought.

What if I could rent a farm?  Looking on Craigslist, I found several properties which could be rented for under $1,000 a month that included 4 or 5+ acres, a farmhouse, barn, woods and an area suitable for growing. (Oxen and plow not included)

Tomorrow I’m headed to Vashon Island to look at one such property.

Would anyone be interested in possibly sharing the cost of a property like this?   The farm I’d like to purchase probably costs between $800-$1M+ and in a few years this property could be available at a 70 or 80 percent discount.  So paying $12,000 per year to have a place to be able to practice and meet other farmers seems like a fantastic deal.

I’m not interested in living on the property, although I might stay for a few days at a time depending on its location.

Comments?

Thanks,
Chad

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 1:08 am and is filed under Announcements, Local Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.