Type of opportunity:

Sale (Standard), Sale (Owner Financed), Lease (1 to 5 Years), Lease with Option to Buy, Internship / Mentorship, Incubator / Mentored Lease, Business Partnership, Employment, Employment with Transfer. More info: We currently own and live in a camper so that is a housing option for us. We already have a wood stove and could easily incorporate solar power.

Equipment & infrastructure:

Barn, Fencing, Well / Pond / Other water source, Greenhouse, Livestock facilities, Farmer housing, Farm equipment, Processing facilities, Irrigation equipment, Cold storage (cooler/freezer).

Current production on farm:

Aquaculture, Cattle (Dairy/Beef), Fallow, Field crops, Hay or pasture, Herbs, Orchard, Poultry (Broiler/Layer), Sheep/Goat (Dairy/Meat), Vegetable production, Vineyard, Woodlot or forest products.

Current farming practices:

Biodynamic, Certified organic, Transitioning to organic, Ecological production but not certified, None, the property is not being farmed.

Number of years experience:

9

Other qualifications:

More info:

Production goals:

Aquaculture, Cattle (Dairy/Beef), Fallow, Field crops, Hay or pasture, Herbs, Orchard, Poultry (Broiler/Layer), Sheep/Goat (Dairy/Meat), Vegetable production, Vineyard, Woodlot or forest products.

Personal experience and production goals summary:

     Greetings!  We are a husband & wife team with 5 children ages 1-8 of strong eclectic Mennonite-Pentecostal-Quaker faith.  Finding landowners of similar or compatible beliefs will likely be essential.  Our goal is to find work that would be wholesome, allow us to be together as a family, and provide a means to express our faith with others.

    We have vegetable gardened nearly every year of the past nine years.  Our first two years were at the local communty garden and thereafter at a home where we had space to have a larger garden and to explore raising meat rabbits, chickens, ducks, and turkeys for meat and eggs, a few Saanen dairy goats and Jacob sheep.  Our first pets early on as a married couple were red wigglers and we have the worm bin still to this day manufacturing some of the finest fertilizer.  Later we added a black soldier fly bin as a food source for our chickens.  We learned to butcher poultry, rabbits, and venison.  We learned to shear sheep with traditional hand shears.  We also discovered making kombucha, lacto-fermented vegetables, kefir, and dabbled in top-bar beekeeping.

     We became friends with organic raw milk dairy cow farmers Edwin and Dawn Shank of The Family Cow (http://www.yourfamilyfarmer.com/) in Chambersburg, PA and gleaned a lot of understanding and interest from them about organic raw milk, Westin A. Price priciples of nutrition, direct customer sales via farm store and delivery drop points, "knowing your farmer" methodology and customer relations, rotational pasture-raised meat, dairy and poultry, and the overall daily grind of farming life.   

     We also interviewed with James Totten of Totten Family Farm (http://www.tottenfamilyfarm.com/) for a farm work position.  During the interviewing process we began to hammer out a business plan and to think through the practical steps we would take to farm for a living.  We were told that housing was a deciding factor as to why were weren't hired as we already had a few young children and he did not have a suitable place for us to live at the time.     

     The travels of Westin A. Price and his research have been a growing inspiration for us and shape much of where we see ourselves heading as far as diet, career, and lifestyle are concerned.  They have kindled a deep desire for a simpler and more natural way of life and interest in related areas of primitive survival skills, eating from the wild, herbalism, primitive tool making and building, and working with animal hides. 

     We would hope to work with as little fossil fuel energy as possible and become better prepared to survive should the much talked about societal "collapse" occur within the next few years, which we believe it might.  We aspire to scythe our own hay.  We want to take the concept of sustainability beyong an accessory fad and into full-scale reality, namely, in alternative energy and food production and preservation.  

     Photo Powerpoint presentation of homesteading endeavors available upon request! 

     Thank you so much for your consideration! 

     Ryan & Siobhan, David, Lea, Anna, Julia, & John-Mark

 

       

 

Resume:

Updated General.docx