Type of opportunity:

Sale (Owner Financed), Lease (5+ Years), Lease with Option to Buy, Internship / Mentorship, Incubator / Mentored Lease, Business Partnership, Employment, Employment with Transfer. More info: Open to nearly any ideas or suggestions. Looking to get myself and my fiance working on a farm as soon as possible.

Current production on farm:

Cattle (Dairy/Beef), Fallow, Hay or pasture, Hemp, Herbs, Hogs, Honey bees, Orchard, Poultry (Broiler/Layer), Sheep/Goat (Dairy/Meat), Vegetable production, Woodlot or forest products. More info: Open to nearly anything.

Previous farming experience:

Volunteer

Number of years experience:

5

Production goals:

Cattle (Dairy/Beef), Hay or pasture, Herbs, Hogs, Poultry (Broiler/Layer), Sheep/Goat (Dairy/Meat), Vegetable production.

Personal experience and production goals summary:

My name is Marco Salazar. I currently reside in south Florida. My fiance, Kourtney Greenberg, and I are looking to take decisive steps toward our goal of realizing a sustainable beyond organic biodiverse regenerative farm of our own or becoming an integral part of one. 

I was born in Costa Rica and lived on a farm for several years before my family moved to the states. I left the farm but the farm has never left me. I have never quite felt fulfilled in the big cities of south Florida like I remember being those few years on the farm in Costa Rica. I have dual citizenship for US and Costa Rica. 

From 2007 to 2012 a few friends and I got together and established a small project livestock operation on 20 acres of agricultural residential land owned by my friends father's company. We used portable solar powered electric fencing to subdivide the 20 acres into smaller paddocks where we ran sheep, goats and a few heads of cattle simultaneously, moving to new pasture every day. We had mobile chicken houses following a few days behind in the rotation. We also raised rabbits inside of a 30' x 50' hoop house and small pasture shelters similar to the mobile chicken houses. The operation was regretfully shut down when the company sold the land in 2012, but it served as a small scale test run of the operation I want to establish.

Kourtney has spent time on her grandfathers farm in upstate New York when she was younger and has also expressed, for years, how out of place she feels in the city. We are both very motivated and hard workers and have a knack for learning quickly. We are problem solvers and critical thinkers who love to challenge ourselves. I have worked in retail management, customer service, and sales for the last decade and these skills could be easily applied to any sales and marketing aspects of a farm, even perhaps some agritourism. My people skills are top notch! I am also entirely bilingual English - Spanish.

We are incredibly passionate believers in the need for sustainable and regenerative farming practices and animal husbandry, as well as the conservation of our farmland and the regeneration of our soil.

My farming practices would consist of management intensive multi species grazing with daily animal movement to fresh forage facilitated by portable solar powered electric fencing so that the animals, doing just what they instinctively want to do, work in harmony with nature which actually promotes microbal activity and builds healthy, fertile soil.

Depending on how much land is available, I would section it off into smaller paddocks, anywhere from a quarter acre to whatever size is necessary, with the electric fencing.  The ruminants would come through first, spending one day in each paddock before moving to the next paddock the next day. A couple of days behind the ruminants would be mobile hen houses spending up to a week in each paddock. The chickens scratch and peck the manure left behind, eat the grubs and parasites for some free and much needed protein, and vastly speed up the natural process by which nature transforms manure into compost. All along they are also dropping their own nitrogen rich manure. While layers are in a paddock, the mobile chicken tractors with the broilers will slowly move daily through the same paddock. 

I would also cultivate different mushrooms and use companion planting methods to grow several kinds of vegetables and herbs, as well as setting up an apiary. 

If you have land, even unused scrubland, and would like to see it put to use and holistically managed, please contact me! We are open to nearly any ideas including purchasing or leasing the land!