Friday Cocktail plus the news of the week.

[wrongway]

we were lucky wife worked to pay personal expenses and get a home in the city. i was stay at home dad and a 4x4 farmer (4 weeks in spring and 4 weeks in fall). this was during the doldrums of the 90's and the 00's. didn't matter what you did you couldn't make much money so the idea was to minimize losses. So we got used to having a small farm with old equipment mostly paid off. at 60 years old and during jusnits 2nd term decided to get rid of all debt and make farm basically bullet proof...well to a certain extent. Kids now all on their own and have great careers. AT christmas time told them that who ever wants the farm can have it lock stock and barrel and I would stay on for free till I can no longer work. Well none of them even considered leaving their jobs to farm. I'm ok with this. I hope to farm another few years in case they change their minds.
There is no way my farm can pay for new equipment but from what I see is this is not necessarily a bad thing.
The great lie that if you're not moving forward you're dying is a narrative to keep farmers spending more and more borrowed money.
It took 47 crops to get to this point in my life with a lot of luck and help and if I had a chance to do it all over again I am not sure I'd take it. But I will definitely enjoy farming as long as I can and will let my kids pay the capital gains tax, lol.

[blackpowder]

I really appreciate that post.
But the moving forward mantra is more than myth.

[wrongway]

I really appreciate that post.
But the moving forward mantra is more than myth.

there is the get better before getting bigger aspect of moving forward

[AlbertaFarmer5]

The operations you mention are a thing of the past.
Where they do still exist, it's on equity, for now....

I should have specified that this might only apply to my area. I believe the quarter section sized farm would still be the most numerous farm size in this county. Lots of employment opportunities and hopeless romantics who want to be farmers at any cost.
Or more specifically, they want to be tractor drivers, preferably shiny.

[blackpowder]

I understood.
And meant no disrespect to them.
Those are hobby farms, they just don't know it.

[farmaholic]

What's viable?

There are so many variables. Debt load, lifestyle, land productivity, profitability, labour(owner's and hired).

It's been TWO decades since I've added land to the Balance Sheet.

Everything is a million bucks. You don't "need" new machinery to operate a farm but once you've had some.... even if the stuff I bought wasn't the "ego building popular brand".... it was still new. So it feels like I'm going backwards if I can no longer afford to replace our equipment with new.

New machinery requires a certain economy of scale. And farm size is somewhat incremental based on how much/many(pieces) needed to operate. How much land needs to be farmed to pay for fulltime "good" hired men.

We would have room for a few more acres based on the iron we already own, but I'm not going to spin my wheels for everyone else just to say I'm jumping into the next increment, not at this stage of my career anyway.

To each their own, but the older I get the less time I spend thinking about expansion. My shadow is getting longer, maybe the Apprentice should step out of my shadow and cast his own. I did my part....

[Marusko]

what's viable indeed?

I'd add the actions of the forefathers to your list farmaholic. Neighbours with aggressive dads and granddads are coasting along with similar acres to us, they have new equipment every 2-3 years. We farm same size but since half our owned acres were bought in the last 10 years, payments take priority, no big equipment was bought new and none is any newer than 10 years old, and off-farm jobs are worked to have a lifestyle.

you're alright to coast along with what you got, extra cashflow can go into fun, or investments to earn passive income instead of land payments. How does the apprentice factor in though?