As for the farming (and this has been said, IIRC): Decide what you want to/can grow, then find out all you can about growing it where you live. Some places have longer growing seasons than others. Buy a tomato plant! They do wonderfully well in a whiskey barrel, and after your first season of fresh tomatoes, you will be encouraged to carry on.

You can make baby greenhouses: Start your seeds indoors (ideally in one of those little “six-pack” pots), then put a stick of some sort into the dirt. Spritz the seeds…then drape/tuck a large baggy over all. The Styrofoam trays meat is packed are great plantling trays, and they will fit on a windowsill.

I have had people help me out (on the ‘net and in person), and am grateful. So I hope this little bit was helpful to you.

PS: Get a chicken or too. Good manure; good eggs. Mind you: They like to ferret around in freshly-dug dirt, so put up a lightweight fence just to keep the feathered ones out of your growing area.

Preach it, brother. I needed that.

Caleb has suggested law practice, a good profession. Nursing is another good profession. Nursing has great potential, serves as an opppertunity for growth in Christian charity and love for the needy, and is a very common “second career” (the average graduate of an RN program is 31 years old). In two to four years one can obtain an RN, and a few years after that become a CNP (Nurse Practitioner) CCNS (Clinical Nurse Specialist), if one wishes to go that route.

The RN program at my local community college is so cheap I’m able to pay as I go, and most health care institutions offer college tuition reimbursement; some even offer loan forgiveness.

And after that, the land.

Well that’s my plan, anyway.

“Kirby Hill” by Hayseed Dixie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRwlbmp21qs

Also, you don’t have to grow everything. Provide something interesting that you like and the community might want. I’d really like to get into the home brewing of beer movement, and once I save up enough money I will. Beer is one way to make friends and influence people to teach you and trade you for some seeds or whathaveyou.

Thank you for your considered response.

After re-reading my comment (and before you wrote your response), I realized that you were certain to call me out on the charge that you had said the life was “easy.” I considered posting an addendum to clarify my meaning, then decided against it for the sake of time. To be sure, your defense is entirely correct.

I am not averse to taking risks myself, but when one has a family to think about, every risk is magnified hundredfold; by making these tentative initial explorations, I hope to have a better picture of what the risks are and how I might go about navigating them.

Of course you’re right that every local situation is unique, but your advice is still helpful. You have pointed out that having another flexible source of income is immensely helpful. I have always thought it would be nice to have a small country law practice, though I didn’t go in that direction, and probably will not do so now. But who knows? You’ve got me thinking.

Thanks for the invitation to the Stegall stead. I have family in Olathe, so I’m occasionally in your neck of the woods (or swath of prairie?). Perhaps I’ll drop you a line before my next visit.

Thanks again.

You ask questions that do deserve some thoughtful response. There aren’t enough specifics here, nor do I have the necessary local knowledge to speak to your place even if I had the specifics. But I can follow my own advice and speak of my experience.

First, a correction—I didn’t say it was easy. In fact, I said it was very very hard. I also do not believe that the kind of life we are discussing is ever free from risk and a strong likelihood of failure. One thing I have learned from the study of the prairie and my own experience is that failure is the farmer’s (and the freeman’s, regardless of vocation) constant companion. Best to make it your friend.

But there are different kinds of risk. Stay away from the kinds that make you another’s bondsman (i.e., borrowing large sums). Accept and embrace the kinds that may lead you to destitution, death, loneliness, back-breaking labor, humiliation, etc.,—you can shoulder all of these as a freeman, which, in my view, ought to be the goal. At the least, you can achieve the rare success of a first-rate and fully self-sufficient failure—then write a great memoir! (see, e.g., Victor Davis Hanson)

As for start-up capital, if you have avoided the typical American financial pitfalls, take a second job and keep saving. Be patient. Remember Jacob, working for seven years (and then another seven!). I imagine any thrifty hard-worker ought to be able to buy a small stead after seven years of saving.

As for my example, I did go to law school, which, by the way, despite my shots at lawyers, I think is a damn fine profession and in fact, is the last truly liberal education available in America, if you want to treat it that way. Just go to a small state school and incur as little debt as possible. The law remains an excellent supplemental vocation to farming, both from an income perspective and, more importantly, from a communal perspective. Go read some Berry on Wheeler Catlett.

And if you’re ever in the neighborhood, drop by to see what a real lawyer failing at farming looks like.

As the one responsible for the quote that generated this post of yours, I think perhaps some clarification is in order. What I certainly was not asking for was a “primer” on the day-to-day practices of growing crops and raising stock. My reference to “nose-to-the-grindstone studying about agricultural methods and practice” should not have been interpreted to mean merely “book-larnin’”; having at my disposal a goodly number of family members who have made a life of farming (in fact there is only farming on either side of my family as far back as one can see), I entertain no delusions that would lead me to believe that this sort of practical advice is best found by trolling the internet or even reading a book. So your bracingly delivered admonition to just get out and give it a try is well-received (if, as some other commentators have observed, a bit lacking in substance).

My primary question, which perhaps I did not make clear enough, regards the financial problems facing me and others in similar situations. I am not talking about buying a little home on an acre of land and growing a sizable garden; I fancy I could figure that out on my own.

What I am thinking of is a bit larger in scale, though still very small in relative terms. Still, not everyone lives in Kansas, where land remains relatively plentiful and cheap–Jeremy made reference to this problem in his original post. And, to make matters more complicated, my mobility/flexibility is strictly limited by the fact that my wife and I have, in good Front Porch fashion, made it our first priority to put down roots around extended family, to make a community of our family, if you will (incidentally, the family of which I speak is hers, not mine, and hers is not a farming family).

Finally, let it be clear that my wife and I do not come close to fitting the profile of those whose main financial problem is “stupidity, a complete inability to delay gratification, and absurd expectations about their standard of living.” I come from, and am faithful to, a long line of folks whose thriftiness borders on stinginess (though, like most in that line, we are still strictly observant of our financial duties as Christians).

In sum: like it or not, farming operations, even small-scale ones, require a fair amount of capital and some potentially risky investments. The “primer” I envisioned was really just some practical advice from some folks who had successfully navigated the early stages of such an enterprise. Perhaps this was the wrong place to seek that kind of advice; you, who are probably the best positioned to give it, clearly declined to do so, opting instead to give a pep speech about stick-to-it-iveness and elbow grease.

Despite your implicit assertion that it really isn’t so hard, I really don’t think it was too much of a stretch to suggest that an undertaking such as this is particularly difficult for one who 1) has no family or friends from whom to inherit or borrow land, 2) is supporting one’s family off a small income (and only expects that family to continue growing and the income to remain low). There are many people out there, including a fair number of small farmers (and including my own farming family) who would simply say it was impossible, or too difficult and risky, for a person in my situation to consider. I like to think that isn’t the case, but I don’t really have practical answers–which is precisely what I am trying to find.

As for the tone of your writing, I appreciate your willingness to call it as you see it. Still, there is something to be said for the ability to distinguish friend from foe–not in order to be hard on one and light on the other, which is no virtue, but in order to avoid wrongly attributing to friends the shortcomings of foes. (One might also mention charity, which encourages the tendency to err on the side of assuming the best about others, rather than the worst, when facts are scarce–but we’ll keep theology out of it for now.)

Keep up the good work.

Insolence, in reaction to this day and age is a sign of compassion for certain truths that seem no longer important and as far as wit goes, the dour but reflexively supportive Puritans never had a Borscht Belt worth a drachma. In other words, if’n ye don’t likem feisty, seek ye elsewhere and do it with the full support and fine tidings of the management. Or, just be good and be mighty glad that there are curmudgeons around to provide the contrast required for the desired classification.

Still though, this Stegall fellow is obviously a maleducato cavone who puts buckets on the head of swine.

Let history teach you a lesson. TNP was an exercise in futility and died a slow cancerous death. Whatever you had to say there that was valid (and there was a lot of this) was, like this piece, ultimately counter-productive because it was so deeply and gratuitously self-indulgent. You want to make the world better? Great. Be a christian and sacrifice your ego for the healing of your brother.

If you enjoy writing, then write for yourself. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to attract the attention of a publisher, and make a few bucks on the side, and maybe even eventually make a living doing it. But just because relatively few people are able to make a living doing it doesn’t mean you can’t do it for yourself. I can’t see why the same logic wouldn’t apply to farming. We all, or almost all, have the right and the ability to do things we find rewarding; but we don’t all have the right and the ability to make a living doing those things.

If there is an unexplored criticism of crunchy “front porch” politics it is that too many of us are ninnies. So you ought to welcome all the FPR SOBs now rocking on the porch (of course I only speak for myself–and Kauffman and Peters, ’cause I know they’re real SOBs too).

No, the worst thing that can happen is that the rockers on the porch are filled with nasty sons-of-bitches who have nothing but insults for those happening by on the sidewalk. Both, though, describe well your previous internet venture. Don’t let it happen here.