My fiancé and I rent a house with a little bit of land and are starting up a farm. How does this work? Let me tell you, it is not easy.
It took us months and months of searching to find a place close enough to town that has the space for our animals and allows livestock. We lived in his parents basement for a few months and boarded our animals while we researched and saved up our money. We tried to buy a house, but failed so we went back to searching.
We had people scam us, lie to us, try to charge us more than what was reasonable and more. We eventually found the perfect place just out of Fort Collins, signed a lease immediately and started moving our animals.
Once we moved in, the real struggle began. With everything that we do, we have to keep in mind that we don't own anything. We can't plant our berry bushes in the ground, we can't have permanent fixtures for the animals, we have to make sure that we keep up the grass so that the goats don't overgraze...
Before we build anything or set anything up, we think through the tear down process. If taking it apart and moving it to a new location sounds like too much of a hassle, we won't do it! The goat shed that we built can be taken apart with a drill and a couple of bits, the chicken run that we built can be taken apart with a wrench and folded up small enough to fit in the back of my jeep, the fence that we put in requires a little force to pull t posts up and a few days for grass to cover up the holes left.
Because we have to build everything to be semi temporary, we have to do a lot of rebuilding. We initially built our chicken run out of pvc and chicken wire and the goats immediately broke it. Shortly after that, we upgraded to wood and chicken wire. The goats didn't take too long to break that one too. Eventually we gave up and bought the manufactured chicken run and the goats have yet to break this one. KNOCK ON WOOD!!! The fence that we put up was initially put in with light duty t posts because we figured that they would leave a smaller hole. Jokes on us, the goats knocked it down so we upgraded to heavy duty t posts.
The goats don't just like forcing us to rebuild our projects, they also like trying to destroy the property that isn't ours. In their first week in the new place, they stripped the beautiful berry bushes down to a sad, leafless bush. They also tried to rip our screen door and I don't want to think about what would have happened if they jumped full force on the sliding glass door. This is why they now have a fence dividing their portion of the yard from the patio.
On this patio, is where all of our potted, fruiting plants live. Because we don't want to lose all of our plant growth progress when we move, we keep all of our perennial plants in pots. We have a wide variety of berry bushes that we have put a lot of love and money into. We have tried planting in the ground and then simply uprooting them when we have to move, but the stress is enough to kill the plants most of the time. Keeping them in pots can be a pain because we have to give them bigger pots each spring, but at least we continue to have fruit after we move rather than starting all over again.
Obviously everything has pros and cons. We have not yet had to pour all of our money into buying a plot of land. We were lucky enough to land a rental close to town that allows us to continue building up our tiny farm and we will use our rental time to save up for our slightly bigger, future farm.
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