Last Ditch

When I started this blog, I was hoping within a year or two, I would be merrily blogging from some quiet forested acreage somewhere on a Gulf Island. I would lazily sip coffee and wax poetic while tending to my beans and squash, making enough from my roadside stand to make the whole thing worthwhile, if not profitable.

Two years later and I am eating candy on the couch, having just read another article about recession and how hard things are for people right now. Over a year ago now, we put in a bid for a tiny little shack and plot of land on Pender Island, only to be outbid significantly on a property that wasn’t really worth the asking price in the first place. A lot of hopes took a serious knock after that failure to launch and the ensuing period of property prices climbing ever higher.

I don’t pretend that property ownership will solve any problems, nor is it inherently better for the environment or for people. It involves exploitation and displacement of people and of ecosystems. Property ownership has become a bizarre fantasy of self reliance when what we probably really need is mutually supportive communities working for each other instead of the business of extractive empire (try saying that three times fast).

I also can’t pretend that I really know what else to do to prepare for the coming decades. Frankly, watching the world respond to the pandemic hasn’t exactly instilled me with a lot of hope that there will be any support for the average person in the climate crisis. In and among that thought spiral, is my desire to work for myself and to teach people how to grow food and to grow some myself in turn. With all of that in mind, or out of the way, I thought I would share some things I have learned for those considering starting a small farm.

Buying Bare Land
Most land in British Columbia starts around $500,000 and goes up from there. Bare land often requires a 40-50% down payment so if you thought some of those incentives being offered by the government would be helpful here, unfortunately they are not. Buying bare land is seen as much riskier than buying a house, so lenders want to know that you have a sizeable amount of the total price. If you were looking at a (relatively) “cheap” piece of land at $300,000, you would need to put down $150,000. I don’t know about you but that’s not exactly the spare change I have lying around. Bare land often requires quite a number of costly additions to support humans (septic tank, utility hook up, etc) so do your research before going this route. Look at very cheap pieces of land with a great deal of skepticism, as they are often priced so low for a reason (like seasonal flooding).

Move?
There’s definitely still pockets of opportunity around Canada and I love a Sunday afternoon of dream shopping 100 year old farm houses on Cape Breton. But that is a world away and presents a lot of practical challenges. The prairies have plenty of affordable acreages as well (some starting in the low $10-20k’s) but of course you end up buying something out in Beaver Gland, Saskatchewan, hundreds of kilometers from any town. Part of that sounds really appealing but I guess part of having a farm means actually having people to sell to. The East Coast and the Prairies have opportunities though and property is considerably cheaper than in other parts of the country.

Leasing Land
I was not a fan of this option at first. After all, if I want to create a food forest and invest in perennial food crops; short term lease agreements mean I am paying someone else to add value to their property (which I’m not inherently against doing but I already have one landlord). Most leases I have seen also rival a monthly mortgage payment, which feels like a financially precarious path. However, a few opportunities for future lease agreements have started to trickle through the grapevine and I’m beginning to look into what a small monthly lease in the $100-200/month range might look like. Depending on a lot of things, it could be conceivable that at that price we could at the very least grow a lot of our own food for a good chunk of the year. Frankly, I need the experience of large scale annual food crop production, and it would be a way to pick up those skills while waiting for something more long term or permanent to show up. Land leases come in all shapes and sizes, so don’t rule it out as an option. It might not feel like the vision in your head but it could get your hands in dirt a lot sooner.

Do I Need a Farm?
This is a thought that was deeply unpopular in my own mind until a few months ago but it is worth asking ourselves: is owning a piece of property or a farm actually what people need? There’s a lot of self-reliance and off-the-grid fantasizing that is very enticing but I think ignores a lot of important issues. First of all, buying land anywhere in North America and many parts of the world means you are buying land that has been stolen and its natural history altered for intensive agriculture. Who has been removed to make that possible is important. Buying land and using it for our own financial gain is one of the underlying issues that got us here. Secondly, if we’re talking about increasing access to food, buying a piece of land and charging premiums prices for organic produce (which, hey, sometimes you gotta do), what problem do we actually solve? Maybe we’re not all trying to solve this problem but I think it can be helpful to consider other alternatives. What are other ways we can imagine farming? Does it have to be an off grid individualist venture? Could it involve other people? Who will it serve? Who won’t it serve? What are the needs of your local community? What responsibility would you have to a new place and new community?

I don’t know what we will end up doing but it has been encouraging to think outside of just one narrow vision of farming and land ownership that feels like a fast moving goalpost.