Nobody told me this about buying land, starting a farm or homesteading!

what is the world's dumbest animal the world's dumbest animal is the squirrel and let me tell you why world's dous animal is a squirrel because when a squirrel is faced with a problem like being out in the middle of the road and a car is coming they go set your Sals in a direction for [Music] Success come all right guys welcome to the Stony Ridge Farm Channel got the ATV out here the cows are out here gobbling down some food and today today's video is brought to you by the Curiosity of one of my viewers and they asked me Josh why don't you talk about what it took to buy your land from start to finish and build your first generation farm and if you guys have never watched the Stony Ridge Farm Channel and you're down here on the internet and you got sucked into the rabbit hole welcome so this is going to be some good valuable information on buying land and starting your own first generation Farm whether you want to farm whether whether you want a homestead whether you want to get serious about this or whether you just want to retire on a larger piece of property this is all good sound advice for you guys so I hope you enjoy the video again hit that like button subscribe to the channel love to have you back here on the farm with me this is a first generation Farm in the foothills of the bluid mountains of North Carolina so first and foremost let's talk about land where you live land may be expensive where I live land's not that expensive so we're in the Foothills SL pedmont region of North Carolina Southwest Virginia area so what I'm telling you here is there are jobs and land is cheap why not uproot yourself if you have to in order to follow your dream so if you're watching this with your wife if you're watching this by yourself go back and watch it with your wife or go back and watch it with your husband this isn't that complicated but it is to some folks and it's hard to just stick your toe in the water if you get my drift you getting ready to jump in the pool head first bam there's people that do that and then there's the toe in the water guy I'm the toe in the water guy so really I didn't know what I was getting myself into I lived in Downtown Greensboro North Carolina in a downtown apartment I bought a small home on a third of an acre in town about 3 miles from downtown in a neighborhood and I started raising vegetables and I felt a calling back to the land that same calling that might have brought you guys here to watch the Stony Ridge Farm channel so I'm a registered nurse and we bought pieces of property out here on a nurse's salary so this piece of property was 60 Acres over here the piece I'm standing on was 90 Acres right here and there's another piece right over there that's another 50 acres that I no longer own and we'll talk about that we'll talk about strategic land purchases here in just a second before we get started with today's video I want to give a huge shout out to Birch living for sponsoring today's video this is the Birch mattress and I think 2023 is winding up and in case you guys don't know I recently had a lot lot of back pain and having a good quality mattress like this really really makes the difference it was important for me to pick a birch mattress made with Organic and natural materials because Birch mattresses never contain cheap and dangerous fiberglass instead they use 100% organic wool harnessing its natural flame resistance so guys I ordered the Birch Lux mattress which is a premium upgrade to the standard Birch mattress it's super awesome it has just an extra pillow on the top right here which makes it super super comfortable I've had the mattress for about a month now and I'm really impressed that it doesn't have any unnatural materials it's all organic so in other words I don't have to worry about it off gassing some kind of chemical into my body while I sleep and I've been sleeping awesome the Birch mattress far exceeds the Old Spring mattress that I had here in the bedroom and it's super easy on the back I fall right to sleep so if you decide to buy a birch mattress you'll get a 100 night sleep guarantee and a 25e warranty 25e warranty on a mattress that really says something for the quality the best part about the Birch mattress was that they shipped it right to my door at no cost or you can have inhome setup so somebody can come and set it up it comes in a box wrapped in a big old plastic bag squeezed really really tight you cut that box open and the mattress kind of just folds out pull out the plastic and Bam the mattress is totally inflated and ready to sleep on within minutes I love my Birch mattress guys and I think you will too if you're looking for a new bed check out Birch living visit Birch living.com stonyridge to get 20% off at Birch mattress that is just for Stony Ridge farmer fans plus two free Eco rest pillows for your little ones check out Birch kids natural mattress which is a 2023 Good Housekeeping parenting Award winner guys thank you so much and a big shout out to Birch living for sponsoring today's video the Birch mattress is absolutely awesome and I cannot wait to keep on sleeping on it 100 night guarantee 25e warranty guys guys check out the link down the video description again it is birch living.com stri get your 20% off and free pillows we got work to do so let's get on back out on the farm and get our work done and we'll sleep good tonight so I had the dream I had the dream probably that you guys have I wanted to live a good clean country life I wanted to breathe good clean country air with manure all around me I wanted to start a first generation farm and what got me inspired was the quality of food and the food system in this country and I don't like it I don't like the way the food system works in this country I want to eat Farm Fresh I want to eat local and that's why I started building a first generation farm so 60 Acres over here that I bought from one of my patients at the hospital this fell was sick we talked a little bit once he got home he got well we came out and looked at a disaster this was an overgrown disaster of a piece of property with trees anywhere from this big to this big it was 40 years abandoned tobacco land it was old tobacco land and what is really important to know about tobacco land or raising cotton or raising a whole lot of other crops is intensively farmed land like that loses top soil there is no top soil left here in the pedmont region and foothills region of North Carolina and Virginia it's all gone it's all been washed away because of intensive poor farming practices that's why people moved out west they moved to Missouri and there's land in Missouri they mooved to Indiana and there's land in Indiana they mooved to Kansas there's land in Kansas there's land out west with top soil okay so the more rule of thumb I guess is the more rural your property is the cheaper it's going to be unless you live in a place like this that has no top soil okay we have jobs we have no top soil and we have land and land was cheap 2,000 bucks an acre for this place 1,800 bucks an acre for that place and 2,000 bucks an acre for that place you do the math it's less than your mcmansion cost right or somebody else is mcmansion the 5,000 ft monstrous house that's 15 ft from your neighbor so how do you acquire the money to buy land well it's a little bit different than going to get a loan I'm a veteran of the United States Air Force I thought I could go get a VA loan zero money down and just buy this 60 Acres over here and I had no idea this 90 Acres was going to be for sale a year later so I went to the VA loan place and I said I think it was Wells farger I was like I'm looking at buying 60 Acres oh raw land no I couldn't buy it I couldn't buy it through a conventional bank loan what I had to do was go to my local Carolina Farm Credit or Farm Credit there's Farm Credit in every state pretty much if you're going to buy land then expect to either do Farm Credit or do a USDA Farm loan okay and there's more information at your local USDA a extension office and we'll talk about that stuff in just a minute so in order to buy this 60 Acres it was $120,000 we had to put about 25% down save your money save your money save your money money think about this now if you have money in the bank and you can just borrow against that borrow against that or if you can go out and buy it up in cash buy it in cash that's much more appealing to a land owner trying to sell their land I don't recommend and others do recommend leasing land if you want to lease land to give it a shot lease some land and give it a shot but here's the deal the land is the cheap part and that's what you need to know that's part of the take home message of this video today the land is the cheap part guys so if you go out here you pay $2,000 bucks an acre for this 1,800 bucks an acre for that and you have very poor land with no fences and and it's unfarmable you're going to have to spend some money you got to buy tractors trucks sheds tools fencing all sorts of stuff Water Systems Water Systems Water Systems you got to think about that too so how do I find land Josh how do I find land for sale well you can go on things like Zillow you can go on to realtor.com or neither one of these places were listed with a realtor you can do word of mouth so all you got to do do is pull down a country road and talk to a farmer and ask them because farmers are aging out guys and their kids aren't interested in farming the land or homesteading they want to live in the mcmansion in the neighborhood make their little bit of money and go to Disneyland that's not what I wanted to do with my life so I decided to seek out some land so 60 Acres over here we had to give about 25% down which it's about $30,000 something like that that we had to put down save your money and be ready if you're young and you're thinking about doing this please go for it go for it now you may have to swallow your pride just a little bit and let's talk about swallowing your pride we first moved up here this is huge this place is absolutely enormous when it comes to a guy that lived on a third of an acre in the neighborhood it's ginormous I dreamed of starting a farm I felt a calling back to the land much like you might feel but this was so overwhelming that we looked for a cheap used mobile home so we didn't know where we wanted to build our permanent home or our house we just wanted to have a place to stay so we sought out a used mobile home we put the word out in the neighborhood and voila it popped up right in our face so I ended up buying a mobile home for about 3500 bucks I gutted it I remodled it and now we live in a mobile home while we pay for the land the land's paid for by the way because we don't have a mcmansion up on the hill of $400,000 house up on the hill we had the land and we worked really hard to pay off the land this again is on a nurse's salary do you feel like I'm feeding you with a fire hose yet I am going to feed you with a fire hose and if you need to go back and watch more go back and watch more if you need to prove to your wife or your husband that we can do this honey go back and watch it again so 60 Acres here 90 acres here we bought that land over there we built up enough equity that we had 25% down in equity on that land over there and we bought this with zero money down now we eventually ended up paying that land off over there and 50 more Acres came up for sale a year later over here across the road I didn't need any more land or any more work guys and I'm going to tell you a little bit about the quality of the land here in just a second so I bought that land over there in the midst of cutting Timber on this farm so there was only on the 60 acre tract over there about seven or 8ish Acres of cleared land all the rest of it was overgrown in 40-year-old Brushy Forest we needed to get rid of that we needed to start another Farm I talked to the oldtimers that used to live in the neighborhood here and I said man it used to be beautiful Rolling Hills right down through there all that was Fields all that was in corn and tobacco an old tobacco farm so we got to talk in a little bit so we cut all the Timber on this piece and we cut the Timber on this piece so we cut about 100 acres in total on Timber now you're looking for land and you're thinking man that Timber's worth a bunch of money trees this big aren't worth a bunch of money trees this this big aren't trees this big are okay so that being said we netted about 400 bucks per acre is on the land cutting the timber we took that money about $42,000 and we started clearing I had a guy come and start clearing land a guy that knew what he was doing he moved fast and he got a lot of land cleared very quickly but you need to pay attention and you need to have good conversations and good communication with the person that's going to clear your land I failed to tell them think Golf Course don't think cow pasture so when you're clearing land you think golf course you want a big beautiful park-like setting that is the goal when you're clearing land and this fella didn't know so I had to hire somebody else to come in behind him to straighten it up and to fix it up Frank Frank's probably watching right now so that all being said uh we started clearing Land We cleared uh right around 85 acres of land and about 885 5 acres is now fenced now we've got to think about this buying the land is the cheap part guys the cheap parts buying the land the improvements is what cost money so we ended up probably spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $75,000 in land clearing money we ended up taking $442,000 dumping that on it and then we had to dump an additional amount of money into clearing the land that's where this piece of property comes in so we bought 50 acres across the road I subdivided it I put a restriction on the property and I sold it I sold it in two different tracks and that was enough money made on that purchase to pay this land off it's about debt being your prison so if you're a prisoner of debt right now get the heck out of debt as fast as you possibly can I'm going to tell you the freedom that it affords you is something super fantastic post comments down there if you're out of debt guys now you're going to need some skills a skill set for sure it's a the skill set to be able to raise animals Care for Animals build fences build waterways and do all this stuff on your own if you're thinking about hiring it done you might as well be a multi-millionaire just buying it so that you can enjoy it and hire it all done but I tell you what you're going to go broke or spend a ton of money by hiring somebody to do everything for you you've got to have some skills with this and some skills with this hopefully this video is helping you with all these skills so water system are very important when you're looking for a piece of land to start a farm or to start a homestead you need to make sure you have some water on the property we have six Creeks on this property not one fence was up when we bought this property I have cut some old barb wire out of trees down here but no fences were up on the property now they make it sound like the USDA is just handing out money handing out free cash to build farms and and handing out cash to Veterans and handing out cash to everybody to build to farm that's not so and I tell you what I don't know how you guys live or I just know how I live and I want to keep the government as far out of my business as I possibly can because it's none of their business what I'm doing so if I get that free money from Grants and programs like that from the government then I'm being watched all the time and I didn't want that I just did not want that so that's my Spiel I think going out going to Farm Credit paying your down payment is the way to go and that's what we did here on the Stony Ridge so now we're talking about fencing here on the property fencing is going to cost you good fencing quality fencing that's going to keep your animals in like these cows is going to cost you anywhere from $6 to $16 per linear foot we've got five miles of fencing on this property let's just have you guys do some math on average about $12 a linear foot 5 miles at 12 bucks per linear foot how much do we have in fencing that's what you got to think about okay so when you're buying land and you're you're chasing that dream you need to think about water you need to think about fencing if you're going to have animals you need to think about how you're going to get the water to your animals you're going to have to think about and decide what animals you're going to raise you're going to raise sheep you're going to raise goats you're going to raise squash you're going to raise corn what you going to do a row crop farm that is less than this size Farm 150 acre row crop Farm will work you to death and you will go broke that's why we didn't do that okay we didn't want to sit at the farmers market all day long trying to sell watermelon and squat and making 18 bucks a day we didn't want to do that so what we did was decided we're going to go ahead and fence the place and start raising some cattle and after two or three years we'll start earning a profit on those cows uhuh six years we're six years into it right now and we're just seeing our first year of profit here on the Stony Ridge Farm another place where you might want to start looking for land is Zillow or realtor.com I think there's another site out there for land for sale guys post them down there if you know good sites and go over to your local Farm Service Office USDA office and there will be a bulletin board in there with all sorts of land that's for sale all the time it's always changing ask people ask people in the neighborhood ask people in the area that you want to live stop in and just shake hands and say Hey you know I'm Bill and this is Jane and and we were looking for a little bit of land to start our Homestead and we don't like development we just want a place where we can live the rest of our life or where we can start a farm or where we can uh start a homestead operation just like this ask around Word of Mouth word of mouth's how we bought this word of mouth is how we bought this and Word of Mouth Is How We bought that it all will fall in your lap if you've got your nose out there sniffing for it okay you'll find it guys so all this being said we didn't have very much land that was cleared out here on the Stony Ridge Farm we cut timber so we bought the land for 2, acre in 1,800 an acre here sold that land paid this off paid that off and started working our butts off toward clearing land and fencing cut timber on the land this is decent Timber this is valuable Timber okay this is chips wood chips okay so there's value in every bit of Timber is just about how much value you have there $400 per acre on average is not valuable Timber but producing high quality beef is valuable so guys I hope this video has really kind of set your sales in the right direction you can do it it's not unobtainable and again this is brought to you from a comment that someone left uh they asked if I could do a video on start to finish how we did this how we bought land so we bought the land we started clearing the land clear cutting we sold some Timber we started pushing off the land we started building our fences we started deciding what kind of animals that we were going to raise and we set our sales in the right direction what is the world's dumbest animal the world's dumbest animal is the squirrel and let me tell you why world's dumbest animal is a squirrel because when a squirrel is faced with a problem like being out in the middle of the road and a car is coming they go set your sales in a direction for Success now I will tell you this guys if you're looking at buying a piece of property and you're looking to start a homestead and you…