I'm working with a young family looking for a small farm property to call their own. Farms in the wine country of northern California are different than a farm in the Central Valley or one in Minnesota. We can't count on beautiful flat acreage perfectly suited to tractors. Our vineyards often wind up and down hillsides and they add a scenic quality that visitors love...and farmers cuss as they work around the slopes.
Great farm land in Sonoma County is selling from $50,000 to $75,000 an acre, so even a small farm is a challenge to the pocketbook. Making money from a farm demands a lot of hard work, smart marketing, and a dedication to the land. This is true whether you are a new organic grower, a third generation truck farmer in Salinas, or a traditional corn and soybean farmer in southern Minnesota. Farming is really hard work and I admire anyone who does it for a living. So, with dreams of a new CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) operation running through our heads, we have been looking for months.
In the past few weeks we have shifted our vision to the Potter Valley, a beautiful area north and east of Ukiah in Mendocino County. Land is more affordable there, and farms are more feasible in terms of expected yields relative to the cost of the land. It's actually possible to see a scenario where a farm purchase can pay for itself with crops rather than be subsidized by a day job. We're having fun and have looked at a few interesting possibilities, so overall we're feeling positive about the area.
Yesterday we decided to go up and look at a piece that has been off the market, but which has 11 acres in an irrigation district with low cost water. Normally I preview these properties via Google Earth to get a sense for terrain, but we didn't plan ahead far enough for me to generate the topo maps OR the Google Earth files. The property is listed by a real estate broker I trust who is the most productive lister of good farm land in the area. He's had pear orchards, vineyards, raw land, and other properties on the market in the last year, so he's a very good resource.
Unfortunately, his idea of level and mine didn't match on this property. We pulled up in front of the accurately described old barn and looked up at the hilliest, rockiest, most unsuitable land I could imagine for row cropping. The agent's description in the MLS of "level, gently sloped" must have been written in the dark standing on the level road in front of the property. His further description of "agricultural" is technically correct, but coupled with the "lower 11 acres in irrigation district" implied to me and my buyers a tractorable, farmable piece of land. Instead, agricultural must mean goats or sheep, not lettuce, carrots, and sweet corn.
The real culprit here isn't the listing agent who was using his most positive spin on the property. We're all supposed to paint our listings in the best light. No, the problem was my willingness to spend a half day road trip without a thorough preview. I could have seen the slope and terrain issues from the comfort of my office rather than standing, disappointed, in front of the barn. The trip wasn't a total bust. We got to take a second look at the property I think will end up being a good fit for them, but otherwise we spent a long tine in the car with their baby because I didn't take time to vet the property. My bad.
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