NEC:

Wow! You all are in for an adventure. So much to offer but here's a start.

These are great books of inspiration for such a lifestyle:

Faith Addis
Year of the Cornflake (1999): Brian and Faith Addis finance their move from London to the farmlands of Devon by taking in children for 'unescorted holidays' during summer and winter and spring school breaks, at the same time as they renovate the house and add farm animals (pigs, sheep, horses, etc.)

Richard T. Antony
Mountain of My Dreams: The Early Years (2003): First in a four-part series about his family's move from urban to rural America (Rappahannock County, VA) in 1985 to grow azaleas for a living.
Mountain of My Dreams: The Middle Years (2004)

Hal Borland
Hill Country Harvest (1967): Nature essays. This book invites the reader to spend a year in New England (Connecticut, at the foot of the Berkshires) with an observer who makes the countryside stimulate the senses.
This Hill, This Valley (1957): A modern Thoreau in a year of country living in a Connecticut valley observing nature through the seasons.

David Brill
A Separate Place: A Family, a Cabin in the Woods, and a Journey of Love and Spirit (2000): Confronted with a disintegrating marriage and a deep well of unhappiness, Brill decided to make go back to the land, buying some woodland in the Tennessee hills and building a 3-room cabin on the edge of the wild. This book recounts his adventures and occasional misadventures in self-transformation.

Louis Bromfield
Malabar Farm series (1940s): In the spirit of Thoreau, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist wrote on agriculture and environment from his Ohio farm.

Marnie Reed Crowell
Greener Pastures: Life in the North Country (1973): Farm life in upstate, northern New York.

Laura Shaine Cunningham
A Place in the Country (2000): An urban childhood was the germ of the author's dream of having a country home. She acquires one after a ten year search, and begins life there a rural innocent.

Edmund Fuller
Successful Calamity: A Writer's Follies on a Vermont Farm (1966): In 1948 Edmund Fuller bought himself a farm on Lake Champlain, pretty much sight unseen, in mid-January, when all 264 acres were buried under four feet of snow. He lasted four years, and this is the story of it.

Lewis Gannett
Cream Hill: Discoveries of a Weekend Countryman (1949): The author's tales of life on the weekend farm in Connecticut.

John Graves
Hardscrabble: Observations on a Patch of Land (1974): Essays about the author's life on a small hill-country farm in Texas.

From A Limestone Ledge (1980): Essays and other ruminations about country life in Texas. A treatise on the pleasures and hardships of doing things for oneself, a nostalgic meditation on country ways. Graves considers every creature and aspect of country life that has lured or forced his attention during two decades of living on, and working, a battered and recalcitrant stock farm in the cedar-covered limestone hills of North Central Texas.

Curtis Harnack
We Have All Gone Away (1973): An affectionate look at life on an Iowa farm in the 1930s and 1940s.

Lewis Hill
Fetched-Up Yankee: A New England Boyhood Remembered (2001): A boy's adventures growing up in the 1930s in Northern New England [Vermont]. By focusing on his neighbors, his family, and the small details of everyday life, Hill shows how the twentieth century came thirty years late to the backwoods of his boyhood. This was a simpler time of square dances and school pageants, when women spent much of their free time listening in on the new-fangled party lines and men drove their first cars as if they were horses, stopping often to let them rest.

Helen and Adrian Hoover
A Place in the Woods (1969): Author's story of living in the woods of Minnesota, before modern intrusions. Also others, including some for children.

The Years of the Forest (1973/1999): Adrian and Helen Hoover gave up urban comforts for the deeper delights of the wilderness in 1954. This is the story of the Hoovers' education in wilderness housekeeping and of the surprising challenges they faced at each step. Includes priceless hints and how-tos for solving the problems of living close to nature and on good terms with one's neighbors -- bluejays, weasels, field mice, and deer.

Lois Phillips Hudson
The Bones of Plenty (1962): A vivid and absorbing novel of a proud, independent North Dakota wheat-farming family and their struggles against the relentless depression years

Graham R. Irwin and Ken Ashton
A Farm of Our Own: A Spiritual Journey Running a Smallholding (1998): An honest and intimate account of the attempts of a city-boy and his partner at running a small farm as a hobby. As its subtitle suggests, it also describes some of the lessons learned during that ten-year once-in-a-lifetime experience. It is a journey that takes the author through some of the most harrowing experiences of his life -- such as when his pet house cow is diagnosed as having mad cow disease; some of the most amusing -- like the antics of a sex-mad drake and ram; some of the most frustrating -- such as having to burn two acres of soggy grass that should have been hay; and some of the most satisfying and rewarding. In its own way, the book aims to build bridges and promote understanding between city dwellers and country folk. North Bedfordshire,
England.

John Jackson
A Bucket of Nuts and a Herring Net (1979): The author's account of his family's move from London to Kent, and how they coped with country and farm life.

Michael Korda
Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse (2002): Michael Korda, editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster and bestselling author, and his wife Margaret decided to buy a 200-year-old farmhouse -- with 2 barns, 20 acres, an assortment of farming implements, and a caretaker named Harold Roe -- in Pleasant Valley, two hours north of New York City. Buying pigs is what finally bonded the Kordas with the people in their working community.

Natalie Kusz
Road Song: A Memoir (1991): In 1969, when she was six years old, Natalie Kusz, with her parents and three siblings, left Los Angeles and headed north to Alaska on a classic quest for freedom, a house on the land, and a more wholesome way of living.

Anne LaBastille
Woodswoman (1991): After her divorce and her triumphs trying to make it on her own, LaBastille moves from a condo to a plot of land in the Adirondacks, where she designs, builds, and maintains a log cabin by herself. This is the story of her life in the Adirondack mountains. Followed by Woodswoman II: Beyond Black Bear Lake and Woodswoman III: Book Three of the Woodswoman's Adventures.

Jeanne Marie Laskas
Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm (2000): Jeanne Marie Laskas is 37, with a house, garden, dog, cat, flourishing writing career -- all of the perfect ingredients, in fact, of a happy city-person's life -- when a childhood dream resurfaces. It is a farm dream. One summer afternoon, the perfect place appears, and it's very real: fifty acres, a pond, an Amish barn, and a magnificent view out over the rolling hills of Pennsylvania's Washington County. She and her boyfriend buy it and the misadventures begin as they try to adapt to farm living and the rural western Pennsylvania lifestyle.

Betty MacDonald
The Egg and I (1945): Screechingly funny and in places very lovely in its descriptions of the isolated coastal mountains of Washington State, and it offers good insights into the impressive challenges and rewards of chicken farming and rural life in general.

Onions in the Stew (1955): A woman's experinces of life on a lake island near Seattle.

Mary MacNeill
The Widow Down by the Brook: A Memoir of a Time Gone By (1999): In the early 1950s, MacNeill and her husband, Wilmot, moved to rural Connecticut. After developing cancer, he spent his waning time and strength on remodeling a barn for them to live in. Widowed at age 44, MacNeill learns to live independently.

Jim May
Farm on Nippersink Creek: A Midwestern Boyhood (1995): Midwest storyteller Jim May has collected some of his best stories of his growing up on a farm, in a devoutly Catholic family, in rural Spring Grove, IL.

Elliott Merrick
Green Mountain Farm (1948/1978): During the depths of the Great Depression, a city family buys an old, ramshackled farm in Vermont and the fun begins. The people, his neighbors, his family, the snows and mud of Vermont winters and springs, sailing Lake Champlain in summer, skiing in moonlight -- the author beautifully captures the essence of Vermont and how to live and what to live for.

William S. Morse
A Country Life (1995): Ninety-year-old author reminisces about country life on a North Country farm in the early years of the 20th century. As a boy he was responsible keeping the woodbox stocked, feeding the livestock, milking cows, etc.

Jim Mullen
It Takes A Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life (2001): An urban humor columnist and his wife buy an upstate New York getaway (in the Catskills), which leads to their reluctant transformation from city slickers to country bumpkins, and their eventual permanent move to the country. Chronicled with stinging wit, hilarious anecdotes, and an amusing fondness for their farming neighbours.

Sallyann Murphey
Bean Blossom Dreams: A City Family's Search for a Simple Country Life (1994): Details the accomplishments and day-to-day life of a family that decided to chuck the city life for the simpler, slower pace of the country. Former BBC producer Murphey, her photographer husband, and their small daughter moved to a tumbledown 42-acre farm in Brown County, Ind., in 1990. Also includes a lengthy set of appendices at the back of the book with recipes, garden tips, etc.

Dan Needles
Letters from Wingfield Farm (1990): Walt Wingfield, chairman of the board of a Toronto brokerage house, yearned for a simpler life. So he bought a hundred-acre farm in southern Ontario. Like Thoreau, he would be a gentleman farmer, rich in barnyard philosophy. He would use only horse-drawn equipment so he could listen to the music of the land. But did Thoreau have to contend with a dour, sour, grouchy farmer next door, whose constant advice was to bulldoze the place? Or a stuttering auctioneer? Or ...

Robert Newton Peck
A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972/1994): Young adult book set on the farm of a Vermont Shaker family in the 1920s. True story of Peck's adolescence.

S.J. Perelman
Acres and Pains, a Guide to Country Loafing (1947/1999): Details the adventures of a New Yorker who suddenly finds himself the owner of a farm in Bucks County, PA.

Noel Perrin
First Person Rural, Essays of a Sometime Farmer (1978): The first of Perrin's four books on country living, each containing essays concerning Vermont country life and ranging from the intensely practical to the mildly literary. Also: Second Person Rural, More Essays of a Sometime Farmer (1980), Third Person Rural, Further Essays of a Sometime Farmer (1983), and Last Person Rural (1992).

Janisse Ray
Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home (2003): When she was 35, Janisse Ray left Montana, heading toward her grandmother's house in the small Georgia town where she was born. Rediscovering the nearly lost pleasures of country life, she wonders if real connections can be built between herself and her neighbors, whether she can build a sustainable life for herself and her son.

Wayne Short
The Cheechakoes: The True Story of the Remarkable Adventures of an American Family Who Moved to Alaska and Lived Like Pioneers (1964): The author, born in the Arizona desert, was moved with the rest of the family to Alaska by his father who was, like his family before him, looking for the last frontier. They were all cheechakoes -- Indian for greenhorns -- but the challenge of the wilderness only served to make their life more exciting, especially for young boys.

Sherry Thomas
We Didn't Have Much, But We Sure Had Plenty: Rural Women in Their Own Words (1981): The strong voices of rural women from a variety of perspectives speak about their lives.

W. D. Wetherell
North of Now: A Celebration of Country and the Soon to Be Gone (1998): Author has lived for many years in mountainous western New Hampshire, in Thoreauvian simplicity, with wood stove and manual typewriter, without television or computer. The book is a collection of little essays on simple things and on low-maintenance pleasures.

Joe

Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance
by M. John Storey, Deborah Burns, Martha Storey

Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management
by M. G. Kains, Maurice Grenville Kains

Making Your Small Farm Profitable
by Ron Macher

Small-Scale Livestock Farming: A Grass-Based Approach for Health, Sustainability, and Profit
by Carol Ekarius

Building a Sustainable Business: A Guide to Developing a Business Plan for Farms and Rural Businesses (Sustainable Agriculture Network Handbook Series, Bk. 6)
by Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics Guide
by John Seymour, Will Sutherland

The Self-Reliant Homestead
by Charles A. Sanders

The Contrary Farmer (Real Goods Independent Living Book)
by Gene Logsdon

Joe

South dakota? Sounds like wheat country. (0 miles is a big gas bill to cover going to farmer's market twice/week.
SD might also have a short growing season. Most small farms go under, especially if there isn't enough cash flow during the 'learning period', which could take years, so thes young'uns need to start small and work u to it as their farm income rises. Market farming is pretty much a full-time thing, at least for one person of the family.
The distance to market sounds like a problem to me.

Perhaps a value-added type enterprise using a crop which is well adapted to the area, is not perishable, and could be sold direct by mail-order, or wholesale.

I'm thinking sheaves of ornamental wheat, oats, barley, etc. that could be dried and arranged. Something like that, maybe something brand new that others haven't gotten into.

With a crop like that, and land already being cultivated, planted, etc. in basically the same type crop, suited to the area. Probably all they need do is hire out somebody in the fall to plant the grain and be prepared to harvest, process, and store the crop in the summer, then market it the rest of the year. I'd suppose fall would be a big time, with sales going down after Christmas, but who knows? Of course all this is pie-in-the-sky, a sound business plan needs to be set up, seeds & packaging sourced out,market research, money saved up, etc.

County agents might be able to help get them started.

I wish them luck.
here is a description of some common florists grains:
http://www.aginfonet.com/aglibrary/content/sk_driedflower/grains_for.html

Here is a link that might be useful: grains for the florists trade

I think you have to look at your resources and markets. You are going to have to grow something, process it and sell it. in the selling is the marketing, the toughest part. but fedex and ups are there and so is the internet. now just what to produce i do nnot know. Buffalo steaks??

Mark

jayreynolds has a great idea. The article he referenced to was wirtten by Buck Godwin (an old friend of mine) who was pretty much the pioneer of ornamental uses of grains and grasses. He did all the work in Alberta (much like the Dakotas).

I also found these inspiration websites:

http://www.craftmark.com/L/lilje/ranch.htm

http://www.greendealer-exotic-seeds.com/seeds/Corn.html

http://www.neseed.com/store/cornornamental.html

http://www.nextharvest.com/grain.htm

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/farnorth/msg1017065019647.html

Thank you very much for all the info. I think that they will have to research, research, research. I told them that they need to find a market first, and then decide what they want to produce. Our DIL is very creative and has an artistic touch. Maybe she can produce something to sell on the internet. . They understand that one of them will have to work for someone else until they make an income that will support a family and insurance. Right now, their biggest problem is insurance. This area is a little economically depressed and it is extremely difficult to find a job that has any benefits at all, especially health insurance. I will give them the websites that were listed and I will check out some of those books.

What a great list of books... I have some of them and will start checking out some others!

As for Market gardening needing to be a full time job I would disagree. My fiance' and I both have full time jobs and we have a 15 member CSA and do a Saturday market. Now I am not saying that we want to keep doing this for many more years, the goal is for me to be able to stay home in the next couple years, but you can do it. Just start small and grow, be careful not to bite of more then you can chew and be sure to give yourself an afternoon off, we usally do nothing except collect eggs after Saturday market, that is our "day off." I also have shifted my real work schedule so I get in at 7 and leave at 4. My fiance; is also home before 5. So we can usally get 2-4 hours in during the evenings. That averages out to 6 hours of work a day, almost a full time person. My faince also sometimes takes 1/2 days on Fridays to pick for market, otherwise Fridays are really late; picked, washed, and packed by 12:00 - 1:00 am and up for market at 5:30 the next day.

((So my days in the summer go -- up at 5:30, on the road by 6:15, at work by 7:00, during lunch I work on our CSA newsletter and our website, leave at 4:00, home at 5, make dinner, eat and sit down between 5 and 6, outside at 6, work until 8:30 or 9:30, take care of chickens and clean up, sit down between 10:00 or 10:30 for half an hour of TV, take a shower, in bed by 11. Start over... :)

So you can do it, but it is a lot of work for everyone, and you have to really want it.

How about a class at the Land Stewardship Project? A school for beginning farmers (www.landstewardshipproject.org). DH and I are currently going back to school, we will have finished - unfortunately - this month, then mentorship begins and the search for a farm.
Students come from all over the US - great for networking.
Good luck
Claudia

Since this is posted on the Market Gardener, I would ordinarily discuss in terms of plants, but you're talking about a sustainable lifestyle, so I'm going to broaden it a little to include livestock. The principles are the same, it's just easier for me to talk in terms of farming.

While there are some lovely books to read on those lists, I would say as far as reading goes, practicality first, philosophy second. You might do some checking on the lists and prioritize the recommendations.

Put in some heavy duty time with the county ag agents. Ours supply farm record books that are a wonder for calculating costs and profits, maintaining livestock and crop records, etc. You can do part of this for them. The agent will be able to give you some idea of the established markets and farming in the area. You'll see what is overloaded and where there's growth. It will also be helpful to know things like: If you're going to raise sheep, it may be helpful to raise the same breeds so you'll have a local source for replacement ewes and rams, or so you can be part of a wool-marketing cooperative.

Look at the talents and abilities. I like sheep and can handle most of the care necessary, such as shearing, etc. But I have big hands--not good for helping deliver a tangle of lambs. On the other hand, there have been times when I've needed to wrestle a hundred pound ewe, who has decided she will not walk even if staying where she is will mean drowning, up a steep and muddy bank in the middle of a rainstorm in the dark. We solve this with a partnership that lets us concentrate on our strengths. BUT, in time of necessity, we've each had to tackle jobs we aren't suited for.

Those are the preliminaries. As I understand there are 320 acres total, with 300 rented out. That gives the youngsters 20 acres to work with?

The main thing I would do is establish a relationship with the farmer or farmers that are renting the land. Offer to work in whatever free time your son and DIL have for whatever wages the farmers can afford in return for learning. Do they raise hay? Learn how to judge when hay is ready for cutting. Learn what grass works in the area, what kind of hay sells, what size bales are easiest to handle on the farm, what size bales bring the best return on the market, what kind of baler to buy, where a used baler might be available, how to handle minor repairs, how to load the twine, how to grease and maintain the mechanism.

Perhaps the farmer runs cattle. Could the property support more animals per acre? How? Find out what kind of improvements the farmer would make on the land. Liming? Reseeding? Would a water tank make it better? Should that stream be dammed or diverted? Would bringing in a herd of goats to clean up the weeds make it better? Would the farmer make the improvements himself as a substitute for the rent? Would he pay higher rent for the improvements? Would he pay your son and DIL to check the animals, haul feed in the winter, etc.?

Look for improvements that can be made gradually. Does the fence need improving? Find out how to run barbed wire. (It's harder than it looks and there are some techniques that will make the work much easier and much safer.) The field needs new posts? Start putting aside enough money from each paycheck to buy one post. Get the posts in place and then replace one strand of wire at a time. Or one roll of barbed wire at a time.

In this way, your son gets experience in farming, the land is improved, and he's working towards a time when he can farm the property himself.

Okay, so you have a plan for the 300 acres, what do the kids do with the 20?

Market research will be the key. Find either a group that will give you mass marketing strength or find a niche that no one else is doing. Don't go for a kind of medium where you have competitors and some do well and some fail but most do only okay.

South Dakota--Are there Indian Reservations nearby? Have the kids considered raising Indian corn--sorry, ornamental corn? Forget cultural authenticity--we're talking tourists here. Most will easily make the connection. Grow one season, dry and store, sell the next summer season. Stores at campgrounds would be potential customers. Would a roadside stand be doable for you? They would also have the fall decorations market. They could sell at the local farmer's market and even if their supply didn't sell one weekend, they could bring the same back the next week with small loss because dried corn doesn't spoil the way cut flowers might. They can also market shocks of corn as decorations. Some of the ornamental corn has different colored stalks--take orders, charge for delivery. They could sell mail order, seeds as well as the ears. The seeds are used in making necklaces for the tourist trade. They might also raise some of the varieties of blue corn, which beyond decoration can also be used to grind blue corn meal for Mexican dishes such as tacos, etc. Since most of these varieties are not hybrid, they should be able to raise their own seed after the first order.

Surplus, since it's good corn, could be fed to their own livestock--you know, those goats that are clearing the pasture?

The relatively short growing season can be managed since in my experience the ornamental corn sprouts can handle some frost die-back in spring, and they'll need to have a couple of frosts before harvest anyway. Patches of different varieties will have to be separated to avoid cross-pollination--or you can cross them and develop your own variety. Print labels on the computer, put the corn in a baggy, and bob's your uncle.

Add gourds and pumpkins, depending upon the growing season, to go along with the themes of Native American crops and ornamental crops. They can even be planted among the cornrows.

Ray

If they've never farmed before and are thinking of market gardening, I'd suggest that they do a garden the first season just for themselves, plus maybe some pastured poultry for meat or eggs. If they learn to put away (either can, freeze or dry) their harvests, they may be able to reduce their food bill to next to nothing except for dried stuff like salt, flour, sweetener, oil, etc. That in itself would be a few thousand that they won't have to work outside to pay the grocer. From that experience they can get an idea if growing veggies/fruits is what they might like to try. If not, at least they haven't lost a lot of time/money on equipment.
Ann

Ray, thank you very much for your well thought out posting. I appreciate the time you took do put that together. I will be making a copy of everyones post and I plan to sit down with them this weekend and discuss these issues. I lived on a farm until I was about 12, so I have just enough knowledge to know what is dangerous on the farm and what is not. I am also looking forward to helping them out when I retire in a couple of years.