AlexInBC

It's just that virtually no-one round here grows grain, so there's a shortage of straw, but nope, certainly no shortage of shavings as logging/timber is the main industry in the area. Unfortunately the shavings make our black alpaca look frankly ridiculous and I think the straw is warmer for them, too, so we have to get straw delivered from over 60km away

dbd33

We have small squares off the field behind us. 300 arrived one Tuesday evening with rain forecast for midnight (pictures somewhere on the blog), we paid $3 and my back still hurts. Round bales are $25 here, next year we'll blend, the horse hay in the small squares is better than we need.

Sawdust is readily available in bags, $4 for 3 cu ft compressed (1 1/2 bags to do a stall from scratch) or "blown in" loose from a truck, cheaper if you need lots. We can also get straw but don't so I don't know what it costs.

AlexInBC

Wow, that's good! I guess it's all down to supply and demand, though. You can't grow much hay halfway up a mountain and loads of people round here have livestock.

AlexInBC

Aah - guess there is an advantage to living out here...we get sawdust/shavings for free. The sawmill is just up the road and they'll only burn it if you don't help yourself.

dbd33

That's what they call "cow hay" but when one of the bales rolled away and rested on our fence it went into the horses quickly enough!

AlexInBC

The stuff we pay $40 a bale for is top quality, produced by friends of ours here http://www.fiddleriverfarm.com/index.htm for their horses, with the excess being sold. Bit of a waste on donkeys, sheep, llamas, etc., but even the people who sell lower quality hay charge the same or more. First winter we just went with the guy the previous owners recommended (yes, we were mugs!) and paid $65 a bale for really coarse rubbish

ScottishJim

Hi Guys and gals,
This is one of the reasons we fancy buying a quarter section (160 acres) and if we can get something with a nice mix of wooded and cultivated we can have enough land for grazing the horses, hay for the winter and wood for the stove.
If there is too much land for what we need we could always rent some of it out.

Just as a footnote if you do want to grow anything on the land find out what soil type you have and the yield per acre as this can make a difference both in the value of what you are buying and in how much hay will be baled per acre.

That's the plan anyway. If we don't hurry up and get over to Alberta ASAP we'll never be able to afford a place.
Looking forward to the 23rd of January when we hope to be flying out to Calgary on the one way tickets. (Depends on house sale closing on the 11th of January )

Best wishes

Jim

wilderness pete

hi

just bought 394 acres without any probs or conditions, and i was looking at anything between 10 and 600 acres in NS.
Depending on what animals you want to keep, you need to look at winter feed.

If its just a few ducks and a pig, should be no problem.
There doesnt seem to be any sheep in NS, cant understand why?

dbd33

You can't have "too much land", except when fencing it.

Growing your own hay requires a lot of capital investment, you have to have a tractor and baler that will work on the one dry day when the hay is ready. Balers are notriously finicky so you probably want two. Most people just trade half the crop to someone who can bring it in. That said, it can be made to work; I believe Tia grows high quality hay sells it, buys lower, and along the way achieves the critical $7,000 in sales and so 75% off the property taxes.

It's complicated, the simple life.

ScottishJim

Thanks dbd33,
I was brought up on a 5 acre steading which was not big enough to keep ponies and grow hay as you warned in a previous email. I helped and worked on a local farm that some friends of the family owned from about 8yrs old especially at Tattie picking and hay baling. I remember when I was about 10 or 11 yrs old the old baler that they used would not tie the twine properly so Muggins here got the job of sitting on the twine boxes next to the bales as they exited with no dust mask or anything for protection. I had to YELL! every time a bale wasn't tied, the tractor would stop and we would tie it.
The hay seed dust used make my eyes water and dust and yelling used to lead to a sore throat.
If it had been nowadays the Farmer would have been prosecuted and fined for such tactics.
So I agree with everything you say but still fancy giving it a go. we are keeping an eye on a couple of properties just now and one of the first questions was about fencing.
The other thing is that the cost of second hand machinery in most of Canada is a fair bit more expensive than here in the UK so I think I'll be making friends with some of the Agri dealers asking for first shout on any trade ins.

I don't know if you have mentioned this earlier but how mwny acres do you have?

Best wishes

Jim

dbd33

Pardon my tardy reply, it got cold enough last night that the hose in the barn froze despite being heated, I've been carrying buckets.

Not in Canada. I did exactly that two years ago. Health and safety are less fashionable here than there and especially on farms. Even if the baler's working properly grabbing and stacking the bales on the wagon is bastard work, "haying" and "roofing" are two words that bring me out in a cold sweat.

Of course you have to give it a go, it's an adventure. Be aware of the cost of fence, even electric braid runs $10/foot if the posts are already there and that's barely good enough for horses. You can spend as much on fence as on a yacht.

We're neo-farmers (copyright Batty X-ray) we have nine acres (five owned, four borrowed) commutable to Toronto (lots of pictures on the blog). I am a completely urban person (I love London and NYC and find Toronto a bit slow and provincial) shocked to discover late in life that I could want tractor accessories for Christmas.

I somehow got on an automated mailing list for equipment auctions, will post the link when they next send me a flyer, there are bargains but they're not likely to be local. Note that most new equipment can be purchased 0 down 0 % and amortized against farm income in three years (if you have farm income), you can get such deals even as an immigrant. Also watch for farm auctions, if you can beyond the sad songs of the folk singers, you can pick up stuff such as gates, buckets, feeders, for pennies on the dollar.

Ontheboatout

There is a piece of land for sale privately next to us with fantastic views. It is all meadowland/pastureland and turned into hay each year. It is $75000 for 50+ acres with drive in place.

There is also a 5 acre property for sale nearby with Century home for $129000.

Both 20 minutes to good schools and town.

Ontheboatout

People here (Mlagash, North Shore) tend to give their hay away free in exchange for mowing. Sawdust is very cheap. We see straw abouts bt have never looked at price.

Paul Wildy

The "near civilization" part and having a decent choice of schools whill be your main challenge I would think. Rural areas in NS are very different to rural areas in the UK. They are really rural and you will find peoples attitudes and outlook to be very different comparred to areas near the city (Halifax).

There are plenty of small rural schools but the funding structure here is very different comparred with the UK. When we lived in the UK our kids went to a small rural school which was very well funded because they received almost half their funding from additional allowances that are designed to "compensate" schools below a certain size. In other words the smaller the numbers, the more funding they got. In Nova Scotia the funding model doesnt work like that and schools outside Halifax Regional Metro get less money and schools with smaller numbers get a lot less money. It makes it difficult for rural schools to provide the same standard of education as schools in the City and the suburbs.

Your kids would get free school bus transport but in rural areas the catchment area can be large and the buses have to cover quite a long route. It wouldnt be uncommon for you kids bus journey to school to be an hour or more depending on how near to the school you live. It can make their day quite long.

I dont want to put you off the rural lifestyle - you just need to be aware of some of the issues.

There are some areas that are nearish to Halifax that are still quite rural where you would probably be able to get a hoby farm - areas like Wellington or Oakfield (near Grand Lake) might be a sensible compromise although land will be a bit more expensive than really rural areas.