From my limited research, Farmland in Ashland County, Ohio is only getting $80 per acre, other parts of Ohio are much higher.

I don't think I'm charging enough on the 12 acres I rent out, only asking $70 but it seems like it should be much higher.

Alot of the county is hilly but my farm is relatively flat, maybe I shouldn't be using the county averages...

Wow Tesla, that is so scenic and beautiful! You are one hell of a lucky bastard. I am very inspired by your post.

Because of the people here, I put in an organic veggie garden last year at my main residence, about 3000 sqft in total and it contains a few vegetable beds with 10+ fruit trees and different kind of berries. So far I bought a compost machine but haven't gotten around to producing the perfect compost as described on the product brochure, but given a bit more experiment I think I should get there. My veggie garden provides about 1/3 of the food we consume in winter, I will see how summer goes.

Now after seeing your post, I really want to get into a farm myself, not for investment, just for satisfying some innate human instinct - securing food source. So do you have to secure a natural water source (creek) when you buy a farm? We actually have quite a bit of residential land under $7/A in the boonies with excellent soil and weather. Can I just buy the residential land and grow food on it?

I have a goat. He would pull a tire all over. Maybe a tractor tire?
Crazy goat is strong!

Asimov,

Thanks for that link. Watched the movie last night and really did enjoy it. Now I need to get busy with the wood chips that have been mellowing beside the garden for several months. In the 1970's a French woodsman did something similar with wood chips. He got a little fancier and harnessed heat and nat generated from his wood chip pile while it composted. He used the young "slash" too instead of old dead trees. I've probably posted these links before, but here they are again in case anyone might be interested. Other people who are into permaculture are passing his ideas around. Just search on "Jean Pain".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHRvwNJRN....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGCj7NA0O....

Seriously, I've never seen so many references to gardening on the financial/political blogs as in the last year.

We all like to eat

Wakeup, that's 40k, not 4k ... to purchase, not to lease. Most of that land in the photos is protected under a conservancy, minimum lot size 25 acres. It was born out of the bankruptcy of the King Ranch, which owned something like 15k acres in the county, centered in Unionville (Doe Run). A 52 acre parcel with 12 stall barn and creek running thru it, no house, crossed by high tension wires, sold for $2.3 million about a year ago.

Ouch! Nice land & really good location (close to several metro areas for jobs); but way out of my price range.

Heh - I considered calling my place "Qualcomm Farm" because the majority of the $$ to pay for it in cash came from a very nice trade on Qualcomm in 1999-2000...

Other than that...yeah, it's way too high but it is likely to remain high, simply because the majority of people who buy out here have big $$$ and mostly don't work or work in their own businesses, which are local. Or they're lawyers

The beauty of this place, from a horse rider/owner's perspective, is that not only is it the largest concentrated area for horse sports, but the expectation is that you allow a 15-20' verge along your roadfront so that horses have a place to be ridden along the road, not in it. Anyone who wants to build a fence too close to the road doesn't get a permit.

And an additional feature - the local hunt has a rendering room and kettles, sized for horses, to prepare horsemeat/deer/roadkill dinner for the hounds. If any zombies venture out here, the hounds will eat well and there won't be any remains to find

Just found this video. It was posted to YouTube yesterday. It will make sense only if you watched the two videos I posted earlier in this thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb4hF8CsR....

Here in upstate New York we don't need irrigation. There are square miles of corn, corn and more corn and it rains enough here that irrigation is unnecessary.

50 wooded acres up here would only cost 200k.

And this is horse country too. Saratoga Springs is a big horse racing town, in fact, the only reason for its ascendancy in the area.

Our family farm was up near Utica I used to help my uncle lay tiles (drainage pipes) because the ground was too moist.

Found this in one of the morning papers:

http://www.news-journal.com/news/local/c....

2.5 cubic yards high quality compost/week free to residential water/sewer/waste customers. Unlimited amounts of wood chips for free.

Thought I'd post this as a tip so that folks on TF might check with their own cities to see if such resources are available. If your city isn't doing this, why not send the link to a department head or city manager?

To me, this was good news.

I wish I had something like that close by, I gotta make a few calls and see what I can find...

Because we're out in the middle of nowhere, I think our place is pretty much off the path of most chipper trucks, but if I can find where they dump, maybe a deal could be cut. I think we're going to do two gardens next year, trying one as a compost bed no till and a 'traditional' one and compare the difference.

Here in rural mid Michigan, the rented acres are going from 150 to 250 for the most part, depending on crop.

how much cost to expect per Acre of farmland in NY/CT/Maine area ?

In southern Wisconsin, farmland is renting for $250-$300/acre on a three year lease.

Sales of farmland are going for $7-$10k. Around here the farmers that are growing their milking herds are gobbling up land.

Yep. CLO's (concentrated livestock operations) produce a lot of manure so need a WMP (waste management plan) before they can get a building permit. In many cases cropland in close proximity to CLO's will sell at a premium. My family's land is "fertilized" with liquid manure from a 2,500 head dairy 2.5 miles away. They lay hose down the ditches and through culverts under roads using portable diesel booster pumps to deliver the liquid manure to the injectors pulled by tractors that drag the hose behind. Farmers in our area will pay $60/A+ for the manure as results in better soil fertility and crop yields than commercial fertilizer which can cost $150/A+.