Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My head hurts just trying to read this thread. Hats off to anyone who can organize something on this scale!

Praying for your future success in this venture. Wish I had the money to invest. Knowing the amount of thought and planning that has went into this endeavor, along with your skill set. I know that I would see a return for years to come.

Thanks guys.

While we are close we are not there yet.

Without Fish Farmers being funded that means that Fish Farmers can't sign a lease with Hedgerow.

Since Fish Farmers is a big chunk of the lease income if Hedgerow is to come off I either need to find the rest of the funding for Fish Farmers or find some other people to join us on the land. The bugger is and the thing I am getting sick of is being eternally stuck in these chicken and egg scenarios. Getting the funds for Fish Farmers would be easier if I had a site. Getting the last few people to sign leases on Hedgerow would be easier if we had Fish Farmers on board.

Sigh

The thing that is pissing me off is that about a year ago I had a whole stack of people say "if only we had affordable and secure access to a piece of land we could start farming." Now where the hell are they? Where are their business plans to submit to the lender? Where is the evidence that they have been planning their startup? Where is the evidence that they have been developing markets?

So many people saying "if only we had a chance".

Through a series of connections we have been talking with an organic chain of butchers. They want someone to supply them with pastured geese and pastured turkeys. We are talking to people and saying we can offer them the land, we can offer them the market, the butchers are even talking about pre-buying the produce. The silence is deafening.

If someone doesn't step up soon I'll just employ someone to do it and take the opportunity myself. I know a fair bit about geese and ducks (my first business when I was 16 was water poultry). Nothing about turkeys but they can't be as hard fish.

Stu, Look at it the other way. If it were easy it would bore you. Overcoming the adversity and challenges, is what will make the victory so sweet. It will be worth it in the end.

Id jump on it if I was closer, or you were closer to me. As it stands Im looking into 50-100 acres hopefully within the next year or two to run cattle to move out of the mining game.

I can see it now Charlie's Wagyu Beef, only fed organically grown fodder.

https://www.jimmypsbutchershop.com/meats_kobe-beef

Ha Ha

Well the latest in the saga.

It looks like I have successfully managed to raise 1.3mil to purchase the land. Actually it could be more than that. The latest investor that has come on board works in the impact investor social enterprise space. They have been trying to find a way to do something in the Ag space for a while. They are pretty keen on the Hedgerow Farm model. So much so that if we could find the tenants we could buy a bigger farm. There are a few details we are working on in particular the pathway to ownership for the tenants but in theory if we found the right property and the right tenants then we could buy whatever we wanted.

The problem is the tenants.

Before we had that investor on board we had income form poeple who said that they wanted land to lease to the tune of about 96k per year. Now that I have rung around everyone we have less. I expected this. Its normal when a project goes from theoretical to happening that a few people get scared and quit. Better that they do it straight away than later.

I didn't expect almost everyone to quit. Not counting Fish Farmers lease we are know down to about 6k. Or worse tell me that they are interested once its up and running. Which of course it would be if they pulled their finger out.

There is a word to describe how I feel right now, gutted.

After having moved heaven and earth to get us to this point to be betrayed like this is just sickening. All these people that told me that they have NO WAY of ever getting started without land because they can't get access to finance. I basically organise the finance for us all, find investors that are willing to share the rewards and not just keep everything to themselves and they don't have the gumption to turn up.

Other than a relative helping them out there is no way they will get a better deal than I have put together for us all.

So I am back to the drawing board.

Sorry mate, what a pain in the butt. I hope things turn around for you.

Martin.

Bump! It has been a long time. Any movement?

Had another disaster.

A 200 acre came onto the market with amzaing soil and water resources. Not that I need it but many of the other farming operations I've been talking to do. People that wouldn't have fitted on the other properties could have sat along side each other on this one.

http://www.realestate.com.au/property-horticulture-vic-mount+prospect-7812158

I thought I had because I was at an Agri business forum where an organic farmer on a panel was talking about the struggles of leasing land. They had got stuck on a small patch of land and needed to expand and were "desperate" to find more land but didn't yet have the cash flow to buy. One of the other panelists said "you need to talk to Stuart".

They did and were talking about leasing 50 acres which would have got us over the line. They never got back to me and the tender date passed.

I've now moved to Bendigo and I've thrown the drawing board out the window

About to leave for out 1st family holiday in forever (the family has been on a couple but I haven't) when we get back I might go looking for the drawing board and start again. The good news is that the investors for the land side of things are still on board but they need the tenants signed up for them to make a move. Still need to find more capital for the business development side of things.

If I just had a couple of things go right I could get started. For example I've got markets for a range of products that I wouldn't produce in the AP system. If I could get a patch of land I could start producing those and get some cash flow, have something to show people and have a point to leverage off.

Sorry to hear about another setback Stu.

Have an awesome holiday and I hope you come back refreshed and raring to go.

So close to get knocked back again and the trials and tribulations of farming haven't even begun. I have not seen many if any small scale farms over here do well. Agribusiness seems to have the game sewn up in their favor with subsidies and good financing. Best of luck to you. Have a great holiday too.

This guy seems to be doing really well.

Ordered his book, they say it has lots of usefull informations. Did not have time to read it though. He is from Canada so I am not sure if this qualify for "over here"

Small scale farming can work and work well but you have to really market your produce well.

I know plenty of small scale farmers that are doing OK to amazing. Their success though is more proportional to their marketing ability rather than their farming ability.