Hobby Farmers Lured By The Romance Of Country Living

July 19, 1992|by LAURIE FEDON LYNCH, The Morning Call

Lehigh County Cooperative Extension Agent David L. Dunbar isn't used to turning people away.

Each year since 1987, Dunbar has taught a course titled "Small-Scale, Part-Time Farming." Typically, the class is filled by about 30 people who live the rural life or want to.

This year, Dunbar changed the course to "Living on a Few Acres" and Extension office phones were ringing. Almost 60 people called to sign up -- twice as many as he could A simple name change may have captured the romance of country living -- drawing hobby farmers or would-be farmers like birds to a strawberry patch. Or perhaps country living is the 1990s attraction that condominiums were in the 1980s.

Whatever the reason, there is a steady flow of people whose dream is living on a few acres.

In the early 1970s, the Roper Organization completed a survey which showed that the number of people who wanted to live in the country was double the number who actually did. The Rural Renaissance that resulted might be repeated, said Nora Brooks, agricultural economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She believes that although U.S. Census figures show few smaller farms, that segment of the rural community will grow in the 1990s.

"Farms will either get smaller or larger and the middle will continue to be squeezed," she said. "There seems to be a push of urbanites going out into rural areas and selling berries on the weekends."

Small farms often spring out of the retirement of full-time farmers who may keep a portion of their farm and then subdivide the rest for Baby Boomers who want to move out of the city and raise their kids, she said.

Just the term "farm" can be tricky. While most people think of farms in terms of acres, the USDA does not. Bob McElroy with the Economic Research Service of the USDA in Washington, D.C., explains that the Department of Agriculture and the Census Bureau define a farm according to its sales, not acreage. The reason being that 10 acres in Florida with ornamental plants under glass might be worth millions, while 10 acres of wheat in Iowa is worth almost nothing. So, the USDA defines a small or "hobby" farm as that which has $1,000 to $10,000 in sales a year. And, depending upon what is being grown, $1,000 in sales might not mean much more land than a garden in the back of a house. This definition also ignores the hobby farmers who plant crops or raise animals only for personal use. So, while the 1990-91 Statistical Summary of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture shows the state's small farm population dropping from 28,500 in 1987 to 24,800 in 1990, the statistics may not reflect the allure of living -- and farming -- on a few acres.

It is impossible to know how many people there are who swarm over the Acreage for Sale classified ads, mesmerized by phrases like "babbling brook," "stone farmhouse" and "open meadow." They are suffocated by suburbs where houses are close enough for them to hear their neighbor's vacuum cleaner. They want elbow room, a wholesome place for their children to grow up.

And, so, they dream, scheme and wait.

"They just have to wait until they can afford it, until they retire, wait until their ship comes in or wait until they just get fed up with living in the city," Dunbar said.

Each week, from February through April, Dunbar and other extension agents skim the surface of earthy topics like Introduction to Farming 101: plant nutrition, food preservation, sheep and swine, chickens and eggs, ornamental plants, field crops, bees and honey. As much as anything, their courses show that the romance of farming isn't always rooted in reality.

"We're successful even if we talk someone out of it," Dunbar said. People need a realistic understanding of what part-time farming is like. Some people might be discouraged. Others might be encouraged and we'll be able to increase their chances of success. We don't want anyone to plunk money down for a farm and get stuck with something they can't handle and don't like."

Thoughts of rural life tend to be clouded with romantic notions that have little to do with drought or insect infestation.

These rural daydreams rarely touch on the reality of how angry neighbors will be if the manure is spread just before Memorial Day weekend or the trouble caused by steers breaking out of the fence and trampling through a nearby housing development.

"It is a beautiful thing to see sheep grazing in a pasture, but that picture doesn't say anything about internal parasites," Dunbar said.

"It doesn't say anything about the wild dogs that chase and kill the sheep or how good fences need to be or that sheep need to be shorn. It doesn't say that you might have to stay up all night during the birthing process, which you will complain and brag about at the same time. It doesn't say that you have to feed and water them every day, or if you have milk cows and goats, milk them twice a day. It doesn't say that you have to clean the stables and then do something with the manure."

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