Closing on the Farm - Nobody Said It'd Be Easy!

It's Tuesday afternoon, just wrapping up a couple meetings that have been WAY too long. Looking forward to heading home, eating a meal and planning what to pack for our trip out to Tennessee for the closing on Friday. "Only three more days" I think to myself, "then we’re really locked in!" About that time the phone in my pocket starts buzzing incessantly. One ring doesn’t really surprise me, but multiple calls in a row gets a little worrisome. Now I want out of this meeting even more.

I head to my office and check the missed calls. All 615 area codes. Interesting. That’s Nashville and the surrounding area, so certainly this has something to do with closing. I hope this is routine and not trouble.
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Insurance for the Small Farm

Following up on the First Time Farm-Buyer's Checklist, I posted some thoughts on insurance over on beginningfarmers.org. What are your experiences with insurance?

1.) Proximity to fire station

When we were looking at properties we hadn’t considered the fact that insurance companies might prefer it if we were close to a fire station! Wait, aren’t fire stations all over the place? Well, turns out if you’re in the middle of nowhere they could be pretty far away. These types of things don’t cross us city-folks’ minds.

Continue Reading at beginningfarmers.org

First Time Farm Buyer's Checklist

If your barn looks like this, you might need some insurance... 
First time farm buying? We are. Heck, it’s pretty much the first time we’ve bought anything. We bought one car and a couple college educations, but that’s about it in terms of valuable assets, and only one of those is tangible. We don’t even have the car anymore. So buying a house and bunch of land was quite an experience. We won’t officially close until the end of next week, but everything is all lined up and now we just gotta show up and sign the dotted lines.

This type of stuff might be old-hat for many of our readers, but for all you out there wanting to buy a farm one day, here’s a few little nuances that might help: 
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