Farm To-Do!

Talk to state Vet about bringing animals in from out of state - DONE!A little over 6 months ago, Scrapple suggested we consolidate all of our lists and notes and make one definitive Farm To-Do List. We share it on Google Docs so it's always easy to access and edit (and share the edits when we're not in the same place at the same time). 

The to-do list can get a little overwhelming at times (from today through the end of February is 6 pages, each line being a task) and so we broke it down into month-by-month priorities to make the mountain of tasks a little more approachable. This has definitely worked, but as our moving date grows near and I get more and more excited, it has been increasingly difficult for me to focus on just one task and hammer it out. This is basically because all the things I need to do this month are ridiculously fun! 

Here's a quick overview of the biggies for January:

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Seeing Signs

our lucky tractorI'm a little superstitious...just enough.

Enough to have felt chills when the vintage jag I had dreamed of driving since I was 10 (I would look so badass!) sat abandoned in the driveway of the farm on our first visit.

Enough that the discovery of a toy John Deere on the ground next to our car seconds before walking into the lawyers office to close on the farm made me think "It's a sign!" and not "Some poor kid must have lost his tractor!".

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Buying Points vs. Higher Down Payment

During the course of buying the farm an interesting question came up about “buying points”. This was our first mortgage so I was pretty curious about everything going on with the banks and inspectors and such. Our lender casually mentioned the option of buying points and then quickly dismissed it as something that no one ever does. In fact, she had only seen it done once. When she said that I got even more interested.

I know not all beginning (or existing) farmers will be able to buy land, but for those who do I thought this topic would be helpful. There's not much good info about the trade-offs between buying points and putting down a larger down payment online, so this is just my own analysis, I'm very welcome to other opinions.

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