Back Home by Chris Hardie
My farming days are over but a recent story made me realize that I clearly left a lot of money on the table.
I tried to make some money selling cows, sheep, wool and eggs but never seemed to hit the market at the right time. We had Scottish Highland cattle before they became cute and popular. We received a few hundred bucks for a calf when in today’s market they go from $500 to more than $2,000 a piece.
We sold grass-fed beef and our nearly fat-free hamburger was $4 a pound, which we had a hard time moving. Now you can’t even buy the pink slime beef for that price.
We also raised purebred Scottish Blackface sheep whose wool is treasured in Scotland making high-quality Harris Tweed suits or fine rugs. But in 2017 when I shipped 77 pounds of wool to a national wool cooperative that sells to the textile industry I received a check for zero and 00/100. Yep the check said ****************VOID*************** which matched the space between my ears.
Then there was the drought year of 2013, which is when hay prices soared. I had a good first and second cutting that year before it stopped raining and had several thousand small hay bales that I could have sold for $8 or $9 each. I figured we could sell the sheep, sell the hay and then buy sheep back the next year.
We kept the sheep, of course.
We had chickens for many years and refreshed the flock with a new batch of chicks each spring. I cringed last year when we were paying more than $5 for a dozen eggs when we couldn’t sell ours for $1 a dozen and ended up throwing away many eggs past their prime.
Yes, there is a theme here. Right idea, wrong time.
Which brings to the story with the right farm idea that we could have capitalized on.
Cow cuddling.
A story from Harvest Public Media said Quinci Schmidt in Corcoran, Minn., is supplementing the low milk prices with cow cuddling in her calf nursery.
“I thought the idea was a great way for people to meet the cows and meet us,” Schmidt said. That started Curious Cows and Company, where for $25 you can spend 30 minutes with a calf, brushing its coat and feeding it hay. There are other options, including bringing up to eight friends at $100 for 30 minutes of cuddling.
Schmidt’s brother, Caleb Scherber, said the calves’ slow-beating hearts are soothing.
“When people get up close to them, it’ll kind of sync your heartbeat, cause it’s so slow,” he said.
Calves are kind of cute, but dairy calves are not as adorable as Scottish Highland calves, who look like fuzzy teddy bears. Had we offered Scottie calf cuddling, we could have charged double.
But why stop at cuddling? How about the complete farm experience?
When we ran our bed and breakfast, I jokingly talked about offering what I called the Full Farm Immersion. For a mere $50 upcharge, guests would help me feed cows, sheep, goats, donkeys, pigs and chickens.
Manure removal would be an additional charge, but I would provide the fork and the muck boots. And for just $25 more, guests could even help me clean the chicken coop and get the full aromatic ammonia effect. If they do that, they could help me butcher the chickens for free.
The unpredictable add-on would be helping chase livestock when they break through the fence. Unpredictable in that we wouldn’t know when it would happen other than it would likely occur in the middle of the night or in the middle of a meal.
The fees would depend on how much my lawyer would charge to draft a contract that all participants would need to sign to keep us free from legal action when they encounter the head-butt from a ram, get bitten in the leg by a pig or have their foot stomped on by a cow who is a little jealous of all the calf cuddling.
I wouldn’t be all about making money. I would also offer a woodchuck bounty bonus called the groundhog gratuity – when I would tip the guest for every carcass turned in.
If the animal experience was too much, we could also offer the garden extravaganza special where guests could enjoy digging quack grass and pulling other weeds. The hoe would be provided, of course.
The possibilities are endless. Good for Schmidt and the others who are offering these services.
Almost makes me want to get back into the farming business.
Not quite.
Chris Hardie spent more than 30 years as a reporter, editor
