in past videos, I've made some bold claims and strong assertions that I'm
going to be adding a new activity in business to our farm I've talked about
growing hemp I've talked about raising geese well by the end of this video I'm
gonna explain to you guys what my plan is for 2019 first keep filling up this
water
I got 13 farm-fresh eggs this morning that's pretty good as you guys have
known I have been exploring two different specific business lines to
enter into you for our farm this year on the one hand I'm thinking about going
into growing hemp whether it be for industrial or CBD use there seems to be
a lot of opportunity and buzz centered around that sort of thing but on the
other hand I've really thought a lot about doubling down on my skills working
with waterfowl and starting to raise geese perfect given my limited bandwidth
with everything I already have going on with the farm between the ducks that
we're raising here for eggs as well as what we're doing with our orchard out
back I want to make sure I don't overextend myself so so I've made a deal
with my wife Allison that I can only enter into one business which to me is
kind of unfortunate because one of the things that drives me crazy astiz that
fear of missing out fear of missing out formal as it's become known so now when
it comes to hemp and in growing hemp here on the farm
there's really two avenues that exist within it there is the CBD focused hemp
production which requires a fair amount of growing precision you only want the
female plant that means you either need to be very precise with how you weed out
and manage your crop or you only go with clones and if you go with clones that
can get quite pricey like I'm talking to people where they want 10 to 15 dollars
per plant but the opportunity with CBD is also tremendous there is such crazy
high demand right now for CBD all these products that you see out there are
using it today we are making a CBD golden milk latte it's all anybody's
ever talking about CBD gummies from hemp balms it just might be the hottest craze
since cobra oil it is a tonic and elixir purge the body and lift the spirits most
of the growers I've talked to you who are growing for CVD are growing it in
some sort of greenhouse or hoop house structure they are very skilled
horticulturists and it's a very precise practice when it comes to growing hemp
for industrial use whether it be for food or for fiber or for biodiesel or
for building materials you know there's a wild crazy long list of it in a field
like the field that we have here at our farm could be a very good fit for the
demands of the industrial hemp trade and that industrial hemp trade is also
booming it might not be as massive or as quickly growing as the CBD trade but
industrial hemp really does have a future there's a lot of potential here
but let's also acknowledge the downsides to him and when it comes to hemp whether
it be for CBD or for industrial production there are a fair amount of
downsides
I mean first and foremost I really don't know what I'm doing I've never grown a
crop really you know I've raised a ton of tree seedlings and I've done a fair
amount of gardening my day but I've never done like you know grow crop
agriculture I don't have a tractor or any of the necessary infrastructure hemp
specifically needs its own special harvesting equipment and attachments
that even the local dairy farmers around here who I'm friends with don't have so
even if I could enlist a few local friends here to help me with the tractor
power I would still need to you know whether it be rent or buy the
attachments to plant as well as harvest the hemp and even if I am able to graze
a good healthy crop I need to have a buyer and I've spent the last two months
trying to nail down potential buyers to to work with and then that's a dodgy
business hi you've reached horticulture in HomeGoods please leave a message at
the beep I'll get back as soon as I can thank you have a great day
I'm finding this very weird contradictory thing happening where
everybody's saying there's crazy high demand but then everybody I talked to
who is a potential buyer or somebody who can process it is acting like there's a
glut and they pretend like they would be doing me a favor by taking the hemp off
my hands so all in all it kind of leaves me in somewhat of a conundrum and it
makes the whole hemp trade seem somewhat unattractive whether that's for
industrial use or CBD right now while there's a boom for hemp and there's just
a real opportunity out there and there's a lot of interest I could see a small
grower like myself actually making some headway but I think very soon the big
guys are gonna push the little guys out of this marketplace and it's going to be
very hard to compete in this industrial hemp industry or in the CBD industry
without actually having the necessary scale and as I think about why I wanted
to get into farming in the first place trying to build up scale for a large
processing operation it is not one of those things that was on my list so
let's talk about my other business opportunity of trying to raise grazing
geese as I think about what I actually like about the farm and life on the farm
one of the things I enjoy the most is just spending time here and hanging out
with my ducks and I feel like I've learned a ton by working with our ducks
over the past year and so when I think about the idea of bringing geese onto
the farm that's not nearly as scary well I love my ducks I just see this amazing
potential and opportunity with the geese you know the downside with the Ducks is
that I have to bring on so much grain onto the farm
that's an off arm input that's an extra expense that's something that requires
fuel and extra money and if I think about really trying to limit the number
of inputs I'm putting into this farming activity you know the feed for the Ducks
can't be ignored if one of the things that I'm trying to do is create a
sustainable business model for my farm one that's sustainable from an
ecological perspective thinking about the holistic impact that the Ducks have
on an environmental perspective is important and what I see with this
opportunity with the geese is something to actually really break through and
find a new way to farm because geese are grazers I can take advantage of all of
this grassland that I have out here or that I will have out here this summer
just you know give it a little bit more time to melt and turn it into something
that we humans can eat in the form of goose meat and so I really want to try
this and as I've been out there researching and trying to learn I've
found a couple of people who dabbled with this but nobody who's done it in a
significant way the other thing I'll say about this idea of doing the goose
operation is number one it's a slight incremental improvement on the current
skills that I have it's not a whole new skill set like hemp farming
number two the costs are significantly different as I priced it out I'm gonna
need to expend about 1500 to 1600 dollars for the geese that's everything
from buying the Gosling's themselves to you know getting some initial feed to
get them started as babies to actually processing them and having them ready
for sale and if those are all my costs if I'm looking at about 50 geese that
I'm looking to raise you know that's not nothing but it's also not a significant
expense it's manageable meanwhile if I'm thinking about growing hemp here on the
industrial side I'm looking at around twelve thousand dollars in some costs
over the course of one year do you make that happen
and after I really want to do CVD and do CBD the right way I'm looking at about
twenty two thousand dollars in expenses and those include everything from buying
the clones to buying the infrastructure I need to build the greenhouse to you
know some of the harvesting tools that I need as well some of the planting and
cultivation tools that I need you know really all of the expenses I'm going to
have so that's a much much bigger scale but if I'm actually looking at my
potential net profits from all of this if I do the goose operation right it
stands to be about the same as the industrial hemp and about two-thirds of
what the CBD approach could be and so from just a economic perspective and an
economic sustainability perspective the costs are such a different structure and
it's just such a different scale that it seems silly not to go after the geese
instead of the hemp so that's my decision I'm gonna be pursuing raising
geese this year if anybody's out there and wants to buy a Christmas goose hit
me up we're gonna have plenty of goose meat we're gonna also probably host a
dinner or something on the farm and find some other ways for folks to
get involved with our goose operation I think it's gonna be a lot of fun you
know I've never tackled a project quite this big agriculturally speaking but at
the same time it's just a little bit of a escalation from what I did with the
Ducks and so I feel like I'm ready for it I do plan to spend an awful
lot of time documenting their grazing patterns and the forage quality to see
what works because I hope to really try to create something that other people
can can build on and try outside of our farm as a way to raise geese because I
gotta say I believe that there is a real opportunity when you think about poultry
farming right chickens and ducks and other turkeys while they get a little
bit of their diet if they're free-range and out here they're not getting all
their diet from from the land geese have the opportunity to have the majority of
their diet come from the land and so I'm gonna be giving this a shot
maybe hemp will happen for me someday for just not this year