Hobby farms harvest benefits

Many Californian families who shifted to the countryside and got dirt under their nails, are happily reaping the joys of a fulfilling farm life

As a full-time sales representative for national van-line companies for 12 years, Ellen Sullivan understood radical moves. One day she decided to make one herself.

Sullivan and her chemist husband, Paul Bernhardy, sold their Orange County, California home - they were empty nesters - and bought a spread in San Diego County's rural Valley Centre. That is when they added a new line on their résumés, that of hobby farmers.

Tough work
No, they don't hoe the back 40 - their farm is only nine acres - nor do they milk cows or harvest wheat. But they do raise sheep and grow lavender, the sweet-smelling Mediterranean shrub that has been cultivated for more than 2,000 years.

They extract its oil, which goes into dozens of products Sullivan sells online and to customers who flock the farm each May and June.

The job is not easy, though.

"It's dusty work, you're dirty, and you have to be unafraid of snakes, spiders and rats," says Sullivan, 57. "You don't get rich doing this, but it's a satisfying lifestyle," she adds.

No experience needed
It must be, because plenty of boomers and Gen-Xers in the US are getting dirt under their fingernails. 'Lifestyle' farms make up for about half of the 2.1 million US farms, according to the US Department of Agriculture, and they are increasing by about 2 per cent every year.

Hobby farmers - loosely defined as those whose incomes are derived not solely from farming - often bring little or no hands-on experience to their new vocation.

Their business acumen and marketing skills from previous jobs, however, can turn their pastimes into gainful enterprises, says Karen K. Acevedo, editor in chief of Hobby Farms magazine.

These 'ruralpolitans' are willing to invest big money to pay for equipment to reap and sow organic vegetables; raise niche crops, such as herbs, shear sheep for wool production; or harvest grapes.

Nature connection
Some hobby farmers embrace the rural life because they love gardening, and others want a quieter, simpler lifestyle with the entire family engaging in something meaningful.

Some city dwellers took up farming to seek more time with their children and for the feeling of safety that the countryside provides.

"Our society has become so disconnected from the natural world that we develop a desperate longing to reconnect in that way," says Michael Ableman, a farmer and author of On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm.

"The resurgence in interest in small farming is in response to that."

Nanci and Ken Sutton always enjoyed hanging out with their menagerie of animals on the one-acre property they owned in Glendora.

A plumber for 30 years, Ken, 58, made service calls and ran a plumbing-supplies business. Nanci, 52, is an accomplished weaver who runs an embroidery business. Both grew up around animals.

Five years ago, no longer able to accommodate their growing herd of llamas, the couple sold their home, waved goodbye to suburbia and bought a seven-and-a-half-acre ranch in Apple Valley for $200,000 (Dh734,620).

The property, on a quiet dirt road with neighbours spread far apart to give everyone breathing room, faces Mt Baldy.

The simple life
The ranch holds their three-bedroom house; separate pens for the 25 llamas; pens for five goats and three peacocks; sheds; apple, apricot, peach, pear and pistachio trees; and 20 grape vines.

Nanci Sutton's income from her business helps the couple pay for the animals' feed and care, which costs about $4,900 (Dh17,998) per year.

She and her husband show the llamas at local and national events. Also, the llamas provide all the wool for Sutton's loom.

Both Suttons get up at dawn every day to feed the animals, clean the pens and sometimes train the llamas on obstacle courses and in other show manoeuvres. On weekdays, Nanci drives an hour and a half each way to Glendora to run the store.

So why do it?

"The llamas," Sutton says, as she cuddled 1-year-old Iroquois in his pen, where a sign warned: 'Caution. Our llamas will capture your heart'.

"Unless you have very expensive breeding animals, they don't make you money," she added, "but the animals are therapy for me".

And then there are those who love growing food to sell at farmers markets. They don't make much from it, but love the camaraderie of the markets and watching the fruits of their labour end up on others' kitchen tables.

Rodney and Joy Chow haven't missed the city for a single day since they started farming their five acres of fruit trees full-time in a farm in Carpinteria, California, seven years ago.

Rodney Chow, 77, spent his adult life in urban Los Angeles toiling as a civil engineer and helping raise three children, but he "always grew things" in a little patch on the backyard.

Joys of farming
The engineer turned developer, who said he would have studied agriculture in college if he had known the joy of farming, bought the land in Carpinteria in 1987 for $220,000 (Dh808,063).

Chow and wife Joy, also 77, still live in the mobile home they put on the property two decades ago, not sure then for how long would they last there. They are building a 1,200-sqft house now.

Their original enterprise of a few trees has turned into a 600-tree farm of Fuji apples, peaches, Heritage Kentucky Wonder Beans and some flowers too.

"I'll do farming until the day I can't walk," says Rodney, who receives income from a pension plan. "I love it."