Starting a hobby farm can begin with something as simple as referencing your own personal experience. Traveling, family history, and even exploring seemingly unrelated hobby interests like weaving or basketry can yield the inspiration to start and run your personal hobby farm.
Knowing about cultures and history may also help in guiding your vision. Tracy and David Toth are one couple whose Pennsylvania hobby farm experience was profoundly influenced by a trip out west to the Navajo Nation, where they learned first hand about Navajo-Churro sheep and how and the way the Navajo people formed a cultural relationship to the farming of the hearty animals, using the strong and beautiful wool to weave the blankets and rugs the tribe is well-known for.
But a successful hobby farm didn’t happen over night for the Toths. Only years later, when Tracy found a magazine featuring the Navajo-Churro sheep at an area tractor store in Pennsylvania, did all of the inspiring images come flooding back. Between churros machine , and her husband David’s practical ROI approach, the Toths thought we would specialize in raising Navajo-Churros, forging what they feel is a personal link with the centuries old Navajo tradition and sheep-raising culture.
Even the breeders who sold the Toths their first sheep could tell that they were on a mission motivated by their travels in the rugged Arizona environment and their experiences on the reservation.
Some people have farming in their family heritage and may look back over the generations to see what worked, that which was part of their own cultural background. But new farmers and people without personal farming traditions shouldn’t be afraid to check to the success of other cultures for inspiration for starting their very own small-scale farms.
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