Hello and welcome to the new blog space for the northeastern Arizona agriculture community.
This will be a place of multiple voices and views around the different facets of our complex area. What do we mean by complex? Ranchers and farmers who have worked in the area for a long time know three main things: the winds will blow, the soils are difficult and rainfall is not consistent. Perseverance and patience was (and still is) the key to farm and ranch survival.
Many times I get calls or emails from interested new farmers and ranchers looking at land who always use the “just” statement, such as “don’t worry, I will just drill a few wells’” or “don’t worry, I will just plant my 20 acres in grass, how hard could that be? “. Wells are expensive and successfully managing one acre, not to mention 20 acres, can be difficult. This is not to be discouraging since people always have different levels of financing and personal energy to complete projects. Instead, we talk about managing expectations. Start out small and grow, don’t tie up all your resources and money at the very beginning. It is great to dream big, but know your limits and stick to your budgets. Temptation will always be there to have more and be more. At the end of the day, your biggest success may be that all your livestock stays in the fences, or you have a bucket of farm raised vegetables to sell at the local market.
The focus of this blog space will be to have real time and real life examples to share with the agriculture community. Farmers and ranchers of all varieties make our counties special. Quick reminder- the definition of a farmer (agriculture product producer) by the US government is a profit of $1,000 per year (ers.usda.gov), usually filed on a IRS schedule F form. This is also true of ranchers. It is not by the size of your land, what crop (food, fiber, animal, etc) that you grow, or the size of your social media following. Farmers and ranchers have an undying passion in their hearts to want to feed their communities and families.
I have not met one farmer or rancher in northeastern Arizona that runs their operation the same as any others. There are always similarities but the overall day to day decisions and management is always based on that person (or family) and their goals. If you are new to the northeastern Arizona agricultural community, welcome! If you have been here awhile, we look forward to meeting you and hearing your story.
Thank you
– Anita Thompson
(Assistant Area Agent, Navajo, Apache and Northern Greenlee Counties)