USA Today
09-11-06
Home is where the farm is
By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY
HYDES, Md. — Mark Worthington, a gastroenterologist at Johns Hopkins
Bayview Medical Center, often works 12-hour days, teaching classes, doing
research, checking in on patients.
Then he goes home, puts on his green John Deere cap, and starts all over again,
looking in on his 18 sheep, five chickens, four dogs, three children, two horses
and a llama named Nelson.
"You don't have to know a whole lot," he says with a chuckle. "You're kind of
driven by fear."
Worthington, 45, and his wife, Janet, 42, are part of a trend. They live on what's
dubbed a "farmlet," a "farmette" or a "lifestyle" farm, depending upon who's
talking.
A growing number of professionals, like the Worthingtons, are returning to the
land, if only to play farmer. Green Acres, 2006.
Such residential farms now account for nearly half of all farms in the USA, with
owners who earn their income from off-farm work, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. Such "farmettes" are
increasing at a rate of 2% a year.
In Iowa, for instance, where farmettes are all the rage, 22% of farms generate
sales of less than $1,000, says Mike Duffy, director of the Beginning Farmer
Center at Iowa State University. It's part back to the land, part escape from the
rigors of modern life post-9/11, but mostly it's a need by overachieving whitecollar professionals to get their hands dirty again. Or maybe for the first time.
There's nothing like a 5 a.m. trip to the barn to feed the goats to get a
workaholic's mind off the e-mails piling up at the office.
Realtor Charles McDonald has seen this trend grow in recent years, having sold
a number of farmettes to working professionals in the Charlottesville, Va., area,
both as weekend getaways and full-time residences.
"We're seeing professional people moving from the larger cities to small farms to
enjoy a more peaceful setting," says McDonald, an agent with Real Estate III.
"These people often have children who they want to experience a quality of life
and the small-town values that they felt were missing living in the bigger cities."
On a recent weekend, Worthington was filling three huge plastic buckets on the
edge of his hillside pasture here just 20 minutes north of Baltimore. It's water for
the sheep, the horses and llama, which share the field on the almost 19-acre
spread dotted with barns and chicken sheds and outbuildings.
The sheep, who hug the tree-lined fence seeking shade from the late summer
sun, were rescued from slaughter and now are kept for their fleece, which Janet
Worthington and the couple's daughter, Blair, 13, then process, making hats that
they sell out of their 1852 beamed-ceiling farmhouse.
"But it's not about the money," says Janet Worthington, an author of several
books, including a college survival guide. "It's my Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little
House on the Prairie) thing. I never got over it. I find it an honor to do this."
"This" can range from looking up at the stars in the pasture at night with her 3year-old, Josh, to burying a dead sheep to breaking the ice on the animals' water
with a baseball bat.
What the family hopes for, 10 years down the road, is a farm that pays for itself.
"Something self-sustaining," says Worthington. "If we can keep this little part of
Americana alive, we'd be very happy with that."
And so would their 10-year-old son, Andy, who spends most of his time catching
frogs in the stream that runs through the property.
"So many people have a dream to own a piece of land," says Richard Pirog,
marketing and food systems research program leader at the Leopold Center for
Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State. The center offers help for niche farmers
who have often evolved from lifestyle farmers like Worthington.
"Maybe they're interested in an organic hay enterprise ... or they want to know
more about raising a herd of goats," says Pirog. Iowa State will also help
fledgling farmers develop a business plan.
Speaking of business — and goats — Lynn Palmer, a physician, and Marshall
Hawkins, a dentist, have lived on 23 acres outside of Natchez, Miss., for 16
years. "Her daddy didn't get her a pony as a little girl, so I've been trying to make
up for that ever since," says Hawkins.
Along with the long-awaited horse, the couple also got some goats to eat the
kudzu, "to clean up the fence line."
They decided to make some cheese and give it away for Christmas. That was six
years ago. The demand was such they now market Dr. Cheese, a boutique goat
cheese (drcheese.net).
"I liked the idea of having a place (in the country) for people to come out and
enjoy," he says. "But the goats just took off." They have 30.
Palmer, whose family practice is over the river in Vidalia, La., dots her
conversations with "Oh, my gosh!" and was out in the barn "milking the girls,
feeding the girls and giving the girls their bottles" the other day.
"It's another full-time job," says Palmer, 51. "I'm out here at 5:30 in the morning."
And she warns those thinking of doing the same. "Oh, my gosh. It would help if
you really knew what you're getting into," she says as her three German
shepherds and family mutt bark in the background. "Don't get any acreage
unless you can mow it yourself."
You also need deep pockets. The annual upkeep on a farm runs far higher than
that of a suburban ranch house.
Iowa State's Pirog looks upon these lifestyle farms as a positive trend for
everyone involved, helping to not only slow urban sprawl, but also giving
professional farmers a chance to work the land for their new inexperienced
neighbors.
Jon Henry, 36, an orthopedic surgeon for Aurora Health Care in Manitowoc, Wis.,
who moved five years ago to a 40-acre dairy farm outside of town with his wife,
Annette, 37, rents out some of his land to neighboring farmers.
"I don't farm it myself. ... I'm trying to reforest. I hope eventually we'll get some
animals, maybe some horses and a few steer."
But it's their four kids, ages 5 to 12, who seem to have come out on the winning
end of the deal.
Henry has converted the old granary into a clubhouse, made a beach area on the
pond and turned the barnyard into a sports court for basketball and rollerblading.
"We wanted to make it so other kids would want to come to our house," he says.
As for what he gets out of it, Henry is quick to answer.
"The attraction for me was being able to have land out in the country. It's a
beautiful old farmstead, with a brick farmhouse built in 1888. And it was a chance
to do something with the land."
Jeff and Michelle Sanders of Charlottesville, Va., understand completely.
When their 6-year-old twin sons neared first grade, they began looking for
something "rural, but in a more-to-do area," preferably close to a college town.
They've just moved onto 22 acres not far from the University of Virginia, complete
with pastures, a lake, forests and a big yellow barn that has been converted into
their home.
Sanders, 48, who is mostly retired from "variations of Internet stuff," now has
some cows and is planning a vineyard, a small orchard and a greenhouse where
he'll grow exotic tropical plants, hoping to sell them to retailers in the Washington,
D.C., area.
"Obviously, I like growing things," he says. "For people who push paper, you
never see your results of all your work. Here you see the results. And now that I
can see the results, I really like doing it."
These new farmers agree that the lifestyle farming trend makes the old-world
farmers around them both happy and sad. Maybe resigned is the best word.
"The people here see a way of life disappearing," says Sanders. "It's somewhere
between cashing in and gritting their teeth. Land here has gone up a lot in value,
and it's not because of agriculture. It's because it's a desirable place to live."
Sanders, for instance, bought a John Deere tractor, which is where his twins like
to spend time sitting on their father's lap. The good life.
Or, as Mark Worthington says, "Once I get off the Beltway and hit where it starts
to get rural, my blood pressure drops 10 points."
MAGS TARGET GROWING LIFESTYLE
Farmette owners even have their own magazine, Hobby Farms, which boasts
cover stories like "Home Dairying Made Easy" and advice columns on everything
from livestock to real estate. It's the fastest-growing farm publication in the
nation, racking up circulation increases of 5,000 new subscribers with each of the
past two issues, mainly through an aggressive mail campaign and Internet word
of mouth. Circulation now hovers around 81,000.
"This was a segment of the community not served with a magazine," says Karen
Keb Acevedo, editor of the 5-year-old bimonthly publication, soon to be joined by
the new Hobby Farm Home, on newsstands Sept. 23. Home will deal with the
interior of the farmhouse and include stories on spinning, weaving, cooking and
kitchen gardening.
"It's for people who are into self-sustainability. They've moved out to the country
to get in tune with the cycles of life ... to grow their own food, raise their own
animals," says Keb Acevedo. "Our magazines give them advice on how to better
manage."