Farm towns within 3 hours from Puget sound

[509]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

There are farms in Puget Sound, Carnation, Duvall, Monroe, Snohomish, North Bend, Fall City to name a few cities. Our growing season is shorter than Eastern Washington, but there is enough sun for commercial crops to be grown. For your land price, however, you would have to go more than 2-3 hours away. Even Mt. Vernon and Yakima would be over $200,000 for 5 acres. Even Pasco, about 3.5 hours away will cost you 3 times that. Maybe in the Omak area you can find something, but it's 4+ hours away.

Over a decade ago I was looking at employment statistics for King and Kittitas counties. There were more people working in Agriculture in King County than TOTAL employment in Kittitias county.

[Stevebh]

Originally Posted by poopskooper

A couple of general answers to your inquiry that I'll throw out to start. First, from what you describe, you'll want to stay on the west side of the Cascades. It has the more moderate climate. Second, just about anywhere in western Washington will be within three hours of Puget Sound.

Five acres for 25k, I think, will be difficult, not impossible but difficult, however. Obviously, it will be virtually impossible in the three most populous counties in the state, King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties and very difficult anywhere else on the west side of the state. I'm thinking that even on the east side of mountains, it may be difficult. But I'm not a real estate expert and hopefully those that are more current in real estate land prices can chime in and give you better news.



eta: so you want 5-acres to farm and only want to be there on the weekends?

I was just looking at LandWatch.com (Search Filter) now and it gave me 64 results, but every single one of them on the east side and none on the west side of Cascades! It slowly starts to pop up on the west side as I increase the budget 35K and up. Looks like I either have to raise the bar or tackle long drive and harsh winter. You are absolutely right.

edit:
To answer your question, yes, I only want to be there on the weekends. I have some electronics and IT background. Though I have not done any products related to farming yet, I think I can put few pieces together to build a system to remotely monitor and control as things mature there.

[Stevebh]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Well, some of those areas are good for small farms: Woodinville, Marysville, Duvall. Maybe you could just get an extra-big lot? And are you aware that WA State uses high property taxes in lieu of a state income tax for revenue? Something to ponder. Farther north of there, take a look at Mt. Vernon.

edit:
Oh, I see; you'll be renting, not buying, for a place to live, but have a small nest egg to spend on land. Well, OP, I don't think it will work. Your more realistic option would be to look into community P-patch programs for growing veggies.

I didn't know about the property tax situation, though it is kind of expected for states that doesn't have income tax. Two of Georgia's neighbors (TX and FL) does this too.

Yes, it is my nest egg for two reasons, first, build a ranch for country living and second, live off the land after retirement (30 years later ).

I am almost certain that this is not one of my get-gym-membership-to-become-active kind of new year resolutions. But yes, we never know.

I have never heard about P-Patch program before. I read about it now and it sounds like a really great option. Though Bellevue-Redmond-Kirkland areas do have some kind of community gardening, the mainstream P-Patch is limited to Seattle dwellers. I am so signing up in waitlist anyways. Thank you for the suggestion.

[Stevebh]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

There are farms in Puget Sound, Carnation, Duvall, Monroe, Snohomish, North Bend, Fall City to name a few cities. Our growing season is shorter than Eastern Washington, but there is enough sun for commercial crops to be grown. For your land price, however, you would have to go more than 2-3 hours away. Even Mt. Vernon and Yakima would be over $200,000 for 5 acres. Even Pasco, about 3.5 hours away will cost you 3 times that. Maybe in the Omak area you can find something, but it's 4+ hours away.

You are right. I was looking at Zillow and LandWatch, and they both gave depressingly zero results for my search criteria on the west side .

I also looked at this map from WA agriculture dept.
http://agr.wa.gov/AgInWa/docs/126-Cr...-ForCopier.pdf
All top 10 "green" counties are either outside my 3-hr radius or over the budget, if not both.

Seems I have to relax some restrictions at this point.

[CrazyDonkey]

Here are some options that might suit you:

Welcome to Skokomish Farms

KINGSTON FARM AND GARDEN COMMUNITY CO-OP PAGE

http://douglas.uwex.edu/files/2010/0...rted-ATTRA.pdf

The History of the Tilth Movement — seattletilth.org

[jacqueg]

Originally Posted by Stevebh

I didn't know about the property tax situation, though it is kind of expected for states that doesn't have income tax. Two of Georgia's neighbors (TX and FL) does this too.

Yes, it is my nest egg for two reasons, first, build a ranch for country living and second, live off the land after retirement (30 years later ).

I am almost certain that this is not one of my get-gym-membership-to-become-active kind of new year resolutions. But yes, we never know.

I have never heard about P-Patch program before. I read about it now and it sounds like a really great option. Though Bellevue-Redmond-Kirkland areas do have some kind of community gardening, the mainstream P-Patch is limited to Seattle dwellers. I am so signing up in waitlist anyways. Thank you for the suggestion.

Might I suggest that you find a parcel to put a down payment on, and then lease most of it to a nearby farmer? That way the land is taken care of, you get an income which will help with your payments, and you have a small plot to experiment with for yourself. If I were looking to do something like this, I'd look for a parcel that was already in berries or tree fruit.

I don't know how ag land is taxed in Washington, but that's something you might want to read up on. Almost everywhere in the US, residential land is taxed far higher than ag land.

My garden is 20 steps from my back door, and it is all I can do to keep up with it. I can't imagine trying to keep up with a garden 3 hours away from me!

[StealthRabbit]

Consider partnering with a CSA, or the migrate farming co-op in Whatcom, cty.

We-t side is very preferrable for ez growing and potential yr rd garden.

Once you decide on a region, then join Master Gardeners in that region and you will get a great education ( for free) and meet very helpful seasoned advice.

I applaud your quest. I would first focus partnering in fertile areas north ( mt vernon...).
For future retirement spot, keep an eye on The Oly Penn. very cheap areas, but harder to get to every weekend. Wet side gardening is a breeze. Very productive, very fun. I grew up as a Colorado farmer, it was very discouragiing to spend all season on a crop and have it hailed out. Or 20 yrs watering and growing a tree only to have a beaver nip it down.

In the meantime put your RE equity dollars into a commercial property that is not subject to internet erosion.
One PNW friend gets $8,000 / month income on an investment (in GA) similar in cost to a trendy WA home. He has never even visited GA property. It is a triple net rented tire shop, and they have 7 yr leases paid 3 months in advance. He can rent / live anywhere he wants! Tahiti? Toronto? The Hague....

[jacqueg]

Or, if you don't want to be a commercial landlord, just put your nest egg down on a house with a big backyard. Play in it for a couple years, to clarify how you feel about the region in general, and what you eventually want to do. Then sell it and roll it over into something closer to what you want.

If I understand you correctly, you're in your twenties now. It's great that you are thinking ahead (never stop doing that), but I'm sure most people at my end of life will tell you that what you now think you'll want when you reach your 60s may not be what you'll want when you actually are in your 60s.

[poopskooper]

^^^I think that's excellent advice.

My thoughts were also to suggest that you work into this farming dream slowly.

I'd be nervous buying five acres and living three hours away to tend to it only on the weekends.

I'm also in the same generation as jacqueg and have made many mistakes when younger biting off more than I could chew because I had a notion and a dream. I thought it would be easy but turned out to be not so much. It ended up costing a lot of money for the mistakes made. We've had large gardens in the past and have concluded that it's a lot of work! I can't imagine expanding that to five acres ...especially since you've said that you have no experience. Five acres is a lot of land.

OTOH, if you've made up your mind to buy five acres and farm it, I know it's difficult to take advice from "old people" for after all, we've done the same things when younger and had to learn by our mistakes. So I can't say I blame you for disregarding such advice ...especially coming from a message board like this.

Still, I would still urge you to think about it.

[Gabbythecat]

I think you are naive to think you could do this on weekends only. Sure, you could set up electronic monitoring, but that would only tell you that you have a problem. You'd still have to spend a fair amount of time fixing the problem.

And - how do you plan to deal with damage from the deer? They are in most areas of Western Washington (well - maybe not in the cities). If you are planning a 5 acre plot, you have to think about how to deal with the deer....not saying you couldn't learn to deal with them, but the deer are just *one* of many challenges to deal with...we had elk in Maple Valley (about an hour from Seattle). You can't imagine the damage they did to our yard! And we put our garden in raised beds, which made the veggies safe from the rabbits, but at a comfortable height for the deer to eat. The elk, of course, just raced right through the raised beds. Such damage. :-P

I agree with the Master Gardeners - I was one for years and learned a great deal from the program. My only observation is that they tend to focus on urban, small scale gardening. If you are really interested in a hobby farm, you might find that some of their information is impractical for something of the scale you are talking about. They use the same teaching material for most of the West Coast, I believe, so no matter what program you would go through, you'd learn mostly the same thing.