Farm Dreams of DFIans

Yusuf

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I am retiring next year. House by the lake being built. :)



Teak and Mahogany saplings already planted. Starting a diary with 20 cows. Also on the agenda is some top of the line Californian Sativa and some good old Idukki Indica.

All are welcome to come and chill out. There will be night safaris on a boat with night vision equipment. The lake borders a reserve forest with tigers and elephants. Ahh, cant wait. :):high5:
Now this is top class flaming.!!!

Congrats mate.
 

Bangalorean

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I am retiring next year. House by the lake being built. :)

http://i44.tinypic.com/2ilwg2.jpg

Teak and Mahogany saplings already planted. Starting a dairy with 20 cows. Also on the agenda is some top of the line Californian Sativa and some good old Idukki Indica.

All are welcome to come and chill out. There will be night safaris on a boat with night vision equipment. The lake borders a reserve forest with tigers and elephants. Ahh, cant wait. :):high5:
How did I miss the discussion on these last 2 pages? :tsk:

Great plan you have, and great location!! I have something very similar in mind, that I spoke of some pages back. The land that I am speaking of is also next to a reserve forest with elephants, leopards and thousands of snakes - not many tigers are sighted, but the reserve is supposed to have 6 tigers and is part of project tiger anyway. Actually, it is in the middle of two reserve forests, and this is mountainous territory.

My only issue is that I cannot retire, so I need to depend on someone to a great extent. That is why I have reservations in taking the plunge. :(

Here is an actual site picture of the vicinity (neighbouring lands, where stuff is already growing):



And this is an image of the kind of terrain around, in general:

 
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Apollyon

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I am retiring next year. House by the lake being built. :)



Teak and Mahogany saplings already planted. Starting a dairy with 20 cows. Also on the agenda is some top of the line Californian Sativa and some good old Idukki Indica.

All are welcome to come and chill out. There will be night safaris on a boat with night vision equipment. The lake borders a reserve forest with tigers and elephants. Ahh, cant wait. :):high5:
I am not even 19 and after reading your post i am tempting to get retire ..so please avoid these kind of posts ..!!
I am jealous..8)
 
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Daredevil

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I am retiring next year. House by the lake being built. :)



Teak and Mahogany saplings already planted. Starting a dairy with 20 cows. Also on the agenda is some top of the line Californian Sativa and some good old Idukki Indica.
Why cows?. Usually, Buffalos are more profitable commercially than Cow's due to high content of fat in the Milk of buffaloes. The more the fat, the more the price of the milk. But this is an amazing venture if planned and maintained very well.

Do you use milking machines?. I heard each one costs around INR 1.3 lac but govt. provides subsidy.

All are welcome to come and chill out. There will be night safaris on a boat with night vision equipment. The lake borders a reserve forest with tigers and elephants. Ahh, cant wait. :):high5:
Thanks for this general invite. If you don't mind which state is your place in?. Looks like a very good location to retire in peace and tranquility.
 

Daredevil

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I'm into agro trade. I can get your villagers a good price for their stuff.
I went to my village after ten years and surprised to see a lot of development there. Most of our villagers are now experts in their fields almost getting 3-4 crops a year. And I think they sell things locally in Hyderabad as our village is just 40km from the city. So you cannot really count on me on this one as I don't live there and been out of country nearly 6 years now.
 

trackwhack

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Thanks DD, Che, Yusuf, Utube, Dovakh, DK, and Bangalorean

I think I owe a small write-up which may help others if they plan to get out of the rat race. Agriculture is rewarding – both emotionally as well as economically if you put your heart and soul into it. It is not for everyone though. Here are some things that you may want to think of.

1) Are you married. If so, would you spouse (and kids if any) agree to move out of the urban maze? If not married, be prepared to look for a girl who shares this dreamy lifestyle. Your choice of mate can make or break this dream. Else stay single and have fun :)
2) Do you have anscestral property and are you happy with moving there? If so good, else spend time finding the right place

To find the right place, these are the things I considered. I wanted it to be beside a large body of fresh water because it would be generally beautiful and I would never have to worry about water to meet my daily farming needs. A lake or river is good but the ideal option is a catchment reservoir. Any reservoir has a fill up period (monsoon) and a drain period (winter & summer) , so during peak summer, the water level is likely to recede and the farther you are from the main river that flows into the reservoir, the more the water will recede, so be careful to get land as close to the source as possible. The next consideration is weather. Pick a reservoir where the weather is nice throughout the year. Other considerations like proximity to a town/city/forest  etc are personal preference.

After nearly 5 years of searching I found a place perfect for me. A large reservoir that is more than 2000 sq. km. You better believe it, 2000 sq.km, no typo here. On several borders of this reservoir there is forest land. Some of it is reserve forest, other demarcated as revenue land but still forest cover. The land I bought was at the junction of the river merging with the reservoir. So throughout the year, the water level never recedes too much. There is not much human habitation upstream on the river hence the water is clean, I had it tested at UAS (University of Agricultural Sciences) The guy giving me the test results said I should start a bottling plant without even needing to filter it :) :). The weather is perfect too. Between 14 and 31 degrees throughout the year. The odd very sunny day may push it to 35 degrees.

I could go on and on. I hope to wrap up my present career within 8 months so I should be living there before the end of 2012. Ewald will find that as a relief.

Regarding the questions asked : DD, yes Buffalo milk is richer, however cows give higher yield. The perfect setup would be a mixture of the two, which I am considering. Milk machines can be purchased for about 25K each. You will need one for every 20 cows I estimate. Hence not a big investment. Other reasons I plan on a dairy are the biogas, which per my calculations should be enough to supply all my domestic and agricultural electricity needs (I also plan on a wind turbine). A nice plantation of teak and mahogany will bring in a bounty in about 15 years. I will be about 50 then, right time for a 2 year world trip, LOL. Anyway all these are plans. I put this together about one week into my first job when I realized that I did not want to walk out retiring from a cubicle when I was 60. 10 years on, everything still seems on track, touchwood, fingers crossed. I've been lucky to find a nice spot which fit all my needs, but it also involved many weekends of driving out and searching for the right place.

DD, you have a PM. I do not want to post on open forum the location for privacy reasons. :). Here are some more shots. These were taken two months back, my brother is helping me put up a small house there. Once I get back to India, I will stay there while building my permanent bigger abode.





 

Daredevil

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Trackwhack,


You are going to live a dream which only 1 in 100,000 can achieve. Thanks for the write-up. All the best with your early retirement.

At least in my life I would like to spend my vacation in such a serene place.
 

Bangalorean

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Good writeup. :thumb:

I might PM you sometime later for some info/advice on teak. :namaste:
 

Tolaha

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My first attempt to get into Agriculture was a disaster. I got conned :(

For me agriculture is a gold mine. I will surely try again after my current business stabilizes.
Excellent topic!
Agriculture is a gold mine but only if you are not the farmer IMHO!

Jokes apart, I too have high hopes on agri sector. Put in a lot of my savings in buying equities in this sector!


What attempt did you make?

I am thinking of tentatively stepping into teak.

(OT for this thread of course - maybe a new thread on business?? :D)
Teak, I'm sure you would have done your research on it. Remember, maybe about 15 years back, there was a rush of companies that would take your money to have a teak planted in your name. All of them went down, simply because of the survival rate of teak plants.

And when you are at it, have you considered sandalwood?

There used to be a time when if people would find sandalwood sapling in their land, they would immediately destroy it! Such were the laws of the land, wherein if somebody steals the sandalwood growing on your land, the landlord would be put in jail! Now times have changed and how! Karnataka government is actually encouraging farmers to plant sandalwood saplings. Many folks (some relatives from my wife's side) started growing it in their land around the Kudremukh National park. The moment I heard it, I told them it is a bad idea. The survival rate of sandalwood is even worse than teak. You can read about it. Having said that, if it survives, it's a gold mine growing in your garden!



Teak is good but it takes 10 years to get returns.

Agriculture has a lot of subsidy. If you have a stretch of 10 acres of good soil, then its a gold mine provided there are good water facilities to water the plants. These days in my village people are using drip irrigation.
One of my cousin is into selling and installing equipment's for drip irrigation. It was good when it was going, but now the market has got saturated at our place. Every damn estate has got one I guess!

During a gold rush, who makes the maximum profit?
I believe some of my relatives have profited as they think they knew the answer... small profits ofcourse!
When the vanilla wave spread across the estates of coastal Karnataka, my uncle didnt show much interest in growing large-scale vanilla in his estates. Instead, he focussed on selling vanilla saplings to the interested farmers. Vanilla farmers, including my uncle, didnt make much selling vanilla pods. There was money to be made selling saplings though!
 
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Tolaha

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I am retiring next year. House by the lake being built. :)

Teak and Mahogany saplings already planted. Starting a dairy with 20 cows. Also on the agenda is some top of the line Californian Sativa and some good old Idukki Indica.

All are welcome to come and chill out. There will be night safaris on a boat with night vision equipment. The lake borders a reserve forest with tigers and elephants. Ahh, cant wait. :):high5:
Terrific boss!

You are living my dream! :thumb:
 

SpArK

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Great thread.

I had farmland in the rain shadow regions in kerala-TN border. Was mainly a cashew plantation along with Coconuts, mango trees and lime. Did the seasonal monsoon crops too.

Anybody needs advice on cultivation in arid lands, do contact me.
 

Yusuf

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When the vanilla wave spread across the estates of coastal Karnataka, my uncle didnt show much interest in growing large-scale vanilla in his estates. Instead, he focussed on selling vanilla saplings to the interested farmers. Vanilla farmers, including my uncle, didnt make much selling vanilla. There was money to be made selling saplings though!
It remember my college mate told me once how his uncle made a killing with vanilla. He was from Kerala. The price went through the roof. Don't remember correctly but I think he said that it was 14k/kg or something at peak quite a few years back.

Also a collegue of mine where I did my only job told me about tea. He was from Darjeeling. Some of the plantation owners were minting. All tea for export. Some of the varieties were sold for thousands of rupees per kg esp exported to Europe and England in particular. The English had their tea tasters stationed there to make sure they got the best stuff.
 

Tolaha

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It remember my college mate told me once how his uncle made a killing with vanilla. He was from Kerala. The price went through the roof. Don't remember correctly but I think he said that it was 14k/kg or something at peak quite a few years back.
True Yusuf bhai... But you know the problem with these horticultural crops... Arecanut, Cocoa, Cardamom, Vanilla etc. The prices will be high initially. An enterprising bunch get into it. Make a huge profit. People follow like crazy. Glut in the market. Prices crash. People burn their hands. They then keep away from that crop. Prices stabilize!
 

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