Well in case you hadn’t seen my Twitter feed, I’ve been in Rochester, Minnesota for the past 4 days. We looked at some apartments, a few houses and yes, farms.
For the time being we’re trying to scope things out up there and get an idea of where we’d like to end up.
Here is one of the first farms we looked at. Hopefully we won’t end up in a place like this…
The Pros:
- a few miles outside of Rochester, MN – close to primary market
- creek cuts through corner of property – free livestock water
The Cons:
- Uncooperative / reluctant sellers – priced high, bad future neighbors?
- Kinda small – 80 acres with a lot of it in woods/timber
- Unimproved land – lots of up-front investment for well, septic, electric, buildings, etc.
- Poor pasture condition – undesirable species, water issues.
Here’s one of our first views of the place. What’s not showing up well is the incredible amount of wild parsnip that was growing here. Wild parsnip is considered an invasive species, and can apparently cause of some quite unpleasant burns. Fortunately, the wild parsnip was in full bloom, making it relatively easy to see and avoid touching it.
After slogging a ways through the marshy pasture and deciding I couldn’t cross the creek without risking a throurough soaking, I gave up and headed back to the car. The tallest grass in the pasture (no idea on species) was easily 6′ tall, but the majority of the grass (seen underneath with the brown seed-heads) was broom-sedge.
I carefully threaded my way back through all of the wild parsnip and we headed out to the next farm.
