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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Public land leases..unwritten code among farmers???

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  • From: Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Public land leases..unwritten code among farmers???
  • Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:27:11 -0400

Frank

In some places I have heard of such things.  Here its about a contract and first come first serve.  That may sound rough, but the world is a rough place.  The only person that can be blamed is the person that did not bid on the property.  The previous farmer should have known it was up for bid.  That is not your fault.  Around our parts farmers get what they can in a heavily urbanized county.  Sometime a farmer gets ill, I know one that got throat cancer and was unable to farm for close to two years.  He lost the land he leased to another farmer.  We did not get a chance to bid because we did not know, but were not angry about it.  We could have kept better tabs early on but we did not.  That was our fault.  Can the land owner be blamed for searching out new farmers to work the land?  Someone needs to farm that land for the land owner otherwise it gets taken out of CAUV, higher taxes are paid and lots of folks are effected by the land not being used.  Everyone around here understands that and either we step in and help or bid.

I know you have been wanting to expand its been slow and I hope this works out well for you.  In the end, you jumped through the hoops and were rewarded for it by the owners of the land.

Congrats on your new acquisition and make sure you use this a lesson for your future and your use of this particular land and make sure it does not happen to you.  :)

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855

(513) 967-1106




On Apr 19, 2009, at 9:05 AM, Frank Ventura wrote:

We have been farming and selling at markets for the last 6 years and the
whole time looking for land to lease to expand.  A great property owned
by a neighboring town went out for bid and we where told about it, so
naturally bid on it.

We won the bid!  But now got a call from the previous farmer who is
upset with us.  They have been farming for a lot longer than us and told
us we should have told them we where bidding on the land and we probably
didn't understand that we shouldn't have bid on the land as we are new
farmers.  Is this some unwritten code among farmers we don't know about?

We feel bad as these farmers seem like really nice people although we
don't really know them well.  We assumed they where not using the land
anymore from hearsay around town and now that we know they did bid we
are surprised we where awarded the lease and the town didn't give
preferential treatment to the incumbent farmer.

Good leased land around markets is a commodity around here and I feel
competition for it is only growing.

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