I plan to farm my land with no tractor this year. Here's how.

There seems to be this notion that unless you have a tractor and hundreds of acres, you're a 'pretend' farmer. Here's what farming in 2025 and beyond is going to look like.

I would be seriously oblivious at this point if I did not notice the hundreds and hundreds of comments left on my social media calling me a ‘play-pretend’ farmer because I am attempting to farm with no prior experience, no tractor, and no fancy tilling equipment.

The Industrial Revolution ushered in a new form of farming that, until the 1880s, had never been practiced with the art of agricultural production. Machines arrived, and with it came the pursuit of large-scale farming, since tractors and large equipment pieces made it possible for one man to carve up his land and harvest crops.

Over-time, large-scale farming gave rise to monoculture farming, also known as planting and harvesting one singular crop. By planting just one crop, farmers could focus on a pesticide bundle that supported their operation, and therefore, scale over-time to turn a bigger profit.

I completely understand how this happened and do not blame the American farmer for pursuing this form of agricultural production whatsoever. The value of farmland has increased by 360% since the 1990s, paired with tax hikes and unfavorable policies at the local and federal level that make it nearly impossible for farmers to turn fair profits today.

That’s because these farmers are stuck in a large-scale method of farming that requires massive inputs to yield a fair output. In a world where the average cost of an acre of U.S. farmland is $4,080 as of 2023, which is a 7.4% increase from 2022 according to the USDA, how we’ve farmed for the last 100-years is unsustainable. It’s unsustainable from a monetary, and more importantly, and environmental point of view.

Whether people are ready for this shift or not is up to them - I am merely here to document my own observations and plans as a first-generation farmer with no prior experience or teaching.

We’ve arrived at a tipping point, and the farmers over the age of 60 with these 100-acre+ farms are collapsing, selling out to Wall Street, foreign entities, and developers. It’s not that they want to sell out; it’s that they’re strapped with debts and costs they simply cannot overcome. Their kids are nowhere to be found (this is a trend I notice as someone who visits 20+ farms near my farm weekly), and the physical demands of managing 100+ acres just isn’t something you can sell to generations plugged into their cellphones.

As a pragmatist, I think it’s pointless to point fingers and call generations of people lazy. Instead, I look at incentives. A human can always be incentivized if you frame the problem in a way that benefits them. You could say it’s us being inherently selfish; I say we need to reframe the problem at hand.

Therefore, I am here to be that living example that I hope and believe will incentivize other people in their 40s, 30s, and 20s (hey, even teens) to hop on board with a new way of farming (and people over the age of 50 are certainly welcome to help as well - we are going to need all the help we can get).

Here’s what it’s going to look like for me.

A tractor-less farm? How is that possible?

“Good luck with your scythe out in the fields this summer,” people have commented to me. “Where are the oxen? If you don’t own a tractor, you need animal assistance,” others have said.

Before I explain how I plan to farm without horsepower assistance, let me dive into the money details here since that is usually what most people are confused about.

I do not plan to turn a profit from farming by selling bulk loads of produce to stores, grocers, and food distributors. Rather, I plan to sell my produce using the following methods:

• my farm stand

• a CSA (community-supported-agriculture whereby buyers come to YOU to pick up their weekly boxes of produce in a subscription model)

This is already working at Pitney Meadows, a community farm in the town over from mine. They offer CSA pick-ups, as well as Pick-Your-Own (PYO) during the growing months. By mixing in an ‘experiential’ component to harvesting the crops, the buyers feel they are part of the farm and are able to get their hands dirty, sporadically. The farm then no longer needs to harvest all of the produce when the buyer is happy to pick it themselves and pay for it.

The surplus crops that are leftover after weekly CSA pick-ups and PYO can be sold at farm stands or at farmers’ markets. I, believe or not, am an introvert. You could probably tell. I would not thrive selling at open public markets. But, if you like talking to new people all day, that is absolutely an option. I prefer to sell from my own farm stand. Here’s how people know to buy at my farm stand:

• I post on social media to TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook daily

• I write about it here

• I will be posting flyers around town and on local bulletin boards

• I am slowly getting to know the other farmers who will promote me to their buyers, as I do for them

I noticed last summer after the first few months with a farm stand, people started to learn I existed and I was open X hours. Give your community a little time and after awhile, they will add you to their shopping loop.

I am also toying with setting up a farm stand directory for my area to make it easier for people in cities to find me and other farms. People in cities want to patronize farms. They want to smell the fresh country air. They need to be incentivized - AKA it needs to be made easier - for them to do this.

To get into the financial weeds for a moment, many people are willing to spend $20-$40/week on a CSA pickup. That’s around $100/per person, per month. If you get 20 people on that subscription, that’s a base of $2,000/per month. If you aren’t paying for tractors, gas, equipment repairs, or dozens of employees, that $2,000 turns into pure profit pretty quickly.

I had $50/days at my farm stand last fall simply selling pumpkins from seeds I scattered by the woods with zero intervention. No mulch. No inputs. I just threw them.

Now that you understand how it’s possible to make money from small-scale farming, or at least how I plan to do it - and will of course be documenting it all here for you to follow along with - let’s look at how I plan to do the actual farming, tractor-less, as a 5 foot 3 inch tall female.

If Grandma Moses and Beatrix Potter could do it, then so can I.

Many a small woman in the past has succeeded at farming without all the fancy add-ons. Is elbow grease required? Absolutely. I am currently working on training my body so it’s ready for the physical demand that’s incoming. But as a 31-year-old healthy adult, there is no reason why I can’t lift pumpkins and push a wheelbarrow around two acres. I discovered in 2024 I never felt so good, healthy, and fit as I did gardening every day. The joy it brought me… I can’t even begin to describe it. Sitting is evil and the Amish know this - that’s why they don’t have chairs in their homes, or if they do, they hang them on the wall during the day. Think about that for a moment!

Here are the methods I plan to follow to make small-scale farming a possibility for myself:

• No tilling: I have read enough mushroom books at this point to know you will not find me messing with the mycelium at my farm. Will I be using a trowel and digging down into the earth from time-to-time? Sure. Let’s not get crazy here. But I will not be using a big tilling machine to tear down into my soil year-after-year, killing its structure, ruining the organic matter, and breaking it apart so it’s more prone to erosion and flooding.

• Bring on the mulch: I will be following the no-tillers before me that rely on heavy mulching for weed suppression. Will this be expensive? No because I will be using my bunny and chicken manure as a major part of this process. I have 9 rabbits, which means my bunny manure pile is stacking up rapidly.

• Polyculture farming: Monoculture farming is destroying the planet. Plants were meant to be planted together, as Native Americans knew with their ‘three-sisters’ method. I will be copying their three-sisters at my farm, planting corn, then beans, then squash near each other. By inter-planting like this, my yields will be much greater in a smaller space. Not to mention, plants can help and support each other so I don’t need to - the corn stalks act as a trellis for the beans, and the squash keeps the soil moist. You get the idea.

• Vertical farming: Spreading out my operation over 5+ acres, alone, is nearly impossible. That’s why I will be honing in on only 1-2 acres to do everything I am describing here. By utilizing the space above me with trellises, I can keep my watering, etc. to a smaller area. I already have two large trellis tunnel sets I traded for at the end of 2024.

• Embracing the chaos: When you drive past American properties today, you notice everyone is obsessed with the Victorian approach to ‘spotless’ gardening that champions non-native plants for the sake of the property looking anally neat. I say bring on the maximalism. Instead of boring, tidy rows of one plant as far as the eye can see, inter-planting will make my farming look like more of a Beatrix Potter-style garden than a modern farm. Good!

I don’t claim to be the first person to create this method. Many farmers and gardeners are already doing this. Here is one person who turned 1/3rd of an acre into $85,000.

When you farm small-scale, your costs drop dramatically. There’s no tractor, pesticides (monoculture farming reduces the need for pesticides dramatically), oil or gas to power the tractor, or other inputs needed. There’s just you, some seeds, some mulch, and a water source. Is it possible you may want to hire help eventually? Probably. But you may be surprised at the amount of people who would love to come volunteer with you as well. People are craving a reconnection with the outdoors and a polyculture, small-scale farm absolutely fits the bill.

Will I succeed 100% at everything I just described? Of course not! That’s the fun of it. I am sure I will learn new things that I can share with you as well. I am incredibly excited to get started, and as someone with a financial transparency background, I am even more excited to share the numbers with you all.

Our country, environment, and communities will benefit immensely from having 20+ small-scale farms like this as opposed to a few massive ag operations that spray tons of chemicals into the air. I am ready for it.

I cover all things land loans, starting farms, my journey as a first-generation farmer, Amish culture, making money with agricultural endeavors, and more here. Follow along!