I'm bummed out,,,

On HLN this morning, the report is about the Tuttle family farm in New Hampshire, not being able to continue after 375 years, ten generations. Seems like the children don"t want to try to carry on in the face of this recession, and the financial struggle of farming. I understand, but it does make me sad.

They are not allowed to split it up or build on most of it. Didn't he say he could get $35000 an acre for some of it?

(quoted from post at 05:28:07 07/31/10) On HLN this morning, the report is about the Tuttle family farm in New Hampshire, not being able to continue after 375 years, ten generations. Seems like the children don"t want to try to carry on in the face of this recession, and the financial struggle of farming. I understand, but it does make me sad.

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It is sad. The small to medium family farmer has always been on the fence..many supplement income with a couple jobs.

But thats not the whole story...as emotional as it may be, I've talked to many a city dweller that came from a farming community but just couldn't stand the conservative attitudes of the populace.

at $35000 an acre I don't think to many people would care how long it had been in the family.

the other thing is families used to be bigger so there was at least 1 offspring that wanted to keep farming or keep it in the family and was willing to give up some easy living for the sake of farming.

todays generation when things get tough the tough take diffrent jobs to keep there life style high and mighty.

The original 360 acres on my farm has been in my family since 1837. I have put it into an Agriculture trust. Each generation after me will get the use and income but can"t sell it or allow it to become encumbered. If they don"t pay the taxes then the farm trustee will generate income through rent and keep them paid. I also have the whole farm enrolled into a farm land preservation plan with the county.
My family has struggled to pay for this farm. I paid off my siblings. I will not chance that some one down stream will be too lazy to keep it going. I don"t require that they do the work themselves but they can still own it and rent it out.
The Tuttle family will find out how little of that three and a half million they will get to keep after taxes. The three of them will get about 7-8 hundred thousand each. When they live on that it will disappear pretty fast.
My youngest brother had a child die due to a doctor"s mistake. He and his wife got 1.6 million after the lawyers where done. That was ten years ago and all of the cash money is gone. They still have the real estate they bought that is worth about a third of what they got.

I've been on the family farm all my life, youngest of four boys, I stayed and the other three left,i'm only 27, so a long time ahead of me, but i'm looking at leaving not because of the farming woos but my mother who lives next to me blames me for everything, yep i'm her scapegoat. I can kind of deal with that but what worrys me is that my dad (67) is not in the greatest of health so if he passes i'm worried that all my hard work will be thrown out the window. What do I do?