Privacy-Hobby farms can be a few acres or well over a hundred but chances are you wonвЂ™t be looking in your neighbors windows. Mary Mensch is a RE/MAX Results realtor who has experience buying and selling hobby farms and offered the following list of pros and cons: Pros ItвЂ™s a romantic notion that many homebuyers are attracted to but there are some unique aspects to rural living that shouldnвЂ™t be overlooked. Most hobby farms in and around the Twin Cities serve as their owners full-time residence and provide them with a wide-open rural feel, the ability to keep animals as pets, for a hobby (i.e., horses) or for no-kill food for the family (fresh eggs from chickens, milk and cheese, fruit and vegetables). ThereвЂ™s no expectation that money will be made from crops, gardens or the animals who live there.В The air is fresh, there are few neighbors around and while there might be a chicken coop, itвЂ™s probably kind of adorable and the chickens are treated like family pets who just happen to lay delicious marigold yolked eggs. ItвЂ™s job was to produce masses of wheat in the field and enough vegetables in the house garden to feed a large family.ДЄ hobby farm, by contrast, is a farm that doesnвЂ™t have to sing for its supper. The land was flat, rich Red River Valley soil. If they were cute and had personalities that was incidental and best not get too attached. Everything and everyone on the property had a job to do.

Theirs was a working farm-nothing hobby about it. The oil smell came fromВ my grandfatherвЂ™s coveralls and would fill the kitchen when he came in after doing battle with the tractor in the fields all day.

The chicken scent came from my grandmotherвЂ™s coop not far from the house where she would throw food scraps, collect eggs, and on occasion choose a bird for the families dinner. My grandparents farm smelled like chickens and machinery oil.

Hobby farm home magazine