Build a Farm Costs

Perhaps you want to build an active farm where you will be able to grow crops or raise livestock. Whether you want a large farm that is able to make a substantial amount of money for you or you are looking for a smaller farm that can allow you to become more self-sustainable, getting started will be an expensive task.

A farm is more than just a barn or two. You also need to think about all of the other types of outbuildings and specialty buildings you will need, fences, and much more. Different types of farms, for example, may need different types of buildings. If you are raising cows for milk that you are going to bottle and sell, you would need a dairy barn. If you are raising chickens and selling the eggs, you would need a poultry house.

Farm building: a very small farm where the farmhouse has already been built and you are putting up some new structures on the property. It will include costs just for the structures and not the livestock that would be needed.

Other considerations and costs

• The overall cost to build a farm will vary greatly based on what you need to have and what might already be available on the property, as well as the size of the property. Building everything from the ground up on empty property will be more expensive than taking over an older farm, keeping the farmhouse, and building new barns and outbuildings.
• If the land needs to be leveled before buildings can be put up, the excavation will add to the cost.
• You will likely need to have permits for each of the buildings you want for the property.

Check out our guide if you need a loan for your home improvement project.

DIY considerations

• Building a farm is not a typical DIY project. There are so many different types of expertise needed to build a farm, that you can’t know how to do it all. You need to work with a range of different types of contractors to put in the well, to build the various buildings to code, and to take care of all of the electrical work and plumbing.
• However, there are smaller jobs that you could take care of, such as painting, hauling away debris, etc. This could help to reduce your overall costs by a small amount.

References

• Craftsman Estimator Costbook, complete series year 2019.
• Latest prices found on Home Depot and other vendor Web sites.
• Literature review of DIY Websites.