Often, the two biggest expenses for a large property, farm, or estate is routine maintenance and unexpected costs. Less intensive and more regenerative maintenance plans can yield a better budget for the unexpected.
Consider for a moment what a traditional farm maintenance schedule looks like...
You might expect to have a crew, whether it is in house or hired through a contractor, to visit a large property every week. Think of your fence lines or steeper hills, they are normally trimmed bi-weekly. This adds up, especially when you consider most years a maintenance crew will visit your property at least half of the year, roughly 26 times. This is highly intensive and costly - not to mention not necessary.
What are your pastures or fields doing? Are they maintained for aesthetics? Consider that when you bush-hog a pasture, timing is critical. Too soon, and you'll ruin important nesting habitat for birds and small animals. Too late and you'll allow woody establishment or fescues to grow too dense which also ruins wildlife habitat.
The traditional maintenance of farms has been done by landscape companies that, while some may be highly trained horticulturists, are in the business of prioritizing aesthetics. Aesthetics come at a cost, and not just to your maintenance budget. It costs the local wildlife, the quality of your soils and erosion, the quality of your riparian buffers, and the holistic qualities of your property. There are solutions that can balance the need for aesthetics and preserving, even benefitting, the native ecology.
By hiring a true land management company that can consult with land owners of all backgrounds and take into consideration and advise on all types of goals - working farms, recreational properties, wildlife habitat and hunting properties, and more - you can best develop a maintenance plan that can truly observe conservational and ecological ideals. Large property owners may realize they have a better balanced budget for their property that can allow future improvements and room for covering those unexpected costs as they arise.
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