CHEYNE Sexsmith
Farm Plan
Our goal is to become long-term stewards of land in Central Texas, building a diversified regenerative farm that supports our family while improving soil health, biodiversity, and water retention. We envision rotational grazing with cattle and sheep, a market garden, poultry, orchards, and bees, with aquaculture as a future possibility. We plan to develop thoughtfully in phases, learning from the land and an experienced landowner. We seek a relationship built on trust, shared values, and respect for the land’s history through a long-term lease, lease-to-own arrangement, owner financing, or gradual farm transition. Ultimately, we hope to create a resilient farm where each enterprise supports the others and the land grows healthier over time.
Detailed Experience
I don’t have farm experience yet, and I would rather say that plainly than stretch what I’ve done. What I have is a backyard flock of laying hens that I’ve kept and cared for through several seasons, and small-plot raised-bed vegetable gardens that I’ve built, planted and managed at home. That is the extent of my hands-on growing and animal work so far.
What I bring instead is twenty years of working with my hands and running a business. I own a finishing and painting company in the Austin area, so I can frame, plumb, wire, repair and maintain just about anything on a property, and I know how to schedule work, manage a crew, keep books and deal with customers. Those are the skills I expect to be most useful to a landowner in the first year while I’m learning the farming side.
I’m currently enrolled in Groundwork, a farmer education program along the lines of Battleground to Breaking Ground, and I’m treating it as the start of a longer apprenticeship rather than a credential. My wife and I have five children who we homeschool, and we’re looking for a place where the whole family can learn by doing, take on real responsibility, and earn the trust of the people we work with. I’m not looking for a shortcut. I’m looking for someone willing to teach, and I’ll show up every day and do the work.
Education & Training
My formal farming education is just getting started. I’m currently enrolled in Groundwork, a farmer education program modeled on Battleground to Breaking Ground, which covers the basics of production, planning and the business side of a small farm. That is the only structured program I’ve completed or am completing so far.
Beyond that, what I’ve learned has come from doing it at home on a small scale, volunteering at harvest on a local farm, and reading what I could find: keeping a backyard laying flock, building and running raised-bed gardens, working alongside a crew at harvest, and working through extension publications and soil and septic reports while we’ve been evaluating land. I’ve spent a good deal of time this year studying what a family-scale farm actually costs and earns, enterprise by enterprise, which has made me more careful about what I claim to know.
The gaps are the obvious ones. I have no livestock experience beyond chickens, no pasture or hay experience, and no time on equipment larger than what a homeowner runs. I’m planning to add the low-cost credentials that landowners tend to look for, such as Beef Quality Assurance certification and a pesticide applicator license, and I’m looking for the kind of arrangement where the real education comes from working alongside someone who has done it for years.
