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Few questions for some of you bigger growers out there

SomeLikeItHot

SomeLikeItHot

Okay, first I'll give a little background info:
 
A very good friend of mine recently inherited a rather large plot of land; we're not just talking a couple acres--but rather ~200 acres down in Salem, MO (roughly an hour and a half from my current residence). Along with the land, he also has the equipment to maintain it. He presently has no interest in living down there and working the land, but as it was his grandfather's he wants it to be put to use. I've been chatting back and forth with him about possibly using a portion of it for peppers. No way I'd dare try and jump into a 200 acre operation!
 
Anyway here's my questions:
 
1.) Around how much money per year do those of you with larger operations have to put into your grow? Obviously, don't include cost of rent/mortgage/land payment itself, that part is taken care of. He owns the land 100%, and would be willing to let me use it for a portion of any proceeds made rather than set rent. I do great, he does great; I do bad, I won't find myself in major debt.
 
2.) How feasible is it to pull off a decent sized field if I can only make it down to check on it/harvest on weekends?
 
3.) What kind of additions would be advised to try and pull this off?
 
I'm just trying to see if this idea is something worth pursuing, or if I should just advise him to rent out the land for cattle farmers in the area.
 
planting peppers/ agriculture in general it is more labor intense than costly, so if you have the right equipment and workers, the rest is easy.
when planting large amounts (not pots) fields like 10 acre lot size. the operation is easy and simple but the harvest is what you should worry about.
after that harvest comes the (what to do with all this) you dont want to plant plant plant and then let them rot on plants, so u must find a good way of marketing before planting.
then processing, u have to have big cooler/cold place to keep the pods from rotting before they are shipped, dried, sold, cooked. etc.
if you are going big, u will need big things like big commercial dehydrator (not Cabela's either) i am talking about 3 phase industrial one where you push in whole cart of pods loaded  200 kilos every 8 hours, i bough one of those for $9000, i will send u pics if u need.
bottom line is, when u go larger, u need larger facility and equipment along with labor/ people (u cant say me, my self and I are the largest grower)
on top of all that, what to do with the harvest 
if you can answer these question i would say go a head and give it try 
 
 
on your question  of "I'm just trying to see if this idea is something worth pursuing, or if I should just advise him to rent out the land for cattle farmers in the area."
 
i would say try to use some of the land for your peppers and let him rent the rest of the land, but not just waste 200 acre for only few acres of peppers 
 
good luck if u need any help let me know especially  where to get the commercial equipment  
 
Somehow I knew I could count on you for some serious advice Judy! I definitely have no intentions of wanting to be the largest grower (God knows I don't have that kind of free time right now with the kids), just toying with the idea of putting his land and equipment to work and putting some extra money in both of our pockets.
 
I definitely plan on telling him to rent out a majority of the land for now, there's great money for him in that alone, just trying to decide if I can pull off putting a portion of the property to work. 
 
Workers would be pretty easy. There's a lot of people down in Salem who already make a living working the land who'd love to make some extra money for doing what they do best. His grandfather actually hired on a few people out there during the few years before he died as he wasn't up to handling the labor anymore.
 
Really, if I go for it, I'd probably start small with a couple acres and see how that goes, then up it each year if all goes well. I figure I have til next year to really go over all of this as its wayyyy too late to start that this year, but I want to make sure I know everything that will go into this so I can make the best educated decision possible and not end up wasting both his and my own time.
 
trust me u will love it, have fun and make extra $.
nothing is more rewarding than watching long rows after rows of peppers setting fruits after u started them from seeds months ago.
it is fun but addictive, u would want more and more, land, varieties and employees eventually
 
best of luck  
 
I've never grown on a large scale, but I would think a couple of acres would be more than enough... way more. And my gut tells me it would soon evolve into more than just weekend tending. A couple of acres could be a full time job as far as pest control, harvest, fertilizing, setting up watering systems (if necessary). I think it could possibly change your life as you know it... in a good way.
 
He has 3 bodies of water on the property. I'd be looking at setting up a pump from a stream nearby (which does have fish) on a timer to handle that part of the game.
 
Sounds like a dream come true. With ~200 acres you could rent out over half of that and have more then enough land to run an entire farm on the  remaining land. Growing not just peppers but anything you could imagine really.
 
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