Three years into leasing five acres, I've completely reversed my thinking on the popular advice to 'buy as soon as you can afford anything.' I used to treat leasing as a consolation prize — something you did while saving for the real thing. Now I think leasing first is genuinely the smarter path, especially for first-gen folks with no farming background.
I've learned what soil problems I can actually tolerate, what road access situations drive me insane, how important neighbor relationships are before you're locked in, and what 'enough land' even means for the way I actually farm — not the way I imagined I would farm.
If I'd bought the first property I could technically afford, I would have bought wrong. Leasing gave me three years of real data about my own preferences and limits.
The conventional wisdom treats buying as the obvious finish line. But I'd argue leasing is a research phase that most first-gen buyers skip at serious cost.
Has anyone else leased before buying and found it shifted what you were even looking for?