Topeka MAG — "So You Bought a Farm. Now What?" with Julie Pennington Falk of Pure Lamb

So you signed the papers. The land is yours. Now what? This October, Julie Pennington Falk of Pure Lamb joins the Topeka MAG to walk new and aspiring landowners through the unglamorous, make-or-break first year of farm stewardship — the part nobody puts on Instagram. Julie raises lamb the slow, honest way and has lived through the steep learning curve that comes with turning acreage into a working, self-reliant operation. Her talk, "So You Bought a Farm. Now What?" covers the practical foundations: reading your land and soil, prioritizing what to fix first (fences, water, shelter), choosing livestock and enterprises that fit your acreage and your time, budgeting for the hidden costs, and building the routines — feeding, fencing, grazing, record-keeping — that keep animals healthy and a farm solvent. More than a checklist, it's a mindset: how to avoid the common first-year mistakes that exhaust new owners and drain accounts, how to scale ambition to reality, and how to build a farm that feeds your family and your community for the long haul. If you've got land — or you're dreaming of it — this is the conversation you need before you break ground.