During the age of feudalism most landed estates made their income through agriculture. Land ownership, farming, and renting land to tenants was the basis of a lord’s wealth and stature. Siar Fordell, while at the moment receives most of our estate income from military service and capital gains, property ownership is a big part of our holdings and one of the main goals of the Thegn-Hold is to become more and more self sufficient through a profitable estate income.
I am careful not to include personal income in with estate income. Working a job that I am paid for is not the same as producing income and profit from aristocratic and feudal holdings. That being said, the resources produced with some sort of reliability month to month, quarter to quarter, and year to year, that are not coming from employment (meaning, for the most part, passive income – dividends, rents, DCA’ed capital gains, and other forms of fealty or tenure) are still somewhat small – but since, at the moment, it is all reinvested back into the estate, each month our estate income grows more and more each month.
In order to compare this estate income to modern land holdings, I have done some research on leasing prices and rents for agricultural land. For accurate comparisons I have been using prices per acre, on the most up to date information, and in similar areas – Iowa for cropland and pastureland, and the mid-west for timberland (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.)
Currently, the Thegn-Hold’s estate income is roughly the equivalent of six acres of leased agricultural land – two acres of cropland (by far the most profitable and expensive) and four acres of pastureland. This equivalency will change, of course, as the Thegn-Hold’s income increases and the prices of leases change (which do not always go up.) While we own shares of agricultural companies and vineyards, we do not own any agricultural land outright, other than what we currently harvest ourselves. This comparison is simply a fun way to set ourselves against the benchmark of feudal holdings of the past.
The Thegn-Hold of Siar Fordell 