I learned a little about banks and loans while trying to find the right bank to work with for this little farm. My husband and I were not aware that huge national banks are not interested in helping farmers or those like us trying to start a small hobby farm. We were quite surprised and disappointed to find out that quite a few of the large well-known banks you might see advertised on television were only interested in loaning money if we fit in a suburb-type property or buying a lot from a builder while building a home at the same time. They weren’t even interested in loaning money for a lot of any size so 16 acres was definitely out of the question. They never even got around to checking our credit or anything of that nature at all. I think this might be because they would want to sell the mortgage and a large lot for a farm might be hard to sell if things went badly. We found two relatively small community banks nearby that specialize in loaning money in farming communities and picked the one that was more encouraging of our dream and had a better deal. If you are interested in buying a small farm or large lot, don’t waste time with the giant banks. Look at the small community bank first.