Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have.
If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.
Maybe they have saved enough from working in tech that they can grow vegetables for themselves in a very low scale way. Its nice to escape from the career you've had for decades. Sometimes its not even an escape from the career, but the career and the city you've lived in. Moving to the forest and growing some vegetables and raising chickens isn't that difficult. You certainly don't need "millions in equipment". Its exactly what I did.
I found it difficult to get a job in tech at the start of COVID after working in it for ~25 years. I moved to Michigan, and now live in the woods. My Cost of Living is a fraction of what it was. My mortgage is only 80% of what I was paying for rent in the SFBay area. Its peaceful and quiet here. It actually gets dark too. I no longer hear BART screeching on the rails at 2am or the constant flow of traffic. I.. do once again work in tech though at a much 'smaller' scale. My company is small and work demands don't dominate my life. I have balance.
This year I've planted ~200 onions, ~100 potatoes, ~100 garlic, ~60 strawberry. I have blueberry from a few years back starting to flourish. I have wild blackberry, and mushrooms galore. "touching grass" is a daily activity as we manage our small flock of chickens.
The woman who ran PR for Chicago Tribune did the same thing with her husband. She now has a small farm in Michigan. She runs a PR agency from the farm.
I personally couldn’t do it… I prefer loud noises and bright lights but I lived in Rincon Hill and Times Square at various times…
How old are you?
You don’t have to answer, but I’m guessing you’re probably not past 45.
At some point, you start to prefer quiet.
I haven’t lived in a really large city, but have been around noise enough that I’m hoping our next move will distance us from neighbors and highway noise.
And yes, maybe we’ll have a farm animal or two.
I grew up all my life in a major city. The quiet and tranquility of a small town freak me out. For somebody who’s never lived in a city, you’re making quite a few assumptions.
As somebody who lives in a multi-million city, every second person I talk to wants to move to the country, and it definitely much stronger tendency after around 30-35+.
It doesn't matter if the parent's assumptions are "quite a few" or don't match you, what matters is if they match a big segment of the population to be statistically useful. There are always outliers who love to grow old in a big city and have their ashes scaterred in the middle of Manhattan.
The only set we should really be listening to are people who both:
Otherwise, everyone always thinks the grass is greener, absent experience with the alternative.Or as I heard it quipped -- you don't love something for it's best bits; you love it because you can tolerate its worst bits.
For our purposes (which in this subthread is determining whether grandparents idea that "45+ prefer more quiet and wish to move to the country" is valid), this distinction doesn't matter - since this is not about whether that group is justified in preferring the country, but whether they prefer it or not.
I care about maximizing people's happiness function.
Whether there are a large number of people who believe in something that's incorrect is immaterial, as is over-counting kvetching without any intent to follow through.
Yeah, that's mostly me. I've lived in Massachusetts at multiple locations between Boston and Gardner. I'm now living at the edge of one of the mill cities. It is not far enough from traffic noise, but it is much better than any other place I've lived other than Massachusetts rural.
I've also lived from the deeply blue-collar (father's small business moving machinery) to the tech world. I find myself marketing my consulting business to small to medium-sized blue-collar/manufacturing businesses. Even though their Trumpist attitudes irritate me, I understand their world better than I do that of urban-centric, and their political views do not stop me from taking their money. It makes it easier for me to charge them the rates that I do.
I think the quip is a good one. However, I feel it could be better phrased as, "You need to seek out the best bits to remind you why you tolerate the worst bits."
When I'm having a bad day, and I wonder why I'm putting up the crap in my life, I walk into my yard, look at my garden with cucumbers, beans, cauliflower, and something like 20 tomato plants next to raspberries, blueberries, sour cherry tree, and Apple tree. And if it's a really really bad day, I will go and settle into the hammock and stare at the sky.
When I can finally feel gratitude for the life I have, then I go back and deal with the crap that lets me afford the life I have.
For the purposes of input on the question of living in a big city vs a rural community, yes, but don't forget, there is also the 3rd option of living in suburbia. I hear it's quite popular in America.
Doesn't that possibly reflect your social circle more than a statement about the public at large?
Same here. I lived in some of the world's largest cities most of my life, and loved the "big city" atmosphere. But in my late 40s it changed and started to crave being out in the countryside, away from people, noise, etc. I now live on the outskirts of a medium size city (in 5 minutes I'm out among orchards and vineyards), but would prefer to be even further out, have an orchard or small farm (though I have no illusions that I could make a living from that)
One uncounted point is frequency of novelty.
Generalizing, I'd say younger people (18-35) are more default-comfortable in novel situations. As we age, people's tolerance for that seems to decrease.
And, on the whole, I'd say that rural life provides less novelty than city life. Or at least novelty within tighter bounds.
I still crave novelty, in that I'm always wanting to discover new things, go new places. But I don't feel the need to be so "busy" as is common in a big city.
I feel this, and I'm mid 40s. I keep my eyes open for places to live which are somehow both remote and near decent healthcare options. I don't need the healthcare options now, but I am aware that I am only going to get older and that's something that I'd want.
I do my best to keep my yard full of life and tend to my plants and my gardens, but there's always the noise from the highway a mile or so away. It's less annoying when it's hot out, but the drone bothers me in the winter months.
Some people do still like city life in their 40s.
Some people do find a more rural life unappealing.
It's always interesting to hear from people who moved to Michigan because the better part of my adult life has been devoted to getting out of Michigan. It sounds like you have a peaceful life though
I grew up here and left as soon as I turned 18! After living all over the US and trying out different cities and locales returning to Michigan made the most sense. Buying a home in the SFBay area isn't feasible unless you're willing to work multiple jobs or sell your soul to FAANG.
Want a house? Get ready to replace: The foundation, the roof, the sewer lateral, oh and the addition wasn't done with a permit so its not to code at all. All for the low low price of $500k! On a lovely 1/4th acre plot, you'll be hearing your neighbor while they fart in the bathroom. What, you only got $500k? Don't worry, this other person here has $550k and they don't have a problem with the house need to be rebuilt!
Oh I'm looking at $500k houses? I should be looking at 1.1mil houses to not deal with all those problems? Now I've got 1.1mil mortgage for 30 years. I don't want to work into my 70's for a house.
Compared to... come to Michigan, you can get 5 acres for less than $300k and your house is functional, maybe it needs a new roof within 5 years. My mortgage is 15 years and will be paid off before that.
I think "competition" is the big thing that drove me back home. I was tired of competing with my neighbors (people who live in the same city) for _everything_. I don't mind people, I loved meeting people in every city I lived. I just felt like I had to fight for every "inch" in most "big cities" (but especially SFBay area).
It's very peaceful here. I love it. Maybe I'll go to the big lake (Michigan) later and swim.
Agreed that competition is one of my major annoyances with big cities.
Once it gets big enough that "good" restaurants require a reservation any day of the week, and those reservations are difficult to get, I'm moving somewhere else.
Why work to fight to win... what you can just enjoy somewhere else?
To be a total snob about it, it's because the "what" is better in some places. If the best restaurant in town is a Cheesecake Factory or Olive Garden, and there are no reservations; hey, you do you.
Michigan's housing prices vary pretty dramatically and we don't have a terribly low cost of living in parts -- especially real-estate. It's no SFBay, but it's rapidly getting worse.
You mentioned the 300,000 on 5 acres, and that's definitely possible, but you're not getting that in the desirable parts of Macomb or Oakland County[0], nor anywhere in Wayne outside of Detroit/Detroit-ish areas.
I watched a house on a busy city road (one where "pulling out of the driveway means an immediate traffic backup to the light" between 7-9 and 4-6 every day) which was 2,200 sq ft, 4 BR 2.0 BA, though it was new construction (relatively modern/upgraded interior) go for $550,000 in 2022 after multiple bids. The home I own (1800/3BR/1.5BA) which I purchased for $175,000 in 2001 and would have lost money had I sold it between 2007~2018, is worth about $330,000. This is partly due to the value increasing due to local changes and "what's happening everywhere in the country" housing prices-wise. I know folks who moved to Plymouth to a home with similar specs but paid a quarter million in 2017.
Cool. And because I didn't re-finance, I don't have a mortgage any longer. Except I want to upgrade. And had I done that in 2008, I could have afforded it. Now that upgrade is twice as much but my salary has not followed suit. My desire to upgrade went to near zero, already, once I paid it off. But now I couldn't even afford to if I wanted to. I figure I'll downgrade and move near the kids when they're older and take home some cash in the process.
One thing I love about where I live in Michigan, though ... it's rare that a house doesn't have a basement. Even in places you wouldn't expect -- our next-door neighbor on Lake Huron had a full basement with 12ft ceilings (and a hell of a system to keep it bone dry). And newer homes tend to have excellent ones you can make useful -- if not always up-to-code -- living/lab spaces out of. SFBay hacks in their garage. We hack in our basements.
[0] When people say they "Live in Detroit" that's probably where they live. Just like the Detroit Zoo.
Everyone else's grass is always greener it seems.
Not in west Texas I'll tell you that!
I grew up in Ohio, and I did grow up on a farm for the first part of my life, and I worked like hell to get out of there and I'd never go back, but somehow a small farm in Michigan has become an idea in my brain, too.
I've lived here since I was born and I'd say I feel that way a lot of the time. There's a lot of downside: tight ties to autos (where I live) mean that a lot of employers -- even if "technically" they aren't automotive focused -- tend to have so many customers in that industry that "when something goes wrong at GM, Ford or whatever Chrysler is called, everyone around here gets it."
Best I've been able to do is work for employers out of state/country but I'm currently employed locally at a remote-only shop.
The weather. I get it. Everyone uses the same "5 minutes and it'll change" joke, but we're unique here. I thought I read somewhere that we see fewer cloudless days than the Pacific Northwest, but I can't find a reference so I suspect that's false, but we spend, basically, December to April with few sunny days. We live in a place of extremes, as well. Ten below (Fahrenheit) in the coldest winter days, 99 degrees a couple of days ago. Had one day in July when I was in High School where it was 85 degrees in the morning and in about a 15-minute period of time dropped to 45 due to a Derecho[0] rolling through (which almost picked me up off the ground due to 75 MPH winds and sent a large Oak Tree through our master bedroom).
We don't get Spring or Autumn, we get Winter, Summer, and a period of time where the two are at war and it may be Winter or Summer depending on what day/hour it is. A decade ago, I was in the ER on the first week of March. The hospital couldn't "turn on the Air Conditioning" at will, they had to switch over seasonally, so when we had an unexpected 85 degree day, that meant it was about 85 degrees in the ER. That was fun.
It is a beautiful place if you get out of the more populated parts, but I work here and that's where I live. Still, nice that it's an hour drive to get to something that qualifies as "Up North[1]"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho
[1] A phrase that has little to do with direction around here ... mostly just means "resort-ish small town, a lot of which survives due to summer 'Cabin Up North' folks." Ours is in Port Sanilac. But, really, Lake Orion and Walled Lake used to be "Up North" communities :)
Funny comment about it being dark in Michigan. My feeling here in the summer is like, will the sun ever set (somewhat light out until almost 10pm depending on location)? I know what you mean, of course.
I grew up in Michigan. I live in Berlin now, and it’s light to 11:30pm and I can read on my balcony in natural light at 4:30am.
Well, seeing that most of Germany is further North than Michigan (southernmost latitute of Germany ~47°, northernmost latitude of Michigan ~48°, that sounds correct.
If you think about how most of Europe is at the same latitude as Canada, you really start to appreciate how important the Gulf Stream is for our climate...
NBA... Toronto Raptors had/have a big campaign around "We The North".
Except whenever they came to Portland to play the Trailblazers, the arena commentators would mock it with signs like "We The North-er" etc. Portland is just over 2 degrees further north than Toronto.
Ya, the sun is out quite late right now =) My chickens don't want to go to bed! But then the sun goes down, and you can see _EVERY_ star in the sky. When I walk my trashcan out to the street, its pitch black. I LOVE it.
Who'd a thunk there'd be so many Michiganders on Hacker News?
I'm with ya, I tend to rise with the sun and 5:00 AM gets very old. Morning's like "Can I just sneak by you? Ope[0], sorry 'bout that, didn't mean to wake you up"
[0] I couldn't resist.
Reversely it's gonna get dark at 4pm in winter.
It's the same in Poland, in this period of the year the sunset is at 10 pm and dusk at 11.
I wanna be you! problem is probably 15 years or more until it's feasible to me due to current salary, savings and country.
Never give up - all three of salary, savings, and country can change dramatically for the better.
Start with country. The best tool against inequality is a suitcase.
Agreed - the day I emigrated from the third world to Canada was the day my life hit the elbow of exponential growth.
Michigan might be cool in summer, what about winters? I need find a place for summer as I'm getting older and texas is just darn hot for 4 months in summer.
Michigan is not particularly cool in summer.
Right, it gets humid, but averages low ~80's. I'd honestly say its low ~70's, but this summer has been hot. I remember times when I was a child where it would still be snowing in May. Spring is also short, winter starts in October. I don't remember ever going out for Halloween without wearing a jacket, or where there wasn't cold rain or snow.
Michigan summers are much much milder (and shorter) than Texas summers (I lived in Houston for a few years).
A lot of people are heavily influenced by Youtubers and other influencers who conveniently leave out the earnings they get from their Youtube views, all while selling a romantic, self sufficient dream of living in harmony with nature.
In that regard Jeremy Clarkson paints a much more realistic picture, even though that show is very over the top and mostly scripted.
I grew up on a farm and was on track to take it over. I know how hard it is. And it was not the live I wanted, so I pivoted to online marketing and web development instead.
I was the only grandkid interested in the family farm at all and stood to inherit the whole works.
I went to college instead and work a regular job. Grandpa has been on that farm since he was born in 1922. Until he retired in 2006, he took two days off work the entire time.
No. Thank. You.
What happened on those two days? Birth of his children? Probably a broken back or some other injury is more likely tho. :)
Lol he got caught in a piece of machinery, which stripped the skin off of his arm from his elbow to his armpit. One day off for ER one for recovery.
What a trooper. They don't make people like they used to.
There are plenty of people like this. They bust their asses doing thankless work every day so people like us can argue on forums about the decline of society.
Two days off sounds bad but when you’re working for yourself and don’t have to answer some prick manager, suffer on a commute, sit hunched unnaturally at a desk, it could be much better.
I'll take my 5+ weeks off per year (with strict 40 hour maximum weeks and strong work life balance) and you can have your self-employed 2 days per 30 years = 0.06 days off per year. That's 32 minutes of personal time off per year.
When you’re working for yourself, every hour goes towards your personal equity, and you’re the boss. It hits different.
yeah instead its 12 hour days with animals that can and will try to kill you, rain or shine, in the snow, dark, and mud.
i've herded cattle on an aussie ranch as part of a working holiday. fun experience as a young man, but absolutely convinced me that IT was the right choice.
I really like Goldshaw Farm[1]. He does yearly breakdowns how is farm performed and the reality is he could not live at all if that was his only income stream. And I think his scale is most realistic what a developer could achieve when he quit and just wanted to try to farm.
YouTube pays his bills mostly, not the farm.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD4VW0lLYjE
Goldshaw is very informative, but I think he is a bit more of a hobby farmer than a real homesteader. If you have a sophisticated system (and are willing to work hard), you can bring in substantial amounts of money on small acreage.
Farm doesn’t always mean hundreds of acres and millions in loans. My neighbors across the street are farmers and live in a residential neighborhood. They have a quarter acre in the front yard for growing veggies and own a 1 acre plot just outside of town.
At some point sitting at a computer becomes unfulfilling and some point some people can’t take it anymore.
They are not farmers. They have a quite serious hobby (and some savings or other income to rely on probably). It's impossible to make a living out of a 1.25 acre of arable land.
To a great extent that depends on where you live, and what you grow.
One of my neighbours produces 10,000 litres of wine/year on ~4 acres of vines. An acquaintence runs a market garden on less than an acre. Another raises pigs in a barn on half that.
I didn't say you cannot run anything. As a side project, sure - 1 Acre is quite a piece of land. But it's impossible to rely on it as your only source of income (i.e. definition of being a farmer). Even in the wine example - let's say they make 2$/liter, that's $5k/acre/year. Pigs actually make very little profit on average, when you combine all the other costs associated with raising livestock. I would be very surprised if they make more than $100/pig/year (averages have been <0 for the last few years).
In this case the wine is being sold directly to restaurants, removing any middlemen. The pigs are being made into artisanal chorizo onsite, and direct-to-consumer sales allows the farmer to capture most of the markup. Similar goes for the market gardener selling fresh and washed vegetables directly at markets and to CSA box subscribers.
I'm not suggesting everyone can be Jean-Martin Fortier, but with sufficiently low overheads and access to somewhat affluent markets, it is possible to make a living on an acre.
If you live off the land then you don't need much income, and the income you get from selling your surplus can be sufficient.
Take a trip through rural America sometime and look around. You'll see lots of very poor-looking households, but if you look carefully you might notice that they keep chickens and have a garden, and larger properties have more in the way of animals. Many are dirt poor, but they live off the land, and can afford to be dirt poor. Not romanticizing it or anything -- the homesteadies I know are not into being dirt poor, but they are into being more independent and living off the land so as to stretch their savings.
This seems like an unnecessary distinction with no purpose other than to gatekeep. A bartender is still a bartender if they only work weekends. An artist is still an artist if it's not their dayjob. A barber is still a barber if they have to work another job to make ends meet.
No, you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking that farming an acre or two is going to replace the income of most 9 to 5 jobs, but at a time in history where we absolutely need to be working to preserve and promote small-scale farming, we shouldn't be gatekeeping people.
ok, fair enough - I agree that the definition of a job shouldn't be tied to the income generated from it. However the main argument presented above was that people shouldn't assume farming is easy and relaxing - and working on a 1 acre farm with no expectation of income is not the same as "being a farmer to make a living" which is 100x harder.
It's not easy, but it is relaxing. When I'm with my bees I have no other cares in the world. The buzzing alone makes sure of that. If I slipped up, they could kill me, so there's also that. But mainly it's just so darned fun and interesting, and not killing bees is a challenge (which is why we've converted our Langstroth hives to top-bar hives, so it's actually feasible to not kill any bees, but it still requires care and attention). When we eventually take up larger animals, I expect much of the same.
I know people making 100k annually in side income from farming microgreens alone in a very small area. This entire thread is full of weird gatekeepy false information.
There’s a lot of interesting and profitable niches that can be done in a small scale such as microgreens, certain species of mushroom, certain varieties of pepper, etc.
This will entirely depend on local market conditions and suchlike, of course.
I read "Have taken up farming" as "I now make a living from farming and nothing else". Maybe that was wrong of me to assume that but I was also thinking that's what the parent comment was referring to as well.
My Thai girlfriend enjoys her farm, spends a couple of hours a day to work on it.
Of course, it's not our primary source of income, as that is my work as software engineer. For her it's a nice hobby.
I don't think you'd need a degree anyhow. Plenty of stuff can be learned online these days. And you don't need a lot of equipment either, if it's just to take care of yourself or your family. Depending on your community, you might also be able to rent some equipment if you need it at times (my girlfriend rents some equipment, tractor or some such with a driver, to cut the rice, about 2 times a year, as do most people in our village).
If you have a bit of a garden, can easily start as a hobby, I think.
You don't need a degree, but if you want to make a good living while farming you need to compete with people who have both a degree and millions in capital invested.
Farmers can make a lot of money, or at least somebody does. A single family Saskatchewan dryland wheat farm is typically worth $10M in land and equipment so either the farmer makes enough money to pay the interest on a multi-million dollar bank loan or enough money so that continuing to farm is preferable to retiring and living on the interest.
The problem is of course the variability due to weather and wild swings in commodity prices. A farm can produce a high six figure income one year and lose six figures the next.
But as you noted, if you're not looking to pull six figures per year from your farm, then it does become quite a bit simpler.
In the UK with arable you can potentially make money (although probably not), and it isn't a crazy amount of work. You plant crops in the autumn, spray them a couple of times, then it's too wet to get into the field and do anything during the winter even if something goes wrong. Only really busy time is a couple of weeks in the summer for harvest.
On the other hand, livestock farming is incredibly hard work (cows need to be milked 365 days a year) and you more or less always lose money.
Cows are easy if you raise them for meat.
True, but you can't really just go on holiday for a week if you have any kind of animals, whereas with arable there are times of the year when you can
Sure you can! Leave them enough hay and make sure the water's flowing.
There are no slugs nor stink bugs in the UK? These are main topic of discussion in any gardening community in Europe throughout growing season. You can't just spray them away.
I'm not actually a farmer I just grew up in the countryside, so I'm not sure, but I think with row crops slugs are less of an issue than vegetables, and they do use slug pellets if necessary.
Pests, bad weather etc. are definitely issues even with modern farming techniques, so in a good year you make a bit of money but in a bad year you can lose most of the crop
I read someone who retires and "takes up farming" as retiring to a house in a rural location and maintaining a garden and maybe some small quantities of livestock.
IE someone who is not depending on the "farm" to be a commercially successful operation or is even attempting to run it as a profitable business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_farm
Hmm, why?
Because there's huge benefits to having a Schedule F on your federal tax return.
You also can get exemptions on your property taxes in many states for the land under agriculture.
You could end up:
30 years ago this garden was the only thing that helped my family and millions other people survive when USSR crashed. 600 square meters planted mostly with potatoes provide enough food for family to survive winter and next summer and even sell something. And it's not that hard work, because people usually had their main work for some tiny money and maintained garden before and after work.
I think that everyone should own some land to feed himself in the event of economy fallout.
That's how I read it. Farming doesn't have to mean planting thousands of acres of soybeans and corn and hundreds of head of cattle.
A large garden, some chickens, and perhaps a few goats are more than enough to keep a hobbyist tinkering all day, and is still what I'd call 'farming', though YMMV.
Yep, it's insanely easy and cheap to sustain a family if you have land, a bit of time and two brain cells, but it's insanely hard and expensive to run a successful modern large scale farm
Aka what vets call "Noah's Ark farms"
Because they have two of every animal, but an uneconomically small herd.
It's the two extremes of work. One is hard physical work directly associated with producing the things you need to stay alive, the other is purely intellectual work which is 20 levels of abstraction away from your necessities.
It depends on the scale, I know 80+ years old people living in the countryside, still splitting their own wood, growing their own garden/orchard, manually removing potatoe bugs from their decently sized potatoe field, cutting grass with a scythe, taking care of their chickens/goats/sheeps... they're 100% self sustained and use tools from the 19th century they inherited from their parents. They're in better physical and mental shape than most code monkeys I know while being 50+ years older
survivorship bias says hi
I got a whole village of 300 survivors for you
That's still survivorship bias. Figure out how those 300 survived and why an exponentially larger number of people didn't and you might have a solution for all the people who want to get into farming.
There are many reasons why people quit commercial farming, none of them apply to personal farms, and you seem to not consider what people lost to become urbanites
I do too, and not a single one of them is happy about it. Every person I talked to, starting from my grandparents, wants to move to a city where heating etc is taken care of for you, but in their age it's easier to continue doing what they've always been doing instead of enduring massive changes like that.
At least they grew in nature, mostly free of obesity and other modern diseases, the grass is always greener... I'll take that over breathing tire/brake dust and sitting 10 hours a day in front of a glass rectangle
I've met an 80+ year old farmer who looks old and frail but raises calves and keeps 80 hives, and he moves those fully loaded hive boxes like it's nothing. It's rather surprising the first time you see it.
With all this tech youd imagine it should have become easier to self sustain.
There’s a lot of interesting methods you can combine with tech stuff to do things like aeroponic towers, composting, mycology, etc.
For example: a “enclosed” mushroom growing op (a few sheds or cabins) can be made incredibly efficient using various sensors, automation solutions, and environmental controls to maintain the optimal growing environment. It can be as complex or as simple as you want.
I am sure there are. I was quite into aquaponics for a while as well.
I just wish these things were more common place. All these technological advances...it should be easy option for people to live in communities where they can do few hours of work a day and live simply. Yet this is somehow a complete luxury!
Instead we need cars, roads, computers, phones, to work 8-10 hours a day just to provide ourselves with shelter food and clothing.
Maybe. But when I think "tech" the first thing that comes to mind isn't "sustainability". The first things that come to my mind are "cost, maintenance, consumption and waste".
Traditional farming has an obscene amount of waste.
Corn or dairy cattle, absolutely. Oranges for concentrate, sure. Even cabbages for transport, right.
But there are other things there's demand for, or demand can even be created for, that do not have such vast efficient scales. Hand-reared escargot, or spinach grown within resonance of a woodpecker pecking at dawn, just two examples.
Please tell me this is a real thing freaks overpay for…
It’s just a marketing spin away from absolutely being a thing people overpay for.
Hand-reared escargot sounds fun. I bet you don't need much to do that. They're yummy, and any surplus can be sold at a farmer's market.
There's also the old joke about the farmer who wins the lottery. "I'm going to keep farming. And when the money runs out I'll find another way to keep farming."
I almost experienced this for real, when I was a kid I was working picking grapes in a vineyard and it was a terribly maintained one, you had to bend over and kneel etc. At the time the highest jackpot in history came up in my country, something like €50M
At some point the owner told us "I'm sorry guys, we'll fix this field. If I win the lottery, I'm gonna fix all of this, and I'm gonna hire a bunch of hot brazilian dancers to entertain us while we work".
It didn't even occur to him that he could stop doing it.
One lesson from farming and waterwork that I've tried to inculcate in myself is continual incremental improvement because nothing stays perfect.
In farming, something is always broken or less than it should be. But there is literally not enough time in the day (or money) to fix and maintain everything perfectly. So you do the best you can.
Similarly, in waterwork, the ocean beats the hell out of everything. Docks, boats, houses, machinery, etc. And so why fix that solid but beat-up dock, if there's a chance this year brings the hurricane that rips it away? Functionality is more important than form.
Q: What's the best way to become a millionaire?
A: Be a billionaire and then start farming.
Sounds like you don’t know how to farm romantically.
Do you swear at the crops in french ?
Pourquois pas?
I’ve done both and I’d prefer farming
I was a staff architect at a public company and started a trash cooperative this year
I 1000% prefer making my neighbors better off than some idiot CEO and all the assholes on the board and investors
I would like to learn more about the trash cooperative.
I’ve had a few ideas in the direction of collecting certain types of trash to recycle (eg: food waste, garden waste, paper/cardboard) due to a personal interest in composting and related topics.
There’s certain stuff though that I have no idea how to recycle (yet). Would one negotiate with a larger waste management company for these items? Or simply offer it as a way for neighbours to reduce their trash collection bills?
Seegull.org
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I’m a programmer with a degree in Agricultural Science so my opinion is oddly relevant to this subject. Please shut up and stop shitting on people’s dreams. Not everything is about profit and scaling. Anyone can and should learn to farm regardless of their background or education.
Your degree has nothing at all to do with your comment, and doesn't justify its rude tone.
I see this kind of comment every time someone decides to take a different path. Pessimistic sounds smart I guess. Well, you are wrong. I have done it myself, started a farm on a whim a couple years back, and did just fine! And no I don't know what hard work you're talking about, I'm much healthier than I was sitting at a desk all day long.
Where in the world are you?
Every time this topic comes up a rhyme of your comment bubbles to the top and speaking from my own experience growing up in a winery. I can say: yes, it's hard, but no, it's not impossible to take up later in life. Stop assuming he just threw away his notebook and bought a tractor and stop spreading coffee table knowledge. Let people discover things for themselves, or even better, try finding things out for yourself. Because maybe, just maybe, you might discover that our differences are what make us unique and capable of achieving things in our own ways. There is no best practice for everything or everyone.
This needs to be the top reply. I know many people who have taken up homesteading while also keeping a foot in tech. They want to grow their own veggies and fruit, raise their own chickens, etc. They want to be closer to nature. And by and large they succeed.
If it’s commercial farming, yea it’s not fun. Exposure to many chemicals/pesticides/herbicides. Animal cruelty on a daily basis — those poor chickens and cows stuffed into tight spaces.
But if it’s for sustaining yourself, it’s not so bad.
Personally, the only “farming” I would pivot into is vertical farming. The idea of turning what would normally be a massive operation out in the country into a self sustainable, climate controlled operation in an urban environment is fascinating to me.
Optimize crops for taste rather than pest or weather resistance. Combine it with the fact that transportation can be reduced significantly; and it’s a recipe for a circular and self sustainable ecosystem.
You are thinking of big ag doing stuff like corn and beans with a combine. Farming can be as big or small as you want it to be. You can be a farmer on 1 acre of land. This is not a good take.
That's one type of farm. Depending on someone's financial situation and expectations, there are certainly other types. Taking up farming does not necessarily suggest that you're going to compete in the highly competitive world of agribusiness. I personally know a smaller-scale farmer who has a biodynamic farm and provides a high quality of life for his family. He has not invested millions in equipment to make this happen (not even close), but he certainly works hard. There's no debating that.
Speaking personally, being that most of my work is "virtual", I take up as much physical work as I can, and even create some out of curiosity.
I miss the physical world and being able to touch and understand mechanical objects. In time I have become a decent bike mechanic and I can do some plumbing and electrical work.
This is just to say that some of us end up craving contact with the physical world more, not less.
I have done the farm thing for a while (gf to that time had a family farm). While manual labor can be rewarding, I have to say I was often bored out of my mind. And I usually never get bored.
It's likely more of a goatops reaction.
https://www.goatops.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336880 (255 points on March 4, 2021 | 80 comments )
Funny how nobody ever says the same about software, which underpins the entire modern economy and has the power to irreversibly change the lives of billions.
What's the definition distribution of "farming"?
My bias is not to go directly to factory farming or industrial agriculture, which sound depressing. I'd rather a smart and lazy approach, helping the land recover to a point and then stopping succession, as has been done with fire in the PNW mountain meadows for berry crops. I'm not under the illusion that the land-management practices of the Nisqually or Puyallup, say, didn't involve consistent work, just a different sort of work, one more within individual and small-group control.
If petroleum-fueled agriculture is "necessary", it's a mess we've gotten ourselves into.
I agree, and I say the very same thing about software engineering. Yet there are plenty of managers who hire unqualified people coming from a 6 week coding bootcamp into teams with highly complex requirements and very skilled, experienced devs. So from that perspective, one would propably think that a 6-week farming bootcamp also gotto be enough :)
Someone could be going into farming for a low cost independent lifestyle, not necessarily as a profit maximization venture.
That's the same line of advice I give in most disciplines:
In some ways it ties into the "big fish in a small pond" theory of life. People who take that sort of advice have easy, stable lives. I'll keep giving it. Likewise, most people probably shouldn't jump into farming unprepared.
That said, life is short, and a year is a long time. If you can stomach the downside risk (losing every dime you poured into farming, having to work hard at it), by all means just jump in. There are vibrant communities willing to teach you everything you need to know, and you'll learn faster working on real problems you're personally experiencing than rote memorizing the tasks a seasoned master tells you to do.
If you want to mitigate some of the risks, perhaps start with something small enough you could manage it without millions in equipment (high-margin products like mushrooms and arugula -- and if you go with those, focus on distribution as a primary concern).
Are you Jeremy Clarkson in secret :P.
To be fair, most devs leaving the software industry won't have half the type of problems that actual farmers have - they have money, so they don't have the same pressures and they are typically doing some kind of boutique product.
I would love to "farm", but only as a retirement "job", and only with specific products.
When I started to study English many years ago, my mom gave me a book series titled America Today or something like that. The book was life changing as it made learning English so much easier than the Chinese way at that time and it taught me a lot about the US. The book 3 devoted many chapters to a day in someone's life, one of which is A Day in the Life of a Farmer. At that time, the US was the beacon of the modern civilization to Chinese people, a superpower that was far ahead of everything we did. And despite that the work of a farmer was still tough. They still needed to get up at 4:00am or early to take care of their livestocks. They still had to take care of their crops before the sun fully rose. They still had to handle many issues about their land, their equipment, and their business. They still had to do tons of intense manual labor. Despite all the toughness, though, the chapter also conveyed the idea that farming can be gratifying and fulfilling. I certainly appreciate this kind of optimism and appreciation, and the life an American farmer has a lasting impression until this day.
Not all farming is large scale.
A lot of actually viable commercial farms where I live are smaller than many hobby farms in the US, for a start.
What a lot of people mean when they say they are quitting to take up farming is pretty much hobby farming - where you may break even or turn a miniscule profit, but the main “goal” is to simply become a bit more self sufficient and do it for some sense of enjoyment.
The interesting thing is some small “hobby farms” are effectively experiments in permaculture or other forms of regenerative “living” that can be extremely cost efficient or even profitable.
Not everyone is taking on farming as an alternative line of work.
I know a dev who's stopped working in his 40s (made huge money by being in the right startup at the right moment) and took up on farming, but not as a mean to survive rather than "fun".
He even ended up having quite some profit after few years by focusing on exotic edibles for gourmet restaurants, but obviously he doesn't make anywhere near the money he did as a developer, but he does love his life.
I can't lie, I aspire to do kinda the same and pick up on farming, but just for myself and family. The food industry is beyond disgusting and you just can't trust what you're eating, no matter how deep your wallet it.
Yes, if you want to subscribe to the stereotypical unsustainable practice of running a mega farm. There is plenty of opportunities for farming on a small scale and selling your products locally or online.
Homesteading is more like hobby farming, and for some it's a retirement plan.
Are we talking industrial scale? Because not every farming venture needs to reach that, and most smaller farmers don't have "college degress and millions in equipment".
And you can pick up a lot in a couple of years, I've had friends who made the switch (and extended family who worked on farming).
Not in the US though, but judging from the decent sized subculture of "living off the grid" (or close), it's probably even easier there.
gate·keep·ing /ˈɡātˌkēpiNG/ noun 1. the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.
Running an industrial farm that makes money efficiently is different than living on a plot of land with chickens and cows, giving you a cheap lifestyle.
If you want to make a solid living farming, then sure. However, hobby farms that break even or even lose money also exist and are probably the majority by sheer number. "Farming" can be as big or as small as you want it to be.
Distant family member of mine started a hobby farm in retirement and lived on it for probably 30 years until his death. He lived off his pension and savings, not his crops.
To be fair, I suspect they meant it in a more idiomatic sense. Not that they literally went farming. Sort of like when one says "water under the bridge" they aren't commenting on bridges, nor water.
What you describe is how corporate farming is done in the United States. There are millions of people in Mexico, for example, who are farming, and they do not have college degrees or millions in equipment. They also work sunup to sundown, every day, with no vacations. "Right to repair" and John Deere are alien concepts to many of them.
I'm a little bit in touch with this particular demographic, and from what I've seen this has nothing to do with romanticism, and instead everything to do with a profound mistrust in technological civilization's ability to feed everyone into the near term future. Much closer to some sort of extreme insurance policy than anything else. There are systemic economic problems that can't be hand-waved away at this point.
Interesting side topic: did you know that while John Deere's top of the line combine is well over $1 million retail (and of course everyone else's models are similarly priced), that a model 42 combine from the 1960s will still go for under $1000 at auction, even as recently as last October, and is more than sufficient to harvest oh, probably even up to 50 acres over a few days? If one sells wheat or oats or whatever, there's no way to compete at market but if one only wants enough wheat to feed themselves for the coming year (and not have to buy seed again next), it's some absurdly small acreage. You might need like a fifth of an acre. There's still plenty of hard work, but mechanization solved some of the worst parts of that before we were even born.
Everyone thinks they're a born farmer until their first horn worm.
"I love tomatoes! I'm going to grow my own!"
wow what a coincidence so do these little baby moths
Don't get me wrong, growing your own food is neat, but you're going to trade the money you'd spend on veggies for time and effort trying to keep even a small back porch of plants alive. You have to be fastidious about everything from soil maintenance/security (from pests) to pesticide application.
Sorry but this is not the case everywhere. Some countries subsidise their farmers because they correctly determine that this type of industrial farming you describe is terrible for the environment.
I think this is a negative approach. This is an open source developer who donated his time and energy over years for practically free. The reason he is quitting open source development in favor of farming is because farming is a more rewarding experience.
The number one killer of open source projects is funding. It is demoralizing to spend years on something that isn't going to really put food on the table, and we do not live in a society that allows us to fully chase our hobbies and passions with complete abandon to that fact.
This is a terrible, terrible misconception about what constitutes a farm and farming!
Yes you can 'farm' on an industrial scale, or you can 'farm' on your parking strip. You're right when it comes to the former, and couldn't be more wrong when it comes to the latter.