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We did this. My wife has a masters in microbio, and I worked at IBM on their C++ and for Fortran compilers for about 8 years (yay std::atomics). I still do remo

by clord 9y ago

We did this. My wife has a masters in microbio, and I worked at IBM on their C++ and for Fortran compilers for about 8 years (yay std::atomics). I still do remote contract work to help pay for upgrades to the farm. Would be nice to get one of my side-projects finished and start pumping out some income streams, but it's not a big rush anymore. I have a point of sale system built with React and Haskell that integrates with big payment processors, etc. that I sell to local businesses. Maybe one day i'll productize it and sell it as a package, but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress? Why'd I switch to rural life? Quality of life. When we had kids and got a glimpse of what life would be like with daycare, two people commuting, etc, we got scared and made a plan. It's been 5 or 6 years and still enjoying selling expensive pasture fed eggs etc. I like working from home and having no childcare expenses. Everyone is happy and healthy and we have time to raise our kids. I remember the limp office parties when we reached GA on some new release, and we'd eat cheap cake. Then I think of how we practically dance and shout at the sky in joy when we all finish digging up all the potatoes. The comparison is stark. Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective.

dejv 9y ago
Yeah, I spend each winter contracting for funded startups and the vision of new tractor implement or some new gizmo makes it easier to work on the stuff. I guess the big part of better lifestyle is just giving up on ambitions. You know that you are not building next billion dollar company and you also know that you are not going to buy new BMW every year anyway so there is no pressure in keeping with Jones.
- monaghanboy 9y ago
  You don't actually have to become a farmer to adopt the latter viewpoint and reap all the resulting life benefits.
  - wybiral 9y ago
    True. I live a minimalist lifestyle by design but I don't live on a farm or anything. Unless your main source of pleasure is having the nicest car, newest gadgets, various status symbols, etc, then you can trade your labor hours towards those things in for more time doing what you really enjoy.
vogt 9y ago
Here's a question about adjustment to rural life, because I have been daydreaming about this for a long time: Are you now isolated from existing friends and family? That's really my one big worry. I'm super burned out on software, and currently facing all the same concerns it sounds like you did before, it just frightens me the idea of being further removed (geographically) from the few family and friends we have left.
- volkk 9y ago
  my guess is that it depends on what kind of person you are and how good you are about keeping in touch. your mileage will vary. if you live like you essentially died instead of simply moved, then you'll have no friends. but if you invite friends over and actually make it a priority to meet up at least once every X weeks/months, then i'm sure you'll be fine
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- rhn_mk1 9y ago
  Maybe I can shine some light on the adjustment, as I have quite some experience with moving and living in small towns. I did lose a great many friends whenever I moved from one place to another. Usually meeting up once-twice a month keeps the thread alive, but closest people will stay in touch online probably forever. That being said, if you put some work into it, you will find new friends. This requires a mindset of getting involved in any open event that you're even slightly interested in. The bigger the town, the easier it seems to come across those. In the other hand, talking to neighbors is easier when there's no one else around. I have an impression this creates a tighter knit community, where you can find new long-term friends. This would probably happen in my case if I didn't relocate again :)
  - vogt 9y ago
    Thanks, that's interesting. I have moved around a lot, so I'm used to adjustments there, I'm just concerned with moving to a small rural town here in Texas and being 3-4 hours away from the few friends family we do have left.
Ascetik 9y ago
>Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective. Amen, brother.
jacquesm 9y ago
> Why take on the stress? As a precaution against hitting a bad spell. Money in the bank is an excellent anti-dote against all kinds of mishaps.
- clord 9y ago
  Many things wrong with this: 1. Is money really a precaution? Why is money in the bank guaranteed safety from a bad spell? Can't the government take everything but 100k if they need to? 2. Why isn't having food production on site considered guaranteed safety against a bad spell? Between our savings and the food production on site we could survive in place for a decade. When we lived in a place-in-the-city working two jobs with all of our assets in a (few) mortgages we were two or three paycheques (or a bad tenant) away from losing everything. The bank had a lien on all of our assets, even though we were nominally a 1%er. 3. What can money really fix in a bad-spell? I mean, can you buy skills? Can you buy relationships? Those things have to be made. Nevermind that if the bad spell is actually bad for more than just you, money might not have the same value as it does. But I will grant that money does have a lot of benefits too, which is why: 4. I have money in the bank... I mean, why are they mutually exclusive for you?
  - _Tev 9y ago
    Yes, you are looking at it from multiple wrong angles. 1. Yes, it is. Government will not take the money (and I don't buy any "omg inflation" arguments, since last crisis has actually in effect reduced inflation everywhere) and even if it does - if you cannot live through bad spell on 100k you have a problem. 2. Sounds like bad reserve managment i.e. missing "money in the bank". I haven't heard anyone recommending to go for mortgage with less than 6months reserve. And you had multiple mortgages with "two or three paycheques" in reserve? Seriously? 3. Money can almost always provide time (to heal, get a job, opportunity to choose less well paid job with more / flexible free time etc.), which can (for most people) be converted to relationships / skills. If you cannot make friends / learn new things given enough time, once again you have a problem. 4. > but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress? Does not sound like you have money in the bank. Especially considering the tiny reserve (two or three paychecks is really ridiculously small, especially when you have multiple mortgages).
zokier 9y ago
> Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective Hellscape, yes, but that hellscape also has funded your farm and that is something that I'd keep in mind. It is pretty big luxury to be able to (financially) go and live on the countryside, doing farming more as a lifestyle rather than means to livelihood.
- figurehe4d 9y ago
  True, and it's also not for everyone. Maybe things will change when I'm older but speaking from my perspective, I was born and raised in a dense suburb, moved to the countryside because my folks grew up in the country and wanted to leave the dense suburb/corporate dystopia or what have you. Its just not for me, I'm a city boy. I like being close to other people. I feel comfortable with busy areas (like a downtown district or a beach). My teenage years spent on a 1.5 acre lot was filled with lots of manual labor (help build a retaining wall, care for horses and other livestock) so in my mind I see living in a metropolitan area as an easier life. That's not to say I don't appreciate the outdoors and nature, I do immensely. I just think the whole 'gotta get away from it all' attitude is interesting because it's the exact opposite for me, what I guess could be described as the 'feeling of missing out'.
  - andrewjl 9y ago
    I grew up in a dense city, and feel the same way. Currently work in a suburb and live in SF, and I especially enjoy the close proximity to lots of people. That said it is nice to spend some time outdoors and walk the soil barefoot! It's a personal choice, do what works for you.
- cardamomo 9y ago
  I think this is a hugely important point. The article highlights some of the systematic hurdles facing would-be farmers, including the cost of land and student loan payments. However, it also highlights some possible solutions. This is a throwaway point in the article, but I think it's key to imagining a food system and economy that can support this kind of farm: > Young farmers are also creating their own “food hubs,” allowing them to store, process and market food collectively, and supply grocery and restaurant chains at a price competitive with national suppliers. Sure, monetary wealth from corporate desk jobs may be necessary to fund farms right now, but small farmers have a lot more power to shape our food system when they band together. Agricultural cooperatives have a long history in the United States [0] and may have a role to play in keeping the new crop of small farmers in business. [0] http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/whatisacoop/History/#Development_in_the_United_States http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/whatisacoop/History/#Development_in...
rifung 9y ago
> Maybe one day i'll productize it and sell it as a package, but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress? I really admire that you made something "useful" with Haskell! When you say you're making enough does that include savings for retirement? That's my biggest worry as someone who just started saving for retirement (I'm 27).
- why15characters 9y ago
  >I really admire that you made something "useful" with Haskell! Why? What did you think everyone did with it? I'd be more impressed is someone ever makes something useful in PHP.
  - hilbertseries 9y ago
    Yes, because wordpress is useless and snap is a hugely popular web framework.
    - why15characters 9y ago
      I would say harmful, not just useless. What does popularity have to do with anything? The question was useful, not popular.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rimliu 9y ago
> Then I think of how we practically dance and shout at the > sky in joy when we all finish digging up all the potatoes. I grew up on the small farm. Got to deal with pigs, cows, patatoes and hay. Do not miss it at all. What's more I used to want to have a houe in the countryside. Then somehow that desire completely wanished.
- mistermann 9y ago
  It may return with time.
JPKab 9y ago
I grew up in a rural community where farming was basically the only industry. It's easy to talk about how awesome it is when you basically are selling insanely overpriced boutique goods (organic, free-range, etc) to yuppies who are willing to pay triple for their calories. Once enough people do this, the prices fall and you're just another farmer, scraping by. I grew up working on farms. It's not romantic to me in any way. Being outside is nice, but there's a reason the kids doing this grew up in suburbs and cities: they have no idea what agriculture really involves when you have to achieve economies of scale to make it remotely profitable.
- andyisageek 9y ago
  I also grew up on a farm... in Maine. It did instill a work ethic that I find it difficult to teach to my own children. But I always joke with people and say it is a great place to visit and a great place to be from. Not so much a great place to actually be.
  - kimburgess 9y ago
    > It is a great place to visit and a great place to be from. Not so much a great place to actually be. I'll definitely echo this. I grew up on a farm / nature refuge in Australia. It's beautiful to go back to, but I could not live there again. My family hovers around the poverty line, work long, hard hours, and are completely at the mercy of the climate and other difficult to control external factors for their lively hood. Combine this with the isolation, poor (or non-existent) community and education resources, complete void of cultural events and niche activities that require higher population densities. It's nowhere near as idyllic as most people make out. I now live inner city. When it's nice weather I can drive an hour, go hiking, rock climbing or exploring. During day-to-day life I have everything I need within walking distance. I can live spontaneously. Myself and my partner are talking about children and I'm looking forward to raising them in a city where they can access whatever interests they like. Once thing I will agree on though is: modern suburban life is a dystopic hellscape. It literally combines the worst of both lifestyles.
    - 9y ago
swlkr 9y ago
This. I agree 100% that modern life is not as great as everyone thinks it is. Just getting outside and hiking was enough to convince me.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Hiking and camping can be part of a modern life. It is for me.
unabridged 9y ago
I would imagine rural high school would be a hellscape of a different sort.
- ehnto 9y ago
  I look back at it pretty fondly. School in the country was basically all of the people from the town meeting up every day to joke around and learn stuff. We had excellent facilities, it always felt safe, and after school we roamed the town and bits of nature on our bicycles. I had like 6 tree houses I could visit, jump around tall hay bail forts, we even once dug a bunker on someones paddock next to the cemetery. The beach was no more than four streets away no matter where you were in the town, and you always had friends and family around the corner. I am glad I left at 17, because once you have gone through school ambition takes you out into the greater world to explore. But I would never want to have grown up in the city. Most of the benefits of the city are really only enjoyed once you are an adult anyway. Perhaps rural towns are different now, I haven't been back since I left.
  - PoachedSausage 9y ago
    I live in the city but grew up in the country too (minus the beach, although I have lived near once), I would definitely want that for my kids, the city isn't kid friendly. The problem is, as an adult, you don't want to leave the city with all it's cultural charms.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      >cultural charms. I believe you misspelled "opportunities for acquiring wealth" ;)
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    I went to a rural high school from 2008-2012. It was hideously underfunded, and if it wasn't for enormous effort from underpaid, overworked teachers putting their sweat, blood, and heart into everything they did, nobody would have learned anything. The school struggled to heat the building in the winter, which seems okay except this far north, "winter" is really 90% of the school year. If you were even slightly different from the "norm" normal school days were hell. Out of 150 students who entered my year as freshman, 95 walked during graduation. The fact that there are so few people means it's incredibly hard to share interests, and because you live in a rural shithole, the only interests people have are: drinking, drugs, driving around in the mud, and making fun of "different" people. While I appreciate "small towns" allow you to "know everybody", that has it's own downside in the complete inability to have any privacy. I also hate thinking about all the possible opportunities I missed from growing up in a poor rural environment.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> I like working from home and having no childcare expenses. I worry that with a young child, we'd still have childcare expenses - except that instead of paying with money, we'd be paying with our time. My wife and I discovered, like many parents probably do, that raising a child is fucking hard. We love her, we wouldn't trade her for the world, and it's fun, but it's the kind of fun you have while camping, or hiking, or sparring. It's fun, but it's exhausting, and we would both be complete wrecks if we had to do it full-time.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  You’re doing a specific high intensity form of childcare. There are lower intensity approaches. When full time child care was the norm, parents didn’t fuss over their kids. “Is she dying or soaking in shit/piss? Ok, then she’s fine for an hour”
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    But even with a minimal approach, I still wouldn't be able to work from home with any level of effectiveness, because at some point she would be soaked in shit and piss, or would need something, or would be about to injure herself. Kids need some minimal amount of supervision below a certain age.
    - ianai 9y ago
      None of this would really be a problem if the economic system actually worked. If people actually made enough to afford FT care of their children and home stay for the very early years then the economy would seriously employ many more people. But instead people have to essentially win the economic lottery.
      - pavel_lishin 9y ago
        I am very much in favor of large, generous subsidies to new parents. For many people, having a child effectively means their ejection from the workforce for a decade.
graycat 9y ago
My FiL was a farmer. He farmed 88 acres in NE Indiana. He raised chickens, eventually 40,000 at a time. The work was hard beyond belief. To make the farm pay, he bought used farm equipment from farmers who failed, built his own buildings, mixed his own feed, and did well in marketing to find buyers. He used USDA Extension advice and research on chicken breeding, nutrition, and disease control. When he started, progress in these three made chicken raising suddenly a hot field. But eventually the business mostly moved to the US South with warmer winters and cheaper labor. He then was able to get a good job in the local county seat: He became the head of the local Rural Electric Membership Cooperative (REMC). In part he got that job because he was respected in the community from his participation in the church, the Bank BoD, Lions, the school board, etc. For the land, he leased that year by year to someone with good, large scale equipment farming 1000 or so leased acres. At one time, 90+% of the US population lived on farms. Now it's 10-%. Farmer productivity has made fantastic gains. So, now, it's tough to make much money farming. One approach is specialized products for high end markets, maybe pheasants, ducks, goat cheese, mushrooms, etc. There's a lot nice about farm living, but life can be nearly as nice in rural areas still near a town and with work not in farming. A good Internet connection can eliminate some of the effects of a lot of geographic distances.
golemotron 9y ago
> but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress? What is the retirement plan for a farmer?
- analog31 9y ago
  Sell the farm. I have friends in farming. The ones who own farms will do pretty well in retirement. The ones who farm rented land have to combine farming with any other source of income that they can scrape up. One of them farms, drives trucks, and is a moderately successful bandleader. His dad is in his 80s, and still works on the farm.
cvsh 9y ago
So you started in 2011-2012. What happens when the next downturn comes and people stop buying "expensive pasture fed eggs etc"? This is my fear about doing something like this. Boutique farming seems like it would similar to the oil industry in how especially sensitive it is to economic cyclicality. Having spent the past 5+ years farming surely complicates the process of getting a job in tech during a contraction.
- clord 9y ago
  Not worried about it. First, we're not really "boutique". We don't dress anything up. It's all used machines and old bags. We charge more because that's our real cost plus a small profit... I figure thing happening in food right now is not so much a trend. Food prices are artificially low by historical measures. As the subsidies granted by cheap oil-based fertilizers goes away and diesel-powered harvesting starts to be less cost-competitive, the prices will go back to historical norms. People want the industrial system to stop cutting the corners they have been (believe me they tell us) so we make profit from those who are ahead of the curve. The way I look at it: normal food has been getting more expensive over the past 100 years and is now considered "boutique" by some. There has been a fad in cheap food that is starting to wind up as it is no longer possible to maintain. It's time to get in front of that before your food costs rise. More importantly it's time to start teaching kids how to do it too as they're going to really be in the post-climate-change world where viable solar-powered food is the most valuable thing to have a startup in.
dailyvijeos 9y ago
You can say that again. Cities are, for the most part, where humanity (i.e., compassion and community) goes to die. I’m seriously contemplating migrating someplace where people aren’t 80% deplorable jerks, like suburban Oregon or New Mexico. Plus, all of the learned helplessness and ostensibly “incapable,” self-absorbed bullshit job people whom are disconnected from anything but a narrow specialty of bullshit... if food prices spiked for any reason, they’re boned.
- devdas 9y ago
  Oddly enough, cities are where I have found actual compassion andd community. Small towns and villages are stratified horrors, where being different from their norm is penalised.
iancmceachern 9y ago
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by clord 9y ago

dejv 9y ago

Yeah, I spend each winter contracting for funded startups and the vision of new tractor implement or some new gizmo makes it easier to work on the stuff. I guess the big part of better lifestyle is just giving up on ambitions. You know that you are not building next billion dollar company and you also know that you are not going to buy new BMW every year anyway so there is no pressure in keeping with Jones.

monaghanboy 9y ago
You don't actually have to become a farmer to adopt the latter viewpoint and reap all the resulting life benefits.
- wybiral 9y ago
  True. I live a minimalist lifestyle by design but I don't live on a farm or anything. Unless your main source of pleasure is having the nicest car, newest gadgets, various status symbols, etc, then you can trade your labor hours towards those things in for more time doing what you really enjoy.

vogt 9y ago

Here's a question about adjustment to rural life, because I have been daydreaming about this for a long time: Are you now isolated from existing friends and family? That's really my one big worry. I'm super burned out on software, and currently facing all the same concerns it sounds like you did before, it just frightens me the idea of being further removed (geographically) from the few family and friends we have left.

volkk 9y ago
my guess is that it depends on what kind of person you are and how good you are about keeping in touch. your mileage will vary. if you live like you essentially died instead of simply moved, then you'll have no friends. but if you invite friends over and actually make it a priority to meet up at least once every X weeks/months, then i'm sure you'll be fine
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
rhn_mk1 9y ago
Maybe I can shine some light on the adjustment, as I have quite some experience with moving and living in small towns. I did lose a great many friends whenever I moved from one place to another. Usually meeting up once-twice a month keeps the thread alive, but closest people will stay in touch online probably forever. That being said, if you put some work into it, you will find new friends. This requires a mindset of getting involved in any open event that you're even slightly interested in. The bigger the town, the easier it seems to come across those. In the other hand, talking to neighbors is easier when there's no one else around. I have an impression this creates a tighter knit community, where you can find new long-term friends. This would probably happen in my case if I didn't relocate again :)
- vogt 9y ago
  Thanks, that's interesting. I have moved around a lot, so I'm used to adjustments there, I'm just concerned with moving to a small rural town here in Texas and being 3-4 hours away from the few friends family we do have left.

Ascetik 9y ago

>Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective. Amen, brother.

jacquesm 9y ago

> Why take on the stress? As a precaution against hitting a bad spell. Money in the bank is an excellent anti-dote against all kinds of mishaps.

clord 9y ago
Many things wrong with this: 1. Is money really a precaution? Why is money in the bank guaranteed safety from a bad spell? Can't the government take everything but 100k if they need to? 2. Why isn't having food production on site considered guaranteed safety against a bad spell? Between our savings and the food production on site we could survive in place for a decade. When we lived in a place-in-the-city working two jobs with all of our assets in a (few) mortgages we were two or three paycheques (or a bad tenant) away from losing everything. The bank had a lien on all of our assets, even though we were nominally a 1%er. 3. What can money really fix in a bad-spell? I mean, can you buy skills? Can you buy relationships? Those things have to be made. Nevermind that if the bad spell is actually bad for more than just you, money might not have the same value as it does. But I will grant that money does have a lot of benefits too, which is why: 4. I have money in the bank... I mean, why are they mutually exclusive for you?
- _Tev 9y ago
  Yes, you are looking at it from multiple wrong angles. 1. Yes, it is. Government will not take the money (and I don't buy any "omg inflation" arguments, since last crisis has actually in effect reduced inflation everywhere) and even if it does - if you cannot live through bad spell on 100k you have a problem. 2. Sounds like bad reserve managment i.e. missing "money in the bank". I haven't heard anyone recommending to go for mortgage with less than 6months reserve. And you had multiple mortgages with "two or three paycheques" in reserve? Seriously? 3. Money can almost always provide time (to heal, get a job, opportunity to choose less well paid job with more / flexible free time etc.), which can (for most people) be converted to relationships / skills. If you cannot make friends / learn new things given enough time, once again you have a problem. 4. > but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress? Does not sound like you have money in the bank. Especially considering the tiny reserve (two or three paychecks is really ridiculously small, especially when you have multiple mortgages).

zokier 9y ago

> Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective Hellscape, yes, but that hellscape also has funded your farm and that is something that I'd keep in mind. It is pretty big luxury to be able to (financially) go and live on the countryside, doing farming more as a lifestyle rather than means to livelihood.

figurehe4d 9y ago
True, and it's also not for everyone. Maybe things will change when I'm older but speaking from my perspective, I was born and raised in a dense suburb, moved to the countryside because my folks grew up in the country and wanted to leave the dense suburb/corporate dystopia or what have you. Its just not for me, I'm a city boy. I like being close to other people. I feel comfortable with busy areas (like a downtown district or a beach). My teenage years spent on a 1.5 acre lot was filled with lots of manual labor (help build a retaining wall, care for horses and other livestock) so in my mind I see living in a metropolitan area as an easier life. That's not to say I don't appreciate the outdoors and nature, I do immensely. I just think the whole 'gotta get away from it all' attitude is interesting because it's the exact opposite for me, what I guess could be described as the 'feeling of missing out'.
- andrewjl 9y ago
  I grew up in a dense city, and feel the same way. Currently work in a suburb and live in SF, and I especially enjoy the close proximity to lots of people. That said it is nice to spend some time outdoors and walk the soil barefoot! It's a personal choice, do what works for you.
cardamomo 9y ago
I think this is a hugely important point. The article highlights some of the systematic hurdles facing would-be farmers, including the cost of land and student loan payments. However, it also highlights some possible solutions. This is a throwaway point in the article, but I think it's key to imagining a food system and economy that can support this kind of farm: > Young farmers are also creating their own “food hubs,” allowing them to store, process and market food collectively, and supply grocery and restaurant chains at a price competitive with national suppliers. Sure, monetary wealth from corporate desk jobs may be necessary to fund farms right now, but small farmers have a lot more power to shape our food system when they band together. Agricultural cooperatives have a long history in the United States [0] and may have a role to play in keeping the new crop of small farmers in business. [0] http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/whatisacoop/History/#Development_in_the_United_States http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/whatisacoop/History/#Development_in...

rifung 9y ago

> Maybe one day i'll productize it and sell it as a package, but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress? I really admire that you made something "useful" with Haskell! When you say you're making enough does that include savings for retirement? That's my biggest worry as someone who just started saving for retirement (I'm 27).

why15characters 9y ago
>I really admire that you made something "useful" with Haskell! Why? What did you think everyone did with it? I'd be more impressed is someone ever makes something useful in PHP.
- hilbertseries 9y ago
  Yes, because wordpress is useless and snap is a hugely popular web framework.
  - why15characters 9y ago
    I would say harmful, not just useless. What does popularity have to do with anything? The question was useful, not popular.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rimliu 9y ago

> Then I think of how we practically dance and shout at the > sky in joy when we all finish digging up all the potatoes. I grew up on the small farm. Got to deal with pigs, cows, patatoes and hay. Do not miss it at all. What's more I used to want to have a houe in the countryside. Then somehow that desire completely wanished.

mistermann 9y ago
It may return with time.

JPKab 9y ago

I grew up in a rural community where farming was basically the only industry. It's easy to talk about how awesome it is when you basically are selling insanely overpriced boutique goods (organic, free-range, etc) to yuppies who are willing to pay triple for their calories. Once enough people do this, the prices fall and you're just another farmer, scraping by. I grew up working on farms. It's not romantic to me in any way. Being outside is nice, but there's a reason the kids doing this grew up in suburbs and cities: they have no idea what agriculture really involves when you have to achieve economies of scale to make it remotely profitable.

andyisageek 9y ago
I also grew up on a farm... in Maine. It did instill a work ethic that I find it difficult to teach to my own children. But I always joke with people and say it is a great place to visit and a great place to be from. Not so much a great place to actually be.
- kimburgess 9y ago
  > It is a great place to visit and a great place to be from. Not so much a great place to actually be. I'll definitely echo this. I grew up on a farm / nature refuge in Australia. It's beautiful to go back to, but I could not live there again. My family hovers around the poverty line, work long, hard hours, and are completely at the mercy of the climate and other difficult to control external factors for their lively hood. Combine this with the isolation, poor (or non-existent) community and education resources, complete void of cultural events and niche activities that require higher population densities. It's nowhere near as idyllic as most people make out. I now live inner city. When it's nice weather I can drive an hour, go hiking, rock climbing or exploring. During day-to-day life I have everything I need within walking distance. I can live spontaneously. Myself and my partner are talking about children and I'm looking forward to raising them in a city where they can access whatever interests they like. Once thing I will agree on though is: modern suburban life is a dystopic hellscape. It literally combines the worst of both lifestyles.
  - 9y ago

swlkr 9y ago

This. I agree 100% that modern life is not as great as everyone thinks it is. Just getting outside and hiking was enough to convince me.

dwaltrip 9y ago
Hiking and camping can be part of a modern life. It is for me.

unabridged 9y ago

I would imagine rural high school would be a hellscape of a different sort.

ehnto 9y ago
I look back at it pretty fondly. School in the country was basically all of the people from the town meeting up every day to joke around and learn stuff. We had excellent facilities, it always felt safe, and after school we roamed the town and bits of nature on our bicycles. I had like 6 tree houses I could visit, jump around tall hay bail forts, we even once dug a bunker on someones paddock next to the cemetery. The beach was no more than four streets away no matter where you were in the town, and you always had friends and family around the corner. I am glad I left at 17, because once you have gone through school ambition takes you out into the greater world to explore. But I would never want to have grown up in the city. Most of the benefits of the city are really only enjoyed once you are an adult anyway. Perhaps rural towns are different now, I haven't been back since I left.
- PoachedSausage 9y ago
  I live in the city but grew up in the country too (minus the beach, although I have lived near once), I would definitely want that for my kids, the city isn't kid friendly. The problem is, as an adult, you don't want to leave the city with all it's cultural charms.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    >cultural charms. I believe you misspelled "opportunities for acquiring wealth" ;)
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  I went to a rural high school from 2008-2012. It was hideously underfunded, and if it wasn't for enormous effort from underpaid, overworked teachers putting their sweat, blood, and heart into everything they did, nobody would have learned anything. The school struggled to heat the building in the winter, which seems okay except this far north, "winter" is really 90% of the school year. If you were even slightly different from the "norm" normal school days were hell. Out of 150 students who entered my year as freshman, 95 walked during graduation. The fact that there are so few people means it's incredibly hard to share interests, and because you live in a rural shithole, the only interests people have are: drinking, drugs, driving around in the mud, and making fun of "different" people. While I appreciate "small towns" allow you to "know everybody", that has it's own downside in the complete inability to have any privacy. I also hate thinking about all the possible opportunities I missed from growing up in a poor rural environment.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

> I like working from home and having no childcare expenses. I worry that with a young child, we'd still have childcare expenses - except that instead of paying with money, we'd be paying with our time. My wife and I discovered, like many parents probably do, that raising a child is fucking hard. We love her, we wouldn't trade her for the world, and it's fun, but it's the kind of fun you have while camping, or hiking, or sparring. It's fun, but it's exhausting, and we would both be complete wrecks if we had to do it full-time.

deleted 9y ago
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erikpukinskis 9y ago
You’re doing a specific high intensity form of childcare. There are lower intensity approaches. When full time child care was the norm, parents didn’t fuss over their kids. “Is she dying or soaking in shit/piss? Ok, then she’s fine for an hour”
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  But even with a minimal approach, I still wouldn't be able to work from home with any level of effectiveness, because at some point she would be soaked in shit and piss, or would need something, or would be about to injure herself. Kids need some minimal amount of supervision below a certain age.
  - ianai 9y ago
    None of this would really be a problem if the economic system actually worked. If people actually made enough to afford FT care of their children and home stay for the very early years then the economy would seriously employ many more people. But instead people have to essentially win the economic lottery.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      I am very much in favor of large, generous subsidies to new parents. For many people, having a child effectively means their ejection from the workforce for a decade.

graycat 9y ago

My FiL was a farmer. He farmed 88 acres in NE Indiana. He raised chickens, eventually 40,000 at a time. The work was hard beyond belief. To make the farm pay, he bought used farm equipment from farmers who failed, built his own buildings, mixed his own feed, and did well in marketing to find buyers. He used USDA Extension advice and research on chicken breeding, nutrition, and disease control. When he started, progress in these three made chicken raising suddenly a hot field. But eventually the business mostly moved to the US South with warmer winters and cheaper labor. He then was able to get a good job in the local county seat: He became the head of the local Rural Electric Membership Cooperative (REMC). In part he got that job because he was respected in the community from his participation in the church, the Bank BoD, Lions, the school board, etc. For the land, he leased that year by year to someone with good, large scale equipment farming 1000 or so leased acres. At one time, 90+% of the US population lived on farms. Now it's 10-%. Farmer productivity has made fantastic gains. So, now, it's tough to make much money farming. One approach is specialized products for high end markets, maybe pheasants, ducks, goat cheese, mushrooms, etc. There's a lot nice about farm living, but life can be nearly as nice in rural areas still near a town and with work not in farming. A good Internet connection can eliminate some of the effects of a lot of geographic distances.

golemotron 9y ago

> but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress? What is the retirement plan for a farmer?

analog31 9y ago
Sell the farm. I have friends in farming. The ones who own farms will do pretty well in retirement. The ones who farm rented land have to combine farming with any other source of income that they can scrape up. One of them farms, drives trucks, and is a moderately successful bandleader. His dad is in his 80s, and still works on the farm.

cvsh 9y ago

So you started in 2011-2012. What happens when the next downturn comes and people stop buying "expensive pasture fed eggs etc"? This is my fear about doing something like this. Boutique farming seems like it would similar to the oil industry in how especially sensitive it is to economic cyclicality. Having spent the past 5+ years farming surely complicates the process of getting a job in tech during a contraction.

clord 9y ago
Not worried about it. First, we're not really "boutique". We don't dress anything up. It's all used machines and old bags. We charge more because that's our real cost plus a small profit... I figure thing happening in food right now is not so much a trend. Food prices are artificially low by historical measures. As the subsidies granted by cheap oil-based fertilizers goes away and diesel-powered harvesting starts to be less cost-competitive, the prices will go back to historical norms. People want the industrial system to stop cutting the corners they have been (believe me they tell us) so we make profit from those who are ahead of the curve. The way I look at it: normal food has been getting more expensive over the past 100 years and is now considered "boutique" by some. There has been a fad in cheap food that is starting to wind up as it is no longer possible to maintain. It's time to get in front of that before your food costs rise. More importantly it's time to start teaching kids how to do it too as they're going to really be in the post-climate-change world where viable solar-powered food is the most valuable thing to have a startup in.

dailyvijeos 9y ago

You can say that again. Cities are, for the most part, where humanity (i.e., compassion and community) goes to die. I’m seriously contemplating migrating someplace where people aren’t 80% deplorable jerks, like suburban Oregon or New Mexico. Plus, all of the learned helplessness and ostensibly “incapable,” self-absorbed bullshit job people whom are disconnected from anything but a narrow specialty of bullshit... if food prices spiked for any reason, they’re boned.

devdas 9y ago
Oddly enough, cities are where I have found actual compassion andd community. Small towns and villages are stratified horrors, where being different from their norm is penalised.

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