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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. F

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.

jfengel 2y ago
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."
- dreamcompiler 2y ago
  Q: What's the best way to become a millionaire? A: Be a billionaire and then start farming.
- riffraff 2y ago
  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.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    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.
tmountain 2y ago
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.
spiderfarmer 2y ago
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.
- Loughla 2y ago
  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.
  - mnmalst 2y ago
    What happened on those two days? Birth of his children? Probably a broken back or some other injury is more likely tho. :)
    - Loughla 2y ago
      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.
      - hammyhavoc 2y ago
        What a trooper. They don't make people like they used to.
        Kye 2y ago
        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.
trevyn 2y ago
Sounds like you don’t know how to farm romantically.
- worthless-trash 2y ago
  Do you swear at the crops in french ?
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    Pourquois pas?
miah_ 2y ago
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.
- igleria 2y ago
  I wanna be you! problem is probably 15 years or more until it's feasible to me due to current salary, savings and country.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Never give up - all three of salary, savings, and country can change dramatically for the better.
    - zubiaur 2y ago
      Start with country. The best tool against inequality is a suitcase.
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Agreed - the day I emigrated from the third world to Canada was the day my life hit the elbow of exponential growth.
BoredPositron 2y ago
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.
- driverdan 2y ago
  I didn't say it was impossible. I was saying that you need to understand the realities of something before dedicating significant resources to it. If you discover you love farming then by all means go for it.
- cryptonector 2y ago
  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.
deleted 2y ago
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giantg2 2y ago
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.
wsc981 2y ago
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.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  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.
  - ifwinterco 2y ago
    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.
    - rini17 2y ago
krmboya 2y ago
Someone could be going into farming for a low cost independent lifestyle, not necessarily as a profit maximization venture.
throwaway211 2y ago
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.
- nativeit 2y ago
  > …spinach grown within resonance of a woodpecker pecking at dawn, Please tell me this is a real thing freaks overpay for…
  - 0perator 2y ago
    It’s just a marketing spin away from absolutely being a thing people overpay for.
  - Kon-Peki 2y ago
    > Please tell me this is a real thing freaks overpay for With very few exceptions, hating your customers is not good for your business.
- cryptonector 2y ago
  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.
stetrain 2y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_farm
- vbezhenar 2y ago
  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.
- silisili 2y ago
  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.
- lm28469 2y ago
  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
- newzisforsukas 2y ago
  > In the U.S., a high proportion of farms might be classed as hobby farms. In 2007, over 40% of farms reported less than $2500 in income and over 10% of farms had less than 10 acres (4.0 hectares) of land Hmm, why?
  - debacle 2y ago
andoando 2y ago
With all this tech youd imagine it should have become easier to self sustain.
- chrsw 2y ago
  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".
  - debacle 2y ago
    Traditional farming has an obscene amount of waste.
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago
  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.
  - andoando 2y ago
    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.
latentcall 2y ago
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.
- chrsw 2y ago
  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.
- postexitus 2y ago
  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.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    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.
    - postexitus 2y ago
      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).
oopsallmagic 2y ago
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.
epolanski 2y ago
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.
destitude 2y ago
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.
astura 2y ago
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.
whalesalad 2y ago
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.
cocochanel 2y ago
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.
- hammyhavoc 2y ago
  Where in the world are you?
sva_ 2y ago
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.
gonzo41 2y ago
Are you Jeremy Clarkson in secret :P.
shagie 2y ago
It's likely more of a goatops reaction. https://www.goatops.com https://www.goatops.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336880 (255 points on March 4, 2021 | 80 comments )
thefz 2y ago
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.
23B1 2y ago
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.
citizen_friend 2y ago
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.
coldtea 2y ago
>Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. 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.
Kye 2y ago
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.
lm28469 2y ago
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. > Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. 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
- rini17 2y ago
  survivorship bias says hi
  - lm28469 2y ago
    I got a whole village of 300 survivors for you
    - Kye 2y ago
      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.
      - lm28469 2y ago
        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
- cryptonector 2y ago
  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.
hansvm 2y ago
That's the same line of advice I give in most disciplines: > Student: I've struggled with math in the past, what do I need to do to be ready for your class? > Me: Take the previous class first. You'll get easy A's in both, you'll actually understand the material when you need it, and there's no real downside since you have a minimum of 120 credits to fill to be able to graduate anyway. 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).
littlecranky67 2y ago
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 :)
connorgutman 2y ago
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.
- driverdan 2y ago
  That was my point. That they should learn about it before committing to it. I was in no way saying someone shouldn't do it if they discover it's something they enjoy.
- seneca 2y ago
  Your degree has nothing at all to do with your comment, and doesn't justify its rude tone.
  - connorgutman 2y ago
    My degree in AgSci has nothing to do with farming?
4n6556mn56nm 2y ago
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.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
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.
cryptonector 2y ago
Homesteading is more like hobby farming, and for some it's a retirement plan.
PuissantSheep 2y ago
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.
AndrewKemendo 2y ago
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
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago
  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?
  - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    Seegull.org Send me a message at Andrew@seegull.org if you want
meristohm 2y ago
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.
xyst 2y ago
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.
fullspectrumdev 2y ago
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.
cmon-man 2y ago
gate·keep·ing /ˈɡātˌkēpiNG/ noun 1. the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.
SolarNet 2y ago
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.
Gud 2y ago
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.
g9yuayon 2y ago
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.

jfengel 2y ago

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."

dreamcompiler 2y ago
Q: What's the best way to become a millionaire? A: Be a billionaire and then start farming.
riffraff 2y ago
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.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  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.

tmountain 2y ago

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.

spiderfarmer 2y ago

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.

Loughla 2y ago
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.
- mnmalst 2y ago
  What happened on those two days? Birth of his children? Probably a broken back or some other injury is more likely tho. :)
  - Loughla 2y ago
    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.
    - hammyhavoc 2y ago
      What a trooper. They don't make people like they used to.
      - Kye 2y ago
        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.

trevyn 2y ago

Sounds like you don’t know how to farm romantically.

worthless-trash 2y ago
Do you swear at the crops in french ?
- cryptonector 2y ago
  Pourquois pas?

miah_ 2y ago

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.

igleria 2y ago
I wanna be you! problem is probably 15 years or more until it's feasible to me due to current salary, savings and country.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Never give up - all three of salary, savings, and country can change dramatically for the better.
  - zubiaur 2y ago
    Start with country. The best tool against inequality is a suitcase.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Agreed - the day I emigrated from the third world to Canada was the day my life hit the elbow of exponential growth.

BoredPositron 2y ago

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.

driverdan 2y ago
I didn't say it was impossible. I was saying that you need to understand the realities of something before dedicating significant resources to it. If you discover you love farming then by all means go for it.
cryptonector 2y ago
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.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

giantg2 2y ago

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.

wsc981 2y ago

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.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
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.
- ifwinterco 2y ago
  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.
  - rini17 2y ago

krmboya 2y ago

Someone could be going into farming for a low cost independent lifestyle, not necessarily as a profit maximization venture.

throwaway211 2y ago

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.

nativeit 2y ago
> …spinach grown within resonance of a woodpecker pecking at dawn, Please tell me this is a real thing freaks overpay for…
- 0perator 2y ago
  It’s just a marketing spin away from absolutely being a thing people overpay for.
- Kon-Peki 2y ago
  > Please tell me this is a real thing freaks overpay for With very few exceptions, hating your customers is not good for your business.
cryptonector 2y ago
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.

stetrain 2y ago

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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_farm

vbezhenar 2y ago
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.
silisili 2y ago
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.
lm28469 2y ago
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
newzisforsukas 2y ago
> In the U.S., a high proportion of farms might be classed as hobby farms. In 2007, over 40% of farms reported less than $2500 in income and over 10% of farms had less than 10 acres (4.0 hectares) of land Hmm, why?
- debacle 2y ago

andoando 2y ago

With all this tech youd imagine it should have become easier to self sustain.

chrsw 2y ago
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".
- debacle 2y ago
  Traditional farming has an obscene amount of waste.
fullspectrumdev 2y ago
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.
- andoando 2y ago
  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.

latentcall 2y ago

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.

chrsw 2y ago
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.
postexitus 2y ago
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.
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  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.
  - postexitus 2y ago
    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).

oopsallmagic 2y ago

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.

epolanski 2y ago

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.

destitude 2y ago

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.

astura 2y ago

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.

whalesalad 2y ago

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.

cocochanel 2y ago

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.

hammyhavoc 2y ago
Where in the world are you?

sva_ 2y ago

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.

gonzo41 2y ago

Are you Jeremy Clarkson in secret :P.

shagie 2y ago

It's likely more of a goatops reaction. https://www.goatops.com https://www.goatops.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336880 (255 points on March 4, 2021 | 80 comments )

thefz 2y ago

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.

23B1 2y ago

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.

citizen_friend 2y ago

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.

coldtea 2y ago

>Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. 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.

Kye 2y ago

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.

lm28469 2y ago

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. > Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. 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

rini17 2y ago
survivorship bias says hi
- lm28469 2y ago
  I got a whole village of 300 survivors for you
  - Kye 2y ago
    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.
    - lm28469 2y ago
      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
cryptonector 2y ago
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.

hansvm 2y ago

That's the same line of advice I give in most disciplines: > Student: I've struggled with math in the past, what do I need to do to be ready for your class? > Me: Take the previous class first. You'll get easy A's in both, you'll actually understand the material when you need it, and there's no real downside since you have a minimum of 120 credits to fill to be able to graduate anyway. 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).

littlecranky67 2y ago

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 :)

connorgutman 2y ago

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.

driverdan 2y ago
That was my point. That they should learn about it before committing to it. I was in no way saying someone shouldn't do it if they discover it's something they enjoy.
seneca 2y ago
Your degree has nothing at all to do with your comment, and doesn't justify its rude tone.
- connorgutman 2y ago
  My degree in AgSci has nothing to do with farming?

4n6556mn56nm 2y ago

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.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

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.

cryptonector 2y ago

Homesteading is more like hobby farming, and for some it's a retirement plan.

PuissantSheep 2y ago

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.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

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

fullspectrumdev 2y ago
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?
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  Seegull.org Send me a message at Andrew@seegull.org if you want

meristohm 2y ago

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.

xyst 2y ago

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.

fullspectrumdev 2y ago

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.

cmon-man 2y ago

gate·keep·ing /ˈɡātˌkēpiNG/ noun 1. the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.

SolarNet 2y ago

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.

Gud 2y ago

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.

g9yuayon 2y ago

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.