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A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

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Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#241

Post by rimliu »

clord wrote: post #112

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…

  > 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.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#242

Post by ddingus »

Retric wrote: post #2

Their are no "three-acre farms," at best it's a garden. My old boss operated a 80 acre micro farm while holding down a full time job. It was a hobby that at best broke even, but he had fun. PS: They might say be operating a stall at a locally grown market, but it's the stall not the farm that's generating income.

Sure there are. A nephew of mine is running one. It's a bit less than three acres.

The trick on those is to sell farm fresh, lifestyle, good feels along with the food.

There are plenty of people who will pay multiples to get great food and great feelings about that great food.

Service is the another piece. Delivery, open markets on X day of the week, etc...

Micro branding helps too. The good vibes and food are a finite thing. When this becomes social / status, part of other lifestyles, it can all work just fine.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#243

Post by JPKab »

clord wrote: post #112

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…

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.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#244

Post by swlkr »

clord wrote: post #112

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…

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.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#246

Post by godzillabrennus »

ruc0la wrote: post #18

I am doing pretty much the same. I am currently an engineering student, working part-time as a programmer. Although the job market for programmers is excellent in Europe, I bought an apple orchard (via loan) pretty close to the capital of the country where I live. Due to the proximity of the capital city, I can sell my product at a decent price and earn more than an average senior dev here. I also enjoy being outside…

160 hours a month?

I remember having a part time job.

All kidding aside, I can tell you aren’t American based on that statement alone.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#247

Post by slavik81 »

nitrogen wrote: post #187
adrianN wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you do a double blind study?

You don't have to blind a study when the effect size is big enough (the classic example is the ridiculousness of a double-blind test of the use of parachutes). See my other comment for how easily egg flavor can be altered.

He's right to be distrustful. People are terrible at taste tests. If you ask people how something tastes, they will tend to tell you what they think they're expected to taste rather than what they actually do.

There's plenty of scientific evidence for this based on wine studies[1], but on a personal level, the tongue map myth[2] is the one that gets me. It was taught in science class as true, and we did (non-blind) experiments to measure the effect, but we failed to conclude the effect didn't exist.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_wine_tasting [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#248

Post by indubitable »

clubmg wrote: post #233

>Why'd I switch to rural life? Quality of life. It's amazing to me that for all our modern tech and conveniences it's not made us happier in fact the old ways seem much more enjoyable and appealing.

I think many things have made us happier, but we have begun to replace the pursuit of products that improve life with the pursuit of products that improve revenue. The automobile, the telephone, the internet, and all of these things have improved life unbelievably. I think the point where happiness and progress begin to diverge is when consumerism enters into the picture -- when people are buying products because of status and marketing, instead of the actual necessity of the product itself. And then that sort of attitude leaks into society itself where virtue signaling starts to become more valued than actual discussion. It's all so very artificial. Perhaps this desire to get 'back to our roots' is some sort of Fruedian escape from the increasing fakeness of society today.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#249

Post by andyisageek »

JPKab wrote: post #243
clord wrote: post #112

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…

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 an…

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.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#250

Post by nkurz »

jjoonathan wrote: post #201
adrianN wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do it without a nervous system that can experience suffering

and without losing 90% (or was it 99%?) of the input energy to heat.

I think egg production by chickens is actually more efficient than that. If I'm reading Figure 1 in the following link correctly, it looks like modern farms are about 17% efficient for calories of food fed to the chickens to calories of eggs produced: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/10...

For comparison (from the same figure) pork is 9%, chickens raised for meat are 13%, cow production of milk is 17%, and cows raised for beef are 3% efficient.

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