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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

#271

Post by nitrogen »

slavik81 wrote: post #247
nitrogen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) e…

People are terrible at taste tests.

True, but after being served backyard vs. store eggs without being told which is which, or which feed type was in use, or that anything had changed at all, and still noticing a difference, I am confident that it is possible for the flavor of eggs to vary.

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

#272

Post by why15characters »

rifung wrote: post #214
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…

> 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).

>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.

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

#273

Post by ruc0la »

robk wrote: post #238
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…

Which country? I'd love to pop by the orchard!

Hungary, send me a PM next autumn, and I will be glad to have you here.

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

#274

Post by ruc0la »

googletazer wrote: post #234
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…

You should blog about it, haven't seen something like that before.

I will consider posting agriculturally related articles shortly. If it becomes actual, I will leave the URL here.

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

#275

Post by hilbertseries »

why15characters wrote: post #272
rifung wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

>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.

Yes, because wordpress is useless and snap is a hugely popular web framework.

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

#277

Post by hammock »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #268

ive considered doing something kind of like this but just grow enough food for myself -- so a garden rather than a farm. the draw for me is reducing my living expenses. modern houses make absolutely no sense because their design carries vestigial baggage from thousands of years ago, from a time when we didnt know about any of the physics or technology that we know about now. it turns out that you can build a passive…

>their design carries vestigial baggage from thousands of years ago, from a time when we didnt know about any of the physics or technology that we know about now. it turns out that you can build a passive and maintenance free house for about the same amount of money as a traditional house.

Can you expand on this? What are the vestiges in a modern house? How does one design a passive and maintenance-free house?

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

#278

Post by bogomipz »

why15characters wrote: post #265
JPKab wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Most of the hipster microgreen crowd aren't even making their money that way, they are making it by scamming other hipsters into trying to do that by acting like anyone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year sell…

>"Most of the hipster microgreen crowd aren't even making their money that way, they are making it by scamming other hipsters into trying to do that by acting like anyone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling $10/pound lettuce to hipster restaurants."

Can you elaborate on this? What exactly is the scam? How does the scam work?

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

#279

Post by ruc0la »

JorgeGT wrote: post #22
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…

> I am planning on purchasing drones to calculate NDVI and other useful stuff. Have you toyed already with Sentinel-2 NDVI? There's a free API: https://scihub.copernicus.eu/twiki/do/view/SciHubWebPortal/A... It would be interesting for instance to have a cron job warn you if the values get too low, etc.

Thank you, I will check it out.

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

#280

Post by JCharante »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #9
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.

"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." If the stall sells products coming from the farm, the difference is lost on me. It's like saying "it's the Sales department that generate income, while Engineering is just a cost".

This is very reminiscent of EVE Online's "I mined it so it's free" fallacy. In that, the player is mining minerals which they then use to manufacture a product in order to sell it, but they often sell the product for less than they would have by selling the raw minerals or lose out in opportunity cost because manufacturing yields a higher $/t, and once you scale up you can't supply your own minerals anymore.
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