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So there are people around me who also are interested in buying some acres to living the dream. But as the post listed, there are a lot overheads and surround issues/problems. Like do you want to grow things "organically" or have to buy *icides to battle enermy of bugs or diceases? At scale, it's too hard to manage the use of chemicals to keep your farm bountiful year round.
I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small farms do not make much money, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.
I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small farms do not make much money, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.
What they're probably thinking of is buying land, which you can lease or pay to have tended. Getting into this market is understandably more difficult; if it was easy free money everybody'd be doing it.
The colloquialism "to buy the farm" meaning "to die" made this a funny click. My thought process went from "not really, but let's see what the author is on about" to "ohhh, the kind with acreage not caskets, got it."
This dark joke comes from back in the day when if an airplane crashed on your farm you’d get a significant insurance payout from the federal government. So the joke became that the failed pilot “bought the farm.”
To them, it was a dark colloquialism from the world wars. Infantry would often talk to each other about how they were looking forward to "buying a farm" once the war was over and they went home to their families.
When the soldiers died in the trenches, as they often did, it was said that they had "bought the farm" as a euphemism. Usually it was better than saying how they actually died.
I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small farms do not make much money, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.
What they're probably thinking of is buying land, which you can lease or pay to have tended. Getting into this market is understandably more difficult; if it was easy free money everybody'd be doing it.
With land priced like that, especially when you lease it out, it's even harder to make money. If there's a house on the property and it's halfway close to a town, you might make more leasing the house than the property.
At least when people get into buying apartment buildings they're not competing with someone who will pay a premium so they have room for a horse and can watch the sunset over their field.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> basically just automatic drip irrigation, which is super cheap Any preferred go-to guide on setting that up? I'm thinking of something with an IBC, and some type of moisture sensing automation, so I can pre-fertilize the water and walk away for 2 weeks if I wanted to without coming back to death.
I didn't go high tech like that. I just went to home depot and bought some cheap tubing, fittings, pressure compensating drippers (which auto-regulate the flow), stakes, and a 3-way Orbit timer. They have free catalog at the store, which you can just take to plan out your set up. I also don't use fertilizer in the water - instead I use manure in the soil. So I laid out the thicker plastic tubing, then connected small…
How often do you add manure through the soil?
I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small farms do not make much money, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.
So there are people around me who also are interested in buying some acres to living the dream. But as the post listed, there are a lot overheads and surround issues/problems. Like do you want to grow things "organically" or have to buy *icides to battle enermy of bugs or diceases? At scale, it's too hard to manage the use of chemicals to keep your farm bountiful year round.
"Organic" farming still uses pesticides and herbicides, much worse outdated ones.
I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small farms do not make much money, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.
(Kennedy Farms in Stony Creek, VA if you’re curious).
This is indeed an India based pov. And based on real life experiences and learnings over 4 years now at this farm. Lots more to learn and understand, surely. I'm sure there's some stuff that translates well across geography too, especially the patience bit.
Do want to see regenerative farming grow, because as it happens today is eventually a dead end.