Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So you want to buy a farm?

zenx.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 201 posts

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#31

Post by throwaway5752 »

waheoo wrote: post #8
mod wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would look at youtube, there's a very active homesteading community.

... of successful homesteaders. The survivorship bias of this movement is akin to vanlife. A lot of people burn out. I've seen some get themselves into a poverty trap they can't get out of. Can't pay off the farm, can't make enough to survive, can't make enough to sell up and move back to the city, been out of job market too long to get a job on their old industry and would be stuck unemployed / on povo wages.

If they were successful they wouldn't be encourage people to subscribe. They are attempting to be successful youtubers, in a number of cases. I saw this researching rocket stove configurations.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#32

Post by koyote »

m0zg wrote: post #19
Scoundreller wrote: post #17

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…

Do you have any issues with other pests?

I have a tiny terrace garden with several potted plants and a part from slug pellets I also run into leaf miners and aphids and whatnot. So I see myself inspecting my plants daily and often spraying or manually removing bugs. This is much more time-consuming than the watering aspect.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#33

Post by m0zg »

tomglynch wrote: post #26
m0zg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fantastic comment. I can actually see myself doing this. How often do you add manure through the soil?

I'm not aiming to maximize yield, so I only add it once a year, to sort of "replenish" things. I also have a compost heap in which I compost grass clippings and autumn leaves, so I mix that in as well.

If I wanted to maximize yield, fertilization would have to be customized more (and I'd probably just use liquid fertilizer out of a watering can). What I have is adequate for my simple set up.

My parents were concerned about yields (because they sold part of the produce for extra income), so they fertilized several times a year, mostly either with manure or with guano (chicken poop), but they used granulated nitrogen fertilizer as well. Then again, they harvested three crops every year, and I only harvest one. It's not hot enough where I live to grow more than that.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#34

Post by samvher »

dehrmann wrote: post #27
driverdan wrote: post #20

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.

There's the other big that gardeners (especially home covid gardeners) forget: almost nothing you want to grow on your "coupla acres" has enough calories to sustain you. Potatoes are probably the only exception. Everything else--beans, wheat, corn--is a pain to grow and process, especially at a small scale.

I think if you're not aiming to be fully self-sustaining it makes a lot of sense to buy things like these and focus on growing fresh fruits and vegetables. From a sustainability perspective beans/wheat/corn and to some extent potatoes are fairly easy to store, making them suitable for central/slow processing. I don't have numbers on this but my sense is that a lot of the resource usage of our agricultural system is due to perishables - food that needs to be cooled, that gets thrown away if no-one buys it on time, that's easy to damage in transportation, and that has high water content (making it heavy to transport).

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#35

Post by lowbloodsugar »

User23 wrote: post #4
techsupporter wrote: post #3

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.”

Huh. I thought it was because you got a small plot of land (about 6' by 2', with a nice headstone).

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#36

Post by altdatathrow »

driverdan wrote: post #20

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.

Farming is easy money [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#37

Post by dylan604 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #17
m0zg wrote: post #10

My parents had a rather large garden (I wouldn't call it a farm), and we grew 3 crops a year in it. As a kid/teenager I hated it at the time, since they made me work there. Fast forward 30 years I have a bunch of raised beds in my backyard, grow produce, and find it more rewarding in that non-monetary fashion, than just about any other thing I've done. Properly set up (basically just automatic drip irrigation, which…

> 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.

Seems to me if you want to do this, you're missing out on the experience. Push a button, get a prize is not very rewarding in the long run.

When I started my backyard growing habit, it was never meant as a self-sustaining venture. It became part of my morning routine, I'd water the plants and just keep an eye on things. Watching the plant's growth from day to day is rather impressive. It's amazing how fast different plants grow in 24hrs. I even did a timelapse overnight of a squash plant's journey. I also started checking things out with a flash light right after dark. The slug hunting became sport. TL;DR if you honestly think you can have a small raised bed/container garden survive with nothing more than drip irrigation, then disappointment is in your future.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#38

Post by exolymph »

My friend Travis Corcoran recently ran a very successful Kickstarter — $95k+ raised — for a book called Escape the City which is a practical guide to the non-fantasy version of this dream.

> Seven years ago I moved from the city to a farm where I taught myself to garden, raise animals & cook "farm to table". I show you how.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tjic/escape-the-city-a-...

If you're interested there's a button on the Kickstarter page to buy copies via BackerKit. IIRC you get immediate access to a GitHub repo with most of the book already in it, although don't quote me on that.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#39

Post by zenxblr »

retox wrote: post #6

Off-topic but what is the original source of the trend of talks/articles that start with "So you want to..."? I find it very annoying, though I don't know why.

Haha :) yes it was a little clickbaity. But as long as it gets many to understand and act on this a little better than trying to flog dead soils to produce something, worth it.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#40

Post by raptorraver »

I'm starting to sell my city apartment this week and we are going to move to the country side to start a small scale farm! I've worked in the farm all my youth and this summer we lived on the place and did some small scale gardening.

I don't have any (at least many) false thoughts about how cool and romantic it will be. It will be hard and frustrating at times but waay more fulfilling than the current tech job. We're planning to start scaling little by little, year by year, me working still remotely. The main reasons we're doing this are that I've dreamed about this past 15 years and to raise our kids in a healthier surrounding and teach them how to grow food and take care of animals.

For anyone having similar dreams checkout Richard Perkins' educational job in the regenerative agriculture space. He has written excellent book Making Small Farms Work[1] and he has active Youtube channel[1] as well as internet courses.

[1]: http://www.ridgedalepermaculture.com/blog/new-book-making-sm... [2]: https://www.youtube.com/user/mrintegralpermanence

Post reply on HN