51–60 of 201 posts
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.
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"Organic" farming still uses pesticides and herbicides, much worse outdated ones.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 have a YouTube channel which follows similar processes and I document the procedures I use for growing plant based foods on small scale in Connecticut, Agricultural Zone 6b. Check out my latest video here: https://youtu.be/IAaBBjMFWEs I'm trying to get to 1k subs to unlock mobile streaming so I can stream my garden chores to show the work involved. If you are into this stuff please subscribe, I look forward to answ…
Why do you need subscribers? Do you want to be a farmer or a Youtuber? Do you want to live the dream or get rich by selling it?
I wrote that. Thanks @happy-go-lucky for sharing that. 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
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.
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…
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…
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…
How much land does one need to become self sufficient? Let's assume that means producing enough biomass to generate the resources necessary to have a surplus of food or money.
(There are many opinions so I don’t put one particular source here.)