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So you want to buy a farm?

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Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#191

Post by bigiain »

pixl97 wrote: post #173
rjyoungling wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Woodworking or motorcycle repair are hard, and the initial setbacks are extremely demotivating. Out of curiosity, then how did you become a good software engineer? Doesn't programming follow that exact trajectory? Excellent comment btw.

In wood working and software time is used by doing it. If you program software wrong you lose time by having to do it again. In woodworking you lose both time and materials.

Also, I suspect many of us here "spent" time learning programming as children/teenagers and honed it as early twenty-somethings.

At those stages of life time is essentially free and unlimited. You can easily pull allnighters and 40 hour hacking weekends and 80 hour weeks - and you do it because it's exciting and fun, and it has only very minor opportunity costs - you might miss a school or college assignment deadline, or a few shifts at your minimum wage part time job. Your bedroom at your parents house or you college dorm is paid for already (even if just by usurious student loans).

Once you get to the "disillusioned with the damned tech industry" stage of your life though, you have responsibilities and rent/loans/bills to pay and probably family you need/want to spend time with and a circle of friends who're in the same stage of life who can't on zero notice order in pizza and mountain dew and hack from 6pm on Friday thru to midnight Sunday catching only naps on the couch as needed.

I reckon there's almost as much of a hill to climb for a "woodworker since junior high" looking at programming as a way out of a woodworking career they've become jaded with - as there is for a thirty-something software engineer dreaming of building timber boats for a living instead of being part of "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." -- Jeff Hammerbacher

(But yeah, you don't need to buy new timber when you accidentally "move fast and break things" as a programmer. On the other hand, at least the tools you buy as a woodworker will still work and be useful in a decade or century's time...)

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#192

Post by pragmatic »

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.

So true.

However...

... all my grandparents were spry into their 80s and lived to their 90s. There was a an article awhile back that the most longed lived or healthy groups were New Jersey Asian females and South Dakota male farmers.

I’ve been at a desk for 20 years and I’m almost crippled.

The difference is the variety of work. Fix fence in the morning, do the manual stuff before it gets too hot. In the afternoon get in the ACed tractor (if you’re lucky). Get back in the house at 10pm. Maybe not till age midnight if the combine breaks, etc.

Lots of physical activity, lots of fresh veggies and a bit of fruit seems to be the recipe for a long healthy life. Wealth not likely or guaranteed.

For better or worse that life is economically impossible now.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#193

Post by pragmatic »

dirktheman wrote: post #71
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.

I know some farmers and they all have one thing in common: they work around the clock, 7 days a week. No days off or vacations. Their farms might be worth millions, but it's also both their home and their job. Also, a lot of people don't get that a farm (anything other than subsistence farming) is a business. It requires careful long term planning, crop rotation, dealing with buyers, collectives, auctions, risk mitig…

Only the ones left in business. The rest are long gone as business savy became just as important as hard work.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#194

Post by pragmatic »

leemailll wrote: post #107
brnt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how things are in your jurisdiction, but here in Europe making a profit on farming just isn't possible. This sector lives and dies by subsidies. You're going to have a cash crop or market the hell out of your product, both seem opposite to the goal of starting the farm in the first place.

It might depend on which crop to grow. I remember in KING CORN (2007), farmer can't make a profit without government subsidy.

Ironic that it came out during the largest Ag boom in the last century. Huge fortunes were made during that time. Sadly those tunes have ended, but this year is going to be good for some.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#195

Post by unnouinceput »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #134
unnouinceput wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking the wrong crowd. Go talk to an Amish about this, you'll get a lot better answers.

You might get better answers but probably not optimal ones? I imagine the avoidance of technology leads to inefficiencies that most people would want to avoid. Maybe the permaculture people, or intentional communities that seek to be self-sufficient (as a community); perhaps kibbutzim hold useful knowledge here?

Amish do not avoid tech, they test it and see pro/cons and then they take a decision if it will get adopted or not. They have a lot of tech enthusiast that will try new tech and then the elders will decide to keep it or not. And they strive for self-sufficiency 100%.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#197

Post by vram22 »

vram22 wrote: post #75
raptorraver wrote: post #40

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…

Yes, Richard Perkins knows and has done a lot of good stuff over years in this space, at his permaculture mixed farm in Sweden. I mentioned him and a few other successful people in the regen ag space, like Gabe Brown and Geoff Lawton, with brief descriptions, in the recent thread about a long-running no-till no-herbicide farm here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24827234 Edit: Also, Aanandaa Farms, started and…

For anyone interested, Richard Perkins has an annual Regenerative Agriculture Masterclass, which is coming up in the near future. Sign up here to be notified of details:

https://regenerativeagricultureonlinecourse.com/

Just got that link from his email newsletter, which I subscribe to.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#198

Post by nicbou »

rjyoungling wrote: post #172
nicbou wrote: post #127

People vastly underestimate how much work "simple" lifestyles are. It's the same with van life. It sounds great in practice, but simple things like showering, defecating and preserving food become very difficult. I suspect that with farming or homesteading, you forego things like financial safety and the ability to take vacations. I value those things a lot. In my opinion, the best way out is a lifestyle business, or…

> Woodworking or motorcycle repair are hard, and the initial setbacks are extremely demotivating. Out of curiosity, then how did you become a good software engineer? Doesn't programming follow that exact trajectory? Excellent comment btw.

I have one simple secret: start 15 years ago

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#199

Post by tjic »

bluntfang wrote: post #132
LunaSea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone need 90K to write a book while already having a profession? Interviewing three people is also apparently worth 5K. And the book's photos are black & white ...

Always good to look at "How To" books with a healthy dose of skepticism. Probably more relevant to the "get rich quick" type books, because if they got rich quick, why would they be selling a book to give away their secrets? Although I find things like farming and agriculture and outdoors to have a less capitalistic shade and more of a genuine "i want to help people achieve their goals and not die" shade.

This is an excellent point @bluntfang.

I'll be very upfront: homesteading is a money losing proposition. It's a consumption good - it costs more than any (monetary) profit it brings.

And my writing about it is ALSO money losing. I'm a coder. When I write and sell novels, the opportunity cost is huge - at an hourly rate, I lose about 90% of what I could otherwise be making coding.

Writing about homesteading is much better - I only lose about 50% of what I could otherwise be making.

I write because (a) I am more driven to create and share my ideas with people than I am to make a marginal dollar, (b) I am ideologically in favor of people moving to the countryside and living a different lifestyle, so writing is an ideological / political choice.

Re: So you want to buy a farm?

#200

Post by anticodon »

bromuro wrote: post #120
anticodon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to the collapse of the USSR and with help of our inept corrupt leaders (Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their US "friends") destroying all the industry and economy, millions of ex-soviet citizens know exactly how hard it is to become self sufficient. I worked really hard on our family "farm" all my childhood and that's maybe the only thing that helped us survive. Although we did experience hunger from time to time.…

Well also Russia is not such a nice environment to grow land... cold winters and hot summers - it must be hard be a peasant there!

Russia is huge and USSR was even bigger. I didn't specify where I was born (on a southern border). The climate is very good for agriculture.

Sill it requires a lot of work. And I doubt that it is possible to be 100% self-sufficient.

There're many things farmer needs that are produced by other people. From tools like shovels to water pumps to animal fodder (which is also very expensive).

It's a nice thing to try though, to prepare oneself for some nasty events. When COVID-19 started I was thinking that if the world comes to an end, at least I'll be able to survive somewhat longer than others with my skills. I know how to grow my food. Didn't do it for a long time, but it's hard to forget the basics.

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