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

Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 188 posts

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#121

Post by ezconnect »

chrisjc wrote: post #63
lb1lf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-You're never done with a farm, it is a constant battle against the elements. (It's just doubly hard if you need to break the land first, making it suitable for farming - but maintaining land comes with its own set of challenges. (I've got approx. .4 sq miles of land to tend to beside my engineering job.)

Just to clarify that I didn't mean all work was done... more that the existing homestead footprint leaves nothing of interest left to do as far as homesteading goes. But still, it's an important point to drive home to anyone thinking of doing homesteading or farming... you're right, the work is never done, and it's often really hard work. Might be better to go off and work on a farm or homestead to see what you're in…

That seems to be a good exit plan, rent it out to people who wants to try homestead and find out if the hard work will fit their lifestyle or it's for people who wants to experience it and go back to the convenient life of the city.

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#123

Post by as-j »

I moved out to a farm in 2003, before YouTube, and grew about 90% of what we ate. We had goats for milk, rabbits, ducks, turkeys for meat, sheep for wool, etc.

We'd still go to the grocery store 1/mo to get toilet paper, etc. We still had commercial power, cars, full time tech jobs, a mortgate, some form of internet....not sure it qualifies as homesteading, but it was my time on a farm.

Yes it's a lot of work, I'd get up at 5:30 to milk the goats, and again at 6pm I'd have to be home to milk. Barns are constant work in the quiet time, and the "garden" uses up all other time in spring through fall. We didn't take a vacation for ~4 years, and then found someone who would help care for the farm and finally got a break.

All the while we worked tech job, me at a 6 person company. The experience was pretty amazing....so I don't regret that. The pay was horrible, even by standards back then. And my opportunities even worse, I was hours from Chicago so could not commute. And there was nothing else nearby, so I was hand cuffed to that job. When 2009 came by and the job ended as the economy tanked we sold the farm and moved to somewhere with a choice of jobs.

Why did we go to the farm? In our 20s we saw it was a chance to buy a house, land, and see how feed really grows. In this case we succeeded.

But the opportunity cost was huge, we could have taken jobs at the to-be FANGs back in the bay area we left. We could have paid that outrageous some of 500k or 600k for a house in Sunnyvale. We could have spent 6 years in our late 20s or 30s earning 3-4x the salary and having it grow, etc.

But hindsight is 20/20. Who would have expected the FANGs to be so successful after the .com bubble burst? Houses in the South Bay to appreciate so much? Well a lot of people by not me. ;)

Was it a mistake? I dunno.

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#125

Post by audiometry »

Veen wrote: post #96
bane wrote: post #72

Something I've noticed among the "successful" youtube homesteaders is that they almost all invariably have property "in the city" that they rent out (generally unseen, usually unspoken, and always off camera) for significant passive income and treat homesteading like a virtuous hobby. Many of them also have side hustles like giving paid talks on homesteading, renting out "farm experiences", or offering classes on var…

One of my favorite YouTube channels is an off-grid homesteader in the UK. I once thought the idea was compelling, but watching the incredible amount of work this guy has put in over many years has discouraged me, as has the toll it took on his body. Plus, he is massively more competent than I am at just about everything: he built a hydraulic post holer and a log miller from scratch, built several buildings, planted t…

Yea, his channel is great. Another one is My Self Reliance ( https://www.youtube.com/c/ShawnJamesMySelfReliance ), located in Canadian forest. The amount of labour required to build cabins, food supplies, etc. is nearly endless. No wonder man evolved to living in tribes and eventually cities -- doing it all by yourself is just absurdly hard.

I'm not saying any of this is bad, but if you have romantic notions about living like this and having lots of free time to pursue frivolous things, you're probably going to be disappointed. Perhaps there is a better point somewhere along the spectrum of Manhattan to solo cabin life in the mountains.

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#126

Post by jonstewart »

octocop wrote: post #115
pwython wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a nutshell: living "off the grid" and growing your own food. Basically pretending like you're in the 1800's.

Oh shit, going from techie to amish is pretty big leap. I can see how that might be hard to get used to.

The Amish have it easier, as they have an extensive community.

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#127

Post by jtbayly »

In general, people lie (even to themselves) about how awesome homesteading is. They claim to make/save money without accurately counting the costs, for example. They fail to mention the disasters or long painful hours. etc. Lots of people have gotten in way over their heads because of this.

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#128

Post by vwcx »

Nbox9 wrote: post #116
newyankee wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homestead may not work if you depend on your own farm for all of your food needs. However, I feel off grid life with solar, storage, EV etc. combined with a remote job and hopefully cheaper Satellite Internet in the future may work for a lot of people. If I lived in a scenic country I would've at least tried this lifestyle, but may be that is because I am inherently introverted.

I think you might be missing a lot of the amenities of modern towns/cities. Let’s ignore energy and internet/cell service. * You’ll want to live close to a grocery store. * You’ll want to live close to doctors —- not only hospitals and ambulances but also any specialist you or someone in your family mind need. * You’ll want access to tradesmen/craftsmen. Plumbers, auto mechanics, carpenters, electricians. Things brea…

This exactly. The level of austerity that comes with traditional homesteading can be shocking to most Americans.

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#129

Post by he_is_legend »

snarf21 wrote: post #84
bane wrote: post #72

Something I've noticed among the "successful" youtube homesteaders is that they almost all invariably have property "in the city" that they rent out (generally unseen, usually unspoken, and always off camera) for significant passive income and treat homesteading like a virtuous hobby. Many of them also have side hustles like giving paid talks on homesteading, renting out "farm experiences", or offering classes on var…

I've always said, the only people who think farming for a living sounds fun have obviously never farmed. It is more tenable if you have income sources so you aren't depending on farming for your dinner. If you are independent wealthy and can pay others to do all the farming for you, you aren't a farmer, you merely own a farm. It is a tough life. The best part is the half days, just pick any 12 hours you want to work!

I'm not disagreeing, but having worked for 20+ years now as a web dev, and also on and off on farms (parents, relations, neighbours, friends, and 30 acres behind my house), I'd move to a farming job that offered the same income in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

There is something much more comforting about having worked yourself to physical tiredness and a feeling of having accomplished "something useful" instead of having fried your brain yet again over some bizarre node.js ritual for the benefit of some capitalist ecommerce overlord.

I'm willing to admit that there are fulfilling jobs in software development that aren't directly feeding the capitalist beast, but they seem to be few and far between.

Re: Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

#130

Post by jethro_tell »

Probably. (source, I grew up a farmer, have a small farm, house in the city, and we have a double tech income)

Farming is hard. It's generally about doing more with less which in the small scale just means grinding it out.

There are two ways to make farming profitable, write a book (or do the homesteader youtube/pateron thing) or scale.

It's really hard to scale on a homestead. You spend all day switching tasks and you can't build machines to mechanize your chores. On our farm we only grow a couple things so we cans work to scale. We have multiple acres of a single crop that produces well for us and has a high sale price. That allows us to build things like bedforming machines, harvesters, processing and storage machines.

But we're not homesteaders. Subsistence farming, even with a modern machine like a tractor is still back breaking thankless work, just like it was 100 years ago. And you're always on, protecting crops, caring for animals, doing the work and it's really inefficient. You have to really love the work if that's what you want to do. Because as a job, it's one of the worst you could pick.

Big boy farmers have scale which allows them to do things like buy crop and livestock insurance, million dollar machines, access the funds from the farm bill through various programs. And it's still brutal work but if done right it can also be pretty lucrative.

There's a reason that farming has mostly been ceded to large corporations, it's hard to do and it's hard to make money without enormous economies of scale. It's easy to dig on giant corporate farms that are cutting corners to make a buck but somewhere along the line, every acre they have is a farm that went bust or just decided they'd be better off with the one time price for the land.

And now you know why.

On the other hand, few things will beat a fresh steak on the day of butcher and a hand grown salad. But you can have that buy living in the city, growing a garden and buying a 1/4 of a cow when it goes to market.

So I don't know if this was helpful, but these are kinda generally accepted truths in the farming community that a lot of people don't really understand because so few people are farmers now. I wish you the best and hope you are able to make the right decision as decide what's next for you.

Post reply on HN