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Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

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Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#141

Post by Kye »

driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

Everyone thinks they're a born farmer until their first horn worm.

"I love tomatoes! I'm going to grow my own!"

wow what a coincidence so do these little baby moths

Don't get me wrong, growing your own food is neat, but you're going to trade the money you'd spend on veggies for time and effort trying to keep even a small back porch of plants alive. You have to be fastidious about everything from soil maintenance/security (from pests) to pesticide application.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#142

Post by selectodude »

jader201 wrote: post #139
godzillabrennus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The woman who ran PR for Chicago Tribune did the same thing with her husband. She now has a small farm in Michigan. She runs a PR agency from the farm. I personally couldn’t do it… I prefer loud noises and bright lights but I lived in Rincon Hill and Times Square at various times…

> I personally couldn’t do it… I prefer loud noises and bright lights How old are you? You don’t have to answer, but I’m guessing you’re probably not past 45. At some point, you start to prefer quiet. I haven’t lived in a really large city, but have been around noise enough that I’m hoping our next move will distance us from neighbors and highway noise. And yes, maybe we’ll have a farm animal or two.

I grew up all my life in a major city. The quiet and tranquility of a small town freak me out. For somebody who’s never lived in a city, you’re making quite a few assumptions.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#143

Post by silisili »

stetrain wrote: post #70
driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

I read someone who retires and "takes up farming" as retiring to a house in a rural location and maintaining a garden and maybe some small quantities of livestock. IE someone who is not depending on the "farm" to be a commercially successful operation or is even attempting to run it as a profitable business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_farm

That's how I read it. Farming doesn't have to mean planting thousands of acres of soybeans and corn and hundreds of head of cattle.

A large garden, some chickens, and perhaps a few goats are more than enough to keep a hobbyist tinkering all day, and is still what I'd call 'farming', though YMMV.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#144

Post by coldtea »

driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

>Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have.

Are we talking industrial scale? Because not every farming venture needs to reach that, and most smaller farmers don't have "college degress and millions in equipment".

And you can pick up a lot in a couple of years, I've had friends who made the switch (and extended family who worked on farming).

Not in the US though, but judging from the decent sized subculture of "living off the grid" (or close), it's probably even easier there.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#145

Post by FredPret »

igleria wrote: post #66
miah_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they have saved enough from working in tech that they can grow vegetables for themselves in a very low scale way. Its nice to escape from the career you've had for decades. Sometimes its not even an escape from the career, but the career and the city you've lived in. Moving to the forest and growing some vegetables and raising chickens isn't that difficult. You certainly don't need "millions in equipment". Its…

I wanna be you! problem is probably 15 years or more until it's feasible to me due to current salary, savings and country.

Never give up - all three of salary, savings, and country can change dramatically for the better.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#146

Post by bryanlarsen »

wsc981 wrote: post #64
driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

My Thai girlfriend enjoys her farm, spends a couple of hours a day to work on it. Of course, it's not our primary source of income, as that is my work as software engineer. For her it's a nice hobby. I don't think you'd need a degree anyhow. Plenty of stuff can be learned online these days. And you don't need a lot of equipment either, if it's just to take care of yourself or your family. Depending on your community,…

You don't need a degree, but if you want to make a good living while farming you need to compete with people who have both a degree and millions in capital invested.

Farmers can make a lot of money, or at least somebody does. A single family Saskatchewan dryland wheat farm is typically worth $10M in land and equipment so either the farmer makes enough money to pay the interest on a multi-million dollar bank loan or enough money so that continuing to farm is preferable to retiring and living on the interest.

The problem is of course the variability due to weather and wild swings in commodity prices. A farm can produce a high six figure income one year and lose six figures the next.

But as you noted, if you're not looking to pull six figures per year from your farm, then it does become quite a bit simpler.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#147

Post by coldtea »

selectodude wrote: post #142
jader201 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally couldn’t do it… I prefer loud noises and bright lights How old are you? You don’t have to answer, but I’m guessing you’re probably not past 45. At some point, you start to prefer quiet. I haven’t lived in a really large city, but have been around noise enough that I’m hoping our next move will distance us from neighbors and highway noise. And yes, maybe we’ll have a farm animal or two.

I grew up all my life in a major city. The quiet and tranquility of a small town freak me out. For somebody who’s never lived in a city, you’re making quite a few assumptions.

As somebody who lives in a multi-million city, every second person I talk to wants to move to the country, and it definitely much stronger tendency after around 30-35+.

It doesn't matter if the parent's assumptions are "quite a few" or don't match you, what matters is if they match a big segment of the population to be statistically useful. There are always outliers who love to grow old in a big city and have their ashes scaterred in the middle of Manhattan.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#148

Post by lm28469 »

driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

It's the two extremes of work. One is hard physical work directly associated with producing the things you need to stay alive, the other is purely intellectual work which is 20 levels of abstraction away from your necessities.

> Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have.

It depends on the scale, I know 80+ years old people living in the countryside, still splitting their own wood, growing their own garden/orchard, manually removing potatoe bugs from their decently sized potatoe field, cutting grass with a scythe, taking care of their chickens/goats/sheeps... they're 100% self sustained and use tools from the 19th century they inherited from their parents. They're in better physical and mental shape than most code monkeys I know while being 50+ years older

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#149

Post by dreamcompiler »

jfengel wrote: post #38
driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

There's also the old joke about the farmer who wins the lottery. "I'm going to keep farming. And when the money runs out I'll find another way to keep farming."

Q: What's the best way to become a millionaire?

A: Be a billionaire and then start farming.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#150

Post by gempir »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #48
driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

A lot of people are heavily influenced by Youtubers and other influencers who conveniently leave out the earnings they get from their Youtube views, all while selling a romantic, self sufficient dream of living in harmony with nature. In that regard Jeremy Clarkson paints a much more realistic picture, even though that show is very over the top and mostly scripted. I grew up on a farm and was on track to take it over…

I really like Goldshaw Farm[1]. He does yearly breakdowns how is farm performed and the reality is he could not live at all if that was his only income stream. And I think his scale is most realistic what a developer could achieve when he quit and just wanted to try to farm.

YouTube pays his bills mostly, not the farm.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD4VW0lLYjE

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