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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"

#171

Post by 4n6556mn56nm »

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 think this is a negative approach. This is an open source developer who donated his time and energy over years for practically free. The reason he is quitting open source development in favor of farming is because farming is a more rewarding experience.

The number one killer of open source projects is funding. It is demoralizing to spend years on something that isn't going to really put food on the table, and we do not live in a society that allows us to fully chase our hobbies and passions with complete abandon to that fact.

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

#172

Post by postexitus »

swiftcoder wrote: post #161
postexitus wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not farmers. They have a quite serious hobby (and some savings or other income to rely on probably). It's impossible to make a living out of a 1.25 acre of arable land.

To a great extent that depends on where you live, and what you grow. One of my neighbours produces 10,000 litres of wine/year on ~4 acres of vines. An acquaintence runs a market garden on less than an acre. Another raises pigs in a barn on half that.

I didn't say you cannot run anything. As a side project, sure - 1 Acre is quite a piece of land. But it's impossible to rely on it as your only source of income (i.e. definition of being a farmer). Even in the wine example - let's say they make 2$/liter, that's $5k/acre/year. Pigs actually make very little profit on average, when you combine all the other costs associated with raising livestock. I would be very surprised if they make more than $100/pig/year (averages have been <0 for the last few years).

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

#173

Post by uxp100 »

synergy20 wrote: post #167
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…

Michigan might be cool in summer, what about winters? I need find a place for summer as I'm getting older and texas is just darn hot for 4 months in summer.

Michigan is not particularly cool in summer.

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

#174

Post by Y_Y »

jpm_sd wrote: post #44

"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

> I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

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

#175

Post by postexitus »

anticorporate wrote: post #168
postexitus wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not farmers. They have a quite serious hobby (and some savings or other income to rely on probably). It's impossible to make a living out of a 1.25 acre of arable land.

> They are not farmers. This seems like an unnecessary distinction with no purpose other than to gatekeep. A bartender is still a bartender if they only work weekends. An artist is still an artist if it's not their dayjob. A barber is still a barber if they have to work another job to make ends meet. No, you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking that farming an acre or two is going to replace the income of most 9 t…

ok, fair enough - I agree that the definition of a job shouldn't be tied to the income generated from it. However the main argument presented above was that people shouldn't assume farming is easy and relaxing - and working on a 1 acre farm with no expectation of income is not the same as "being a farmer to make a living" which is 100x harder.

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

#176

Post by zer00eyz »

yccs27 wrote: post #126
zer00eyz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They should, it's basic insurance. If you grow corn: It can be sold as a future, and you can have crop insurance on it. IM not sure you grasp what a future is in the case of a farmer... Now if your in construction, or buying fuel a future can be insurance. Or a risky bet. None of that is like your heath or home owners or car insurance.... unless you dont have them.

Do you grasp what a future is? Having home/car/health insurance protects you against it being destroyed. Buying fuel futures protects you against the price of gas spiking. Having crop insurance protects you against your crops being destroyed. Selling crop futures protect you against the price of your crops falling. It's all protecting you from events that would seriously hurt your finances, aka hedging/insurance.

> Selling crop futures protect you against the price of your crops falling.

Price contracts are a thing. You can do this in new england with fuel oil for heating. It is fairly common.

But futures pay today for a product at some later date. It's a loan as well.

And as a producer it's not just a hedge on price. What happens if your expect to yield 140 bushels of corn an acre, and only get 130? Your crop came in, so no insurance, how do you make up the missing bushels? You're buying those futures back or delivering the contract even at 10x the price.

That isn't an outcome one expects from a hedge or insurance.

There is a reason that there are specialists in marketing and delivery of products with futures markets that help them plan.

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

#177

Post by asveikau »

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.

Some people do still like city life in their 40s.

Some people do find a more rural life unappealing.

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

#178

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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'm a little bit in touch with this particular demographic, and from what I've seen this has nothing to do with romanticism, and instead everything to do with a profound mistrust in technological civilization's ability to feed everyone into the near term future. Much closer to some sort of extreme insurance policy than anything else. There are systemic economic problems that can't be hand-waved away at this point.

Interesting side topic: did you know that while John Deere's top of the line combine is well over $1 million retail (and of course everyone else's models are similarly priced), that a model 42 combine from the 1960s will still go for under $1000 at auction, even as recently as last October, and is more than sufficient to harvest oh, probably even up to 50 acres over a few days? If one sells wheat or oats or whatever, there's no way to compete at market but if one only wants enough wheat to feed themselves for the coming year (and not have to buy seed again next), it's some absurdly small acreage. You might need like a fifth of an acre. There's still plenty of hard work, but mechanization solved some of the worst parts of that before we were even born.

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

#179

Post by whalesalad »

postexitus wrote: post #135
latentcall wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farm doesn’t always mean hundreds of acres and millions in loans. My neighbors across the street are farmers and live in a residential neighborhood. They have a quarter acre in the front yard for growing veggies and own a 1 acre plot just outside of town. At some point sitting at a computer becomes unfulfilling and some point some people can’t take it anymore.

They are not farmers. They have a quite serious hobby (and some savings or other income to rely on probably). It's impossible to make a living out of a 1.25 acre of arable land.

I know people making 100k annually in side income from farming microgreens alone in a very small area. This entire thread is full of weird gatekeepy false information.

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

#180

Post by squarepizza »

semireg wrote: post #163

20 years ago I read a few Wendell Berry essays on agriculture and it changed my life. I immediately believed two things: 1) if it wasn’t for computers I’d be an agrarian and 2) I finally had a better idea of conservatism in the sense that nature selects for conservative agrarians. These ideas challenged my ideas of “turning it off and on again” and overall system design. I needed to prove to myself that I was more th…

> is the grass greener on the other side of the fence?

Was it?

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