251–260 of 309 posts
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Cows are easy if you raise them for meat.
True, but you can't really just go on holiday for a week if you have any kind of animals, whereas with arable there are times of the year when you can
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
Because they have two of every animal, but an uneconomically small herd.
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’ve done both and I’d prefer farming I was a staff architect at a public company and started a trash cooperative this year I 1000% prefer making my neighbors better off than some idiot CEO and all the assholes on the board and investors
I’ve had a few ideas in the direction of collecting certain types of trash to recycle (eg: food waste, garden waste, paper/cardboard) due to a personal interest in composting and related topics.
There’s certain stuff though that I have no idea how to recycle (yet). Would one negotiate with a larger waste management company for these items? Or simply offer it as a way for neighbours to reduce their trash collection bills?
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> You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist I love this about farmers. They are the polymaths of our age and folks dont get it. Farming YouTube is a trip because there's more tech in a tractor than in some startups. > and if you're doing properly, crooked accountant as well. Yea, most people dont get what a "future" is, and why corn and lumber have them (but not onions... thats a les…
> (but not onions... thats a lesson too) That was too enticing to not look up. Wow, the story behind that is something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act Edit: There's a Planet Money with more on this story (which I've not listened to): https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/epis...
Then again... this was the 1950s and paper contracts, so US market intervention or not was more stark.
And also Eisenhower was likely more concerned about whether the USSR was going to nuke the US and if China was going to try to invade Taiwan for a third time.
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.
With all this tech youd imagine it should have become easier to self sustain.
For example: a “enclosed” mushroom growing op (a few sheds or cabins) can be made incredibly efficient using various sensors, automation solutions, and environmental controls to maintain the optimal growing environment. It can be as complex or as simple as you want.
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> You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist I love this about farmers. They are the polymaths of our age and folks dont get it. Farming YouTube is a trip because there's more tech in a tractor than in some startups. > and if you're doing properly, crooked accountant as well. Yea, most people dont get what a "future" is, and why corn and lumber have them (but not onions... thats a les…
> You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist Not sure how commmon this is anymore. The age of the family farm with a mix of livestock, rotating crops, and woodlands are long gone in the developed world. Each of these tasks would be handled mostly by a professional in any serious farming operation.
Some cattle for dairy, meat and market. Some crops. And often some woodland for tax or grant reasons or under forestry contracts. Maybe some chickens or pigs or similar - usually for local markets.
It’s actually quite neat: I can easily obtain actually free range eggs at relatively low cost, produced within a few kilometers of where I live (a city). Same for pork products, etc.
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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…
It's always interesting to hear from people who moved to Michigan because the better part of my adult life has been devoted to getting out of Michigan. It sounds like you have a peaceful life though
Best I've been able to do is work for employers out of state/country but I'm currently employed locally at a remote-only shop.
The weather. I get it. Everyone uses the same "5 minutes and it'll change" joke, but we're unique here. I thought I read somewhere that we see fewer cloudless days than the Pacific Northwest, but I can't find a reference so I suspect that's false, but we spend, basically, December to April with few sunny days. We live in a place of extremes, as well. Ten below (Fahrenheit) in the coldest winter days, 99 degrees a couple of days ago. Had one day in July when I was in High School where it was 85 degrees in the morning and in about a 15-minute period of time dropped to 45 due to a Derecho[0] rolling through (which almost picked me up off the ground due to 75 MPH winds and sent a large Oak Tree through our master bedroom).
We don't get Spring or Autumn, we get Winter, Summer, and a period of time where the two are at war and it may be Winter or Summer depending on what day/hour it is. A decade ago, I was in the ER on the first week of March. The hospital couldn't "turn on the Air Conditioning" at will, they had to switch over seasonally, so when we had an unexpected 85 degree day, that meant it was about 85 degrees in the ER. That was fun.
It is a beautiful place if you get out of the more populated parts, but I work here and that's where I live. Still, nice that it's an hour drive to get to something that qualifies as "Up North[1]"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho
[1] A phrase that has little to do with direction around here ... mostly just means "resort-ish small town, a lot of which survives due to summer 'Cabin Up North' folks." Ours is in Port Sanilac. But, really, Lake Orion and Walled Lake used to be "Up North" communities :)
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…
I do too, and not a single one of them is happy about it. Every person I talked to, starting from my grandparents, wants to move to a city where heating etc is taken care of for you, but in their age it's easier to continue doing what they've always been doing instead of enduring massive changes like that.
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I grew up in Michigan. I live in Berlin now, and it’s light to 11:30pm and I can read on my balcony in natural light at 4:30am.
Well, seeing that most of Germany is further North than Michigan (southernmost latitute of Germany ~47°, northernmost latitude of Michigan ~48°, that sounds correct. If you think about how most of Europe is at the same latitude as Canada, you really start to appreciate how important the Gulf Stream is for our climate...
Except whenever they came to Portland to play the Trailblazers, the arena commentators would mock it with signs like "We The North-er" etc. Portland is just over 2 degrees further north than Toronto.
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survivorship bias says hi
I got a whole village of 300 survivors for you