A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm • Hacker News Board

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#411

Post by clord » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

rmrm wrote: post #366

discreteevent wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had about 20 chickens and this is exactly what we did. Not sure why you got downvoted.

Talking about farmscale agriculture, it's hundreds of chickens at least. If it's pastured, they likely need to be moved quite often. Chickens are likely easiest, but on a scale to produce a living for a family, I don't think any type of farming or ranching is low effort or easy to step away from.

We have hundreds of chickens most years now, and yea the neighbours can take care of them for a week or two. The biggest thing that keeps us from traveling in the summer is our "garden".

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#412

Post by clord » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #206

clord wrote: post #112

We did this. My wife has a masters in microbio, and I worked at IBM on their C++ and for Fortran compilers for about 8 years (yay std::atomics). I still do remote contract work to help pay for upgrades to the farm. Would be nice to get one of my side-projects finished and start pumping out some income streams, but it's not a big rush anymore. I have a point of sale system built with React and Haskell that integrates…

> Why take on the stress? As a precaution against hitting a bad spell. Money in the bank is an excellent anti-dote against all kinds of mishaps.

Many things wrong with this:

1. Is money really a precaution? Why is money in the bank guaranteed safety from a bad spell? Can't the government take everything but 100k if they need to?

2. Why isn't having food production on site considered guaranteed safety against a bad spell? Between our savings and the food production on site we could survive in place for a decade. When we lived in a place-in-the-city working two jobs with all of our assets in a (few) mortgages we were two or three paycheques (or a bad tenant) away from losing everything. The bank had a lien on all of our assets, even though we were nominally a 1%er.

3. What can money really fix in a bad-spell? I mean, can you buy skills? Can you buy relationships? Those things have to be made. Nevermind that if the bad spell is actually bad for more than just you, money might not have the same value as it does.

But I will grant that money does have a lot of benefits too, which is why:

4. I have money in the bank... I mean, why are they mutually exclusive for you?

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#413

Post by ryguytilidie » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #82

ryguytilidie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't buy a lifestyle from them, I buy fucking good milk from animals that are loved like family, and I'm proud to be helping them make a living doing something that is good for everyone(including the cows). It's not a lifestyle, it's just supporting people who aren't shitting on everyone's future. The things you say here seem like you are ABSOLUTELY buying a lifestyle here. ie. values for how animals should be tr…

I think he means that he is buying "the cow's lifestyle", instead of his. I applaud the sentiment, but do small farm cows, loved like they are part of the family actually do less damage to the environment? Is factory farming doing something that makes factory cows produce more methane? I also disagree he is not buying a lifestyle for himself. Non pasteurized milk is ABSOLUTELY better tasting. So he is purchasing a lu…

'I applaud the sentiment, but do small farm cows, loved like they are part of the family actually do less damage to the environment? Is factory farming doing something that makes factory cows produce more methane?'

Why does it matter? If both methods do equal damage to the environment and one doesnt torture animals, I still see the one that doesnt torture animals as superior.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#414

Post by ryguytilidie » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #122

dsff56 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are wrong here as you are mistaking lifestyle with principles and ideals. Lifestyle is something very different than principles and ideals. Strange that you don't see the difference...

> Lifestyle is something very different than principles and ideals. Are you leading a lifestyle that goes contrary to your ideals and principles? Isn't that a rather depressing and dishonest way to live? Why would you want to live like that? Sure, not everybody can "afford" to live by the ideals/principles they ascribed to, depending on what these might be, but that's not a choice by those people, it's a choice made…

"Even stranger that you didn't try to explain that difference, which leaves the rest of us wondering what you are actually trying to allude to."

I've found that many people now seem to prefer 'ill just be snarky to my fellow man with zero content whatsoever' as their primary means of communication unfortunately. :(

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#415

Post by vogt » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

clord wrote: post #409

vogt wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a question about adjustment to rural life, because I have been daydreaming about this for a long time: Are you now isolated from existing friends and family? That's really my one big worry. I'm super burned out on software, and currently facing all the same concerns it sounds like you did before, it just frightens me the idea of being further removed (geographically) from the few family and friends we have lef…

We are lucky to have lots of family on the farm here with us, so it was actually a bit of an upgrade in terms of family connections. It's multi-generational. Leaving friends behind was the biggest adjustment. That and Toronto food/music are the biggest adjustments for us.

Good for y'all. I am very envious. Maybe one day.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#416

Post by Symbiote » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 6:44 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #354

wyager wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right, but that visual quality comes at a huge cost in other areas. For example, I find tomatoes in the US disgusting (and don’t tell me “oh, you need to try fresh/cherry/whatever tomatoes”, I have). They look good but taste horrible. They’ve been bred for looks and weight, not flavor. In many places outside the US, the tomato breeds there are bred for flavor, not looks. They’re uglier, but they ha…

To be fair, the gross tomoato issue isn't just the US. I am from Indiana, where summer tomatoes from farmer markets (or a backyard) were wonderful. Grocery store tomatoes were foamy, tasteless things. I'm in Norway now. Same issue, only I've never found yummy summer tomatoes.

Yeah, but Norway is north of the USA. It's not possible to have local tomatoes, so ones optimised for transport should be expected.

Many US states should be able to grow tomatoes like they do in Italy.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#417

Post by myth_drannon » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 8:04 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #343

CydeWeys wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animals need taking care of every day year-round. There's very few homesteaders who don't have at least some egg-laying chickens. I have a feeling you're thinking more about industrial-scale monoculture farmers, but that's not what the linked article is talking about.

Chickens are pretty easy though. You can pay some neighborhood teenagers to take care of the flock while you’re in Aruba.

When I was a child we had some chickens. The most difficult part was keeping them safe outside dogs, cats kill them for fun. Foxes and other wild animals tend to really like them for lunch.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#418

Post by devdas » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 9:21 PM UTC

dailyvijeos wrote: post #379

clord wrote: post #112

We did this. My wife has a masters in microbio, and I worked at IBM on their C++ and for Fortran compilers for about 8 years (yay std::atomics). I still do remote contract work to help pay for upgrades to the farm. Would be nice to get one of my side-projects finished and start pumping out some income streams, but it's not a big rush anymore. I have a point of sale system built with React and Haskell that integrates…

You can say that again. Cities are, for the most part, where humanity (i.e., compassion and community) goes to die. I’m seriously contemplating migrating someplace where people aren’t 80% deplorable jerks, like suburban Oregon or New Mexico. Plus, all of the learned helplessness and ostensibly “incapable,” self-absorbed bullshit job people whom are disconnected from anything but a narrow specialty of bullshit... if f…

Oddly enough, cities are where I have found actual compassion andd community. Small towns and villages are stratified horrors, where being different from their norm is penalised.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#419

Post by erikpukinskis » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

naavis wrote: post #347

erikpukinskis wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once enough people do this, the prices fall and you're just another farmer, scraping by. You’re assuming that the bulk of the market always has to be cheap commodity goods. But the idea behind the artisanal movement is that both sides of the market will change. More small producers will produce more high quality goods and more consumers will pay high prices to buy them. Both sides need to grow in synchrony. Maybe y…

There is a huge number of people who can barely afford to buy cheap food now, let alone expensive "artisanal" food.

The idea is that those people become producers of high margin goods too, and then they can afford to buy high margin goods themselves.

Re: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

#420

Post by QuarterReptile » Sun, Nov 26, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #198

jcbrand wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The local product is typically more expensive because it's production is less efficient I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I think you're leaving out some details. We know that other non-local products can be made cheaper because they are in localities that are lax on labor laws and environmental protection. So the notion that it's simply about efficiency is in my opinion a bit reductionistic. As an e…

> We know that other non-local products can be made cheaper because they are in localities that are lax on labor laws and environmental protection. That can be a factor, but simply making things in bulk is a huge efficiency gain even with the exact same worker/environment protection. And on top of that you have transportation efficiency to take into account. A remote farm can send full trailers of product to a distri…

It's not always advantageous to be efficient, and this is even more true in really important areas like food supply, because having the extra, underutilized capacity can save you in a pinch. When it comes to frivolous things like computers and phones and cars, it's much easier to favor efficiency,because the breakdowns can be really problematic, but still less immediately endangering.

Evolution is perhaps the best example of how being inefficient can be hugely beneficial in the long term.