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

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

#431

Post by Kirth »

ibizaman wrote: post #228
ruc0la wrote: post #18

I am doing pretty much the same. I am currently an engineering student, working part-time as a programmer. Although the job market for programmers is excellent in Europe, I bought an apple orchard (via loan) pretty close to the capital of the country where I live. Due to the proximity of the capital city, I can sell my product at a decent price and earn more than an average senior dev here. I also enjoy being outside…

Are there good spots in Europe? I was in Belgium and wasn't satisfied (too corporate jobs or underpaid jobs) so I moved to the US and now can afford on one salary an apartment near Venice Beach in LA, CA with my wife and two kids whule having a family life. Living on one salary, even just with my wife at the time, was impossible in Belgium.

> Living on one salary, even just with my wife at the time, was impossible in Belgium.

Although tech in Belgium isn't as well paid/rockstar-ish as the rest of Western Europe, that's a bit much.

Where were you living, what were you earning?

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

#432

Post by greedo »

jrs95 wrote: post #115
krrrh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not disagreeing with the trust of your comment, but despite popular belief, McDonalds does use real eggs.[1,2] Though there’s no doubt that an egg from a chicken who has walked around, eating bits of grass and bugs, will taste better and have a better nutritional profile. [1] https://yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca/answer/does-your-egg-mcmu... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/27/are-mcdonalds-eggs-real-fast...

It does, but only the McMuffin sandwiches really taste like it. The others use the folded egg that they get premade and frozen.

The folded eggs used to be made from fresh eggs. Did this change?

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

#433

Post by jrs95 »

greedo wrote: post #432
jrs95 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but only the McMuffin sandwiches really taste like it. The others use the folded egg that they get premade and frozen.

The folded eggs used to be made from fresh eggs. Did this change?

It must have, if they were. It's still made from eggs, they just make a bunch of liquid egg and then make it into these shapes and freeze them & ship to restaurants. The scrambled eggs in the big breakfast weren't frozen, though. They could made with the sort-of-real liquid egg stuff or just fresh eggs, I'm not sure.

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

#434

Post by _Tev »

clord wrote: post #412
jacquesm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yes, you are looking at it from multiple wrong angles.

1. Yes, it is. Government will not take the money (and I don't buy any "omg inflation" arguments, since last crisis has actually in effect reduced inflation everywhere) and even if it does - if you cannot live through bad spell on 100k you have a problem.

2. Sounds like bad reserve managment i.e. missing "money in the bank". I haven't heard anyone recommending to go for mortgage with less than 6months reserve. And you had multiple mortgages with "two or three paycheques" in reserve? Seriously?

3. Money can almost always provide time (to heal, get a job, opportunity to choose less well paid job with more / flexible free time etc.), which can (for most people) be converted to relationships / skills. If you cannot make friends / learn new things given enough time, once again you have a problem.

4. > but honestly my bills are paid and I don't feel the need to make more money than I do right now. Why take on the stress?

Does not sound like you have money in the bank. Especially considering the tiny reserve (two or three paychecks is really ridiculously small, especially when you have multiple mortgages).

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

#435

Post by mrguyorama »

agumonkey wrote: post #328
JPKab wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a rural community where farming was basically the only industry. It's easy to talk about how awesome it is when you basically are selling insanely overpriced boutique goods (organic, free-range, etc) to yuppies who are willing to pay triple for their calories. Once enough people do this, the prices fall and you're just another farmer, scraping by. I grew up working on farms. It's not romantic to me in an…

grass is greener. Kids in isolated tribes or areas are running away from their parents lifestyle as fast as possible. They don't see the beauty in the old ways and are unable to see the lies in modern cities, too much shiny. Surely nothing is perfect but modern society has reached a point of diminishing returns IMO. Somatic and mental health issues, absurd jobs, absurd structures influenced by remote financial games;…

I grew up in a small rural shithole. I don't share the same positive outlook you see. What did I see? I saw poverty. I saw far too much land not bringing enough money into the area to even sustain it. Schools struggled because they didn't have money, businesses suffered because nobody had money, the lack of businesses meant a lack of work. In fact, entire sectors of the economy up there don't exist. As I was coming of age, I realized I was pretty good at solving problems, working with logic, and writing code. The problem? The one software development job for hundreds of miles paid $9/hour. There is no money in the small towns. In fact, even now that small rural town is heavily subsidized by the one or two metro areas in the state.

If an area can't bring in the tax dollars and other money to run the local economy, it degrades. When the only influx of anything is welfare dollars, how is that a beautiful way? It wasn't beautiful sixty years ago either. Stories of my parent's generation are similar stories of poverty and struggle and the occasional running away to live an almost comfortable life closer to the city. The "work ethic" often lauded by those who pine for these times seems to be the willingness to work far too much for far too little.

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

#436

Post by mrguyorama »

ehnto wrote: post #288
unabridged wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine rural high school would be a hellscape of a different sort.

I look back at it pretty fondly. School in the country was basically all of the people from the town meeting up every day to joke around and learn stuff. We had excellent facilities, it always felt safe, and after school we roamed the town and bits of nature on our bicycles. I had like 6 tree houses I could visit, jump around tall hay bail forts, we even once dug a bunker on someones paddock next to the cemetery. The…

I went to a rural high school from 2008-2012. It was hideously underfunded, and if it wasn't for enormous effort from underpaid, overworked teachers putting their sweat, blood, and heart into everything they did, nobody would have learned anything. The school struggled to heat the building in the winter, which seems okay except this far north, "winter" is really 90% of the school year. If you were even slightly different from the "norm" normal school days were hell. Out of 150 students who entered my year as freshman, 95 walked during graduation.

The fact that there are so few people means it's incredibly hard to share interests, and because you live in a rural shithole, the only interests people have are: drinking, drugs, driving around in the mud, and making fun of "different" people.

While I appreciate "small towns" allow you to "know everybody", that has it's own downside in the complete inability to have any privacy. I also hate thinking about all the possible opportunities I missed from growing up in a poor rural environment.

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

#437

Post by hammock »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #289
hammock wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>their design carries vestigial baggage from thousands of years ago, from a time when we didnt know about any of the physics or technology that we know about now. it turns out that you can build a passive and maintenance free house for about the same amount of money as a traditional house. Can you expand on this? What are the vestiges in a modern house? How does one design a passive and maintenance-free house?

sure. houses are made of wood. we recently had some super bad fires here in california and right now people are literally building new wooden homes upon the ashes of their last homes. does that make sense to you? in hurricane areas, people do the same thing in the absence of regulations -- they build out of sticks. roofs are often tiled with tar or slate or ceramic. why? they break, leak, and need to be replaced freq…

That sounds awesome. The only thing I could think of while reading it was how impossible it would be to convince a secondhand buyer of all that though. Resale value not worth the upfront investment. However if I planned to own that house until I died (or longer) might be worth it.

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

#438

Post by tebura »

roadnottaken wrote: post #306
kimburgess wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a great place to visit and a great place to be from. Not so much a great place to actually be. I'll definitely echo this. I grew up on a farm / nature refuge in Australia. It's beautiful to go back to, but I could not live there again. My family hovers around the poverty line, work long, hard hours, and are completely at the mercy of the climate and other difficult to control external factors for their lively…

Good points, but I totally disagree about the suburbs. We live on a quiet cul de sac in a very suburban neighborhood. We’re 20 minutes from mountains, trails, beach, schools, stores, and work. It’s safe and friendly and our kids play with other kids in the street every day. Seems like a pretty sweet compromise to me, but YMMV.

hay buddy, which suburb you live ?

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

#439

Post by greedo »

jrs95 wrote: post #433
greedo wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folded eggs used to be made from fresh eggs. Did this change?

It must have, if they were. It's still made from eggs, they just make a bunch of liquid egg and then make it into these shapes and freeze them & ship to restaurants. The scrambled eggs in the big breakfast weren't frozen, though. They could made with the sort-of-real liquid egg stuff or just fresh eggs, I'm not sure.

Strange... We used to have a blender for both scrambled eggs and folded eggs. Crack the eggs in, blend them smooth as silk and Bob's your uncle.

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

#440

Post by clord »

_Tev wrote: post #434
clord wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, you are looking at it from multiple wrong angles. 1. Yes, it is. Government will not take the money (and I don't buy any "omg inflation" arguments, since last crisis has actually in effect reduced inflation everywhere) and even if it does - if you cannot live through bad spell on 100k you have a problem. 2. Sounds like bad reserve managment i.e. missing "money in the bank". I haven't heard anyone recommending to…

1. You've got some reading to do about how banks are going to deal with bank failures after the fiascos of 2008. start with: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bailin.asp

2. You're right, which is part of why we bailed on the situation while the real-estate market supported our exit and converting the assets into something real.

3. the time it buys you depends on it's value.

4. Zero mortgages right now actually. you're not a careful reader.

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