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Comment by clord | Hacker News Reader

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 with big payment processors, etc. that I sell to local businesses. Maybe one day i'll productize it and sell it as a package, 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?

Why'd I switch to rural life? Quality of life. When we had kids and got a glimpse of what life would be like with daycare, two people commuting, etc, we got scared and made a plan. It's been 5 or 6 years and still enjoying selling expensive pasture fed eggs etc. I like working from home and having no childcare expenses. Everyone is happy and healthy and we have time to raise our kids.

I remember the limp office parties when we reached GA on some new release, and we'd eat cheap cake. Then I think of how we practically dance and shout at the sky in joy when we all finish digging up all the potatoes. The comparison is stark. Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective.

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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 any way. Being outside is nice, but there's a reason the kids doing this grew up in suburbs and cities: they have no idea what agriculture really involves when you have to achieve economies of scale to make it remotely profitable.

I also grew up on a farm... in Maine. It did instill a work ethic that I find it difficult to teach to my own children. But I always joke with people and say it is a great place to visit and a great place to be from. Not so much a great place to actually be.

> 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 hood.

Combine this with the isolation, poor (or non-existent) community and education resources, complete void of cultural events and niche activities that require higher population densities. It's nowhere near as idyllic as most people make out.

I now live inner city. When it's nice weather I can drive an hour, go hiking, rock climbing or exploring. During day-to-day life I have everything I need within walking distance. I can live spontaneously. Myself and my partner are talking about children and I'm looking forward to raising them in a city where they can access whatever interests they like.

Once thing I will agree on though is: modern suburban life is a dystopic hellscape. It literally combines the worst of both lifestyles.

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.

To each his own. To me, the utter dependence on automobiles, the blatantly wasteful lifestyle and the oppression of HOAs feels claustrophobic, dissonant and excessive. I feel depressed when I have to battle traffic to get access to nature.

Something I never considered when I was younger was how much these things are a spectrum and that there is no bright dividing line between many of these choices.

As an example: I'm living in what's definitely the suburbs (VA Beach), but within easy walking distance of the local coffee shop, groceries, my kids school, etc.

We don't have an HOA, but know a lot of our neighbors. I have a car, but don't use it much b/c of both location and that I work from home.

What is HOA?

I believe in this context it means Home Owners Association[1].

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

It can vary a lot, town planning goes from meticulously fine tuned for successful community, to max number of houses and fewer services for property developer profit.

hay buddy, which suburb you live ?

Meh, still better than the tourism based places. At least with a farm you're busy all year. With tourism you're under employed half the year and shooting up something to kill the time.

"shooting up something to kill the time."

I like FPS games to. ;-)

I wish I could upvote you twice. For some reason many people who have never farmed have this romantic vision of it. In reality farming is extremely hard work and requires a wide range of skills and knowledge to be successful.

If you're good at it you can make decent money but someone who's only worked desk jobs is not going to be good, at least not for a while.

Not only is it extremely hard work, but you can't ever get a break from it. There's a bunch of work that needs to be done every single day (things like milking the cows). If you're someone who likes taking vacations, just know that it becomes a lot harder when you've got a farm. Forget about travel entirely during the growing season.

Hell, I don't even have any pets because I travel frequently enough that they'd be a hassle. I can't imagine how I'd deal with an entire farm in these circumstances. I barely keep one houseplant alive as it is, not from lack of care when I'm home, but from lack of care when I'm gone.

Depends where you live, and what you farm.

In the case of e.g. cereal crops in the north, there are 4-6 months where you can do little beyond some maintenance, buying/selling equipment, planning next year's crop, etc. that means there is plenty of time for vacations. You are right that during seeding or harvest (especially), all bets for travel are off.

But, it is incorrect to imply that because you farm, you ought to kiss vacations good-bye.

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.

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.

I bet most people don't know chickens need light to lay eggs, their egg laying will slow down as the days grow shorter. Plus they will kill each other if even the slightest bit of blood appears. And the smell oh the smell!

This problems improve if given enough space and aren't crowded

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".

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.

We learned the hard way that pigs also like to kill chickens for fun. Although it's possible this behavior was unique to our pig.

> I have a feeling you're thinking more about industrial-scale monoculture farmers

That seems to be what the article is about. The first case study is a vegetable farm, without any hint that they produce anything else. They are also industrial-scale, else they would be considered gardeners, not farmers.

Not just hard work but dangerous. So many people including children have been killed or maimed working on farms. What makes it is farms are all family operation not some factory.

Farming must be the last industry in the western world that has children working in it and it's seen as OK.

I can't upvote this enough. There are aspects of agribusiness that are great (built in gym, outdoors, teaching work ethic to children, etc.) but there are other aspects like all the "vendors" you work with (seed supplier, livestock feed supplier, equipment companies, etc.) all sell to you (the farmer) at retail prices but you ALWAYS sell at wholesale. They set their prices to the market, you take what the market gives you. Unless you can be Cargil or ADM, prepare to scrape by.

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; etc etc

Whenever I see some guy that bought a piece of land and fixed an old barn I get dreams. All I'd need a bit more mileage in ceramics and electronics so I can get just enough modern science, the rest is already there.

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.

> 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 you can argue the dominance of low quality commodity foods is inevitable. I’d love to see that argument.

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

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

Doesn’t change the fact that Apple is the most profitable firm.

It's also a matter of priorities, I'm currently "poor" by the definition of the (western) country I live in, but can afford quality food by choosing to prioritize it.

There's also a huge number of people (myself included) who can afford (and do afford) to buy expensive quality stuff.

I don't hold it against science and bio-tech for bringing high yield and disease resistant crops to market; that shit will help us feed the whole planet economically. Doesn't mean I can't also enjoy organic, non-altered food in my own home. I get annoyed with this attitude so many people have about these things, that somehow we can either feed the whole planet economically or have ritzy well-to-do people buy organic kale. We can do both very easily.

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

I suspect it's a "the grass is always greener in the neighbour's lawn... or in this case pasture" effect.

Beeing outside for long stretches might sound healthy, but at the end of day gives you skin-cancer. Source of Information: Scar over my eye, where the doctor cut out the summers harvest of pesticide resistant weeds in uv-rays.

Skin cancer is generally much easier to treat though than all the other internal cancers people can get from vitamin D deficiency... Also, something to think about: http://dermatologytimes.modernmedicine.com/dermatology-times... "Researchers at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) have revealed that they are finding more instances of melanoma in office workers than people who work outdoors..."

I might have missed it from just quickly looking at that source, but what do they think is causing this increase of melanoma in office workers?

From other things I've read, probably vitamin D deficiency form lack of sunlight is a factor. Of course, there can be too much of a good thing too...

Intermittent sun exposure has also been blamed rather than frequent to promote tanning.

Lack of exercise and stress from indoor jobs may play a part as well in increased cancer risk in general.

Well yeah- the truism that a hobby turned into a livelihood makes it less fun applies to everything. Coders talk about it all of the time.

My mom’s family were Dust Bowl refugees, and my grandfather had to hustle to not starve to death.

On a lighter note, check out this Canadian using a large backyard as a profitable farm: https://youtu.be/KO-OuqbR3EE

Here’s also a working Swedish homestead/farm (that’s being threated by the uncertainty of oil/mineral extraction): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7GkLSNBmds1DZit_oHk-Fg

If I did it someday I wouldn't be thinking about making money, just being self-sufficient and growing enough food for me and my family. If I could sell some that's great but that's not the objective.

Where will you get clothing, gas, spare parts, school supplies, internet/phone connection, healthcare? There's more to self-sufficiency than eating.

My guess would be to be independently wealthy at that point.

> Once enough people do this, the prices fall and you're just another farmer, scraping by

I suspect these individuals will find something new to popularise and produce at high margin.

> they have no idea what agriculture really involves

Well, no. They have no idea what it involves for that type of scale, but to say they have no idea at all (about their operating scale) seems to just show your hurt feelings about growing up that way.

But in the long term, even local farming is probably a better idea than the current debt-based economy that depends on imported goods from for example China, especially when even central farming with long distance shipping of foods has its costs.

the farm in my family indirectly exports some crops to China (as in crops go to a port which takes them to China): the import/export relationship is not one-way. it (China) is a large country by population, and while that's got to be one of the factors driving economic growth --- steel industry and various forms of tech and manufacturing (rise of ODMs, etc.) --- now that the government is increasingly (indirectly) opting into the IMF, there are also a lot of people to feed.

debt can be viewed as another word for "relationship."

and it's cool in some ways, yet in other ways kind of a shame: debt from the United States is, to some degree, buying into the military-industrial complex. valuing China's money is, in part, condescending to a rather selective perspective on human rights. hopefully the guanxi flows to the best in each rather than the worst.

i don't pretend to understand the international economy. however, with the sort of logistics enabled by modern communications technology, i suspect that it's a lot more feasible to completely pack one large barge with a variety of goods than it used to be, making for lower-cost shipping than one might expect.

I am talking about all goods not just food, and not claiming there are zero exports either. And yes, part of the reason we got off the gold standard was military spending. Even now I like to mention that the more NSA/FBI spends, the more money is printed using government debt.

> 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.

Most of the hipster microgreen crowd aren't even making their money that way, they are making it by scamming other hipsters into trying to do that by acting like anyone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling $10/pound lettuce to hipster restaurants. There's obviously a very limited number of restaurants in the "overcharge people for local food" market to sell to. But you don't need to do that crap. You can sell normal vegetables for a normal price to normal people and make a perfectly reasonable living.

>Once enough people do this, the prices fall and you're just another farmer, scraping by.

The reason most farms are "scraping by" is the same reason most restaurants fail, and most programmers can't handle fizzbuzz. Most people are simply incompetent, regardless of their occupation. Every farmer I see complaining about money is wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most of them are driving around in $80,000 pickup trucks while complaining about how poor they are.

>Being outside is nice, but there's a reason the kids doing this grew up in suburbs and cities: they have no idea what agriculture really involves when you have to achieve economies of scale to make it remotely profitable.

You don't have to achieve economies of scale to be remotely profitable. Not every farm has to be a corn+soybean rotation.

>"Most of the hipster microgreen crowd aren't even making their money that way, they are making it by scamming other hipsters into trying to do that by acting like anyone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling $10/pound lettuce to hipster restaurants."

Can you elaborate on this? What exactly is the scam? How does the scam work?

There are lots of youtube channels (and similar) promoting this idea. These channels can generate a lot of ad revenue for their creators. I'm assuming that's what they're referring to.

Unless they’re among the top 500 YouTubers I bet they make more selling fresh basil than YouTube ads.

I would disagree with this, my small YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6WpEeF48A7r032N486j1cQ ) generates a couple hundred a week at which point I rotate videos for newer fresh ones. And this channel is literally about saving money by buying things at thrift stores.

You've only got a few hundred views in total on all of your videos; how could you possibly be generating a couple hundred dollars per week?

> I like working from home and having no childcare expenses.

I worry that with a young child, we'd still have childcare expenses - except that instead of paying with money, we'd be paying with our time.

My wife and I discovered, like many parents probably do, that raising a child is fucking hard. We love her, we wouldn't trade her for the world, and it's fun, but it's the kind of fun you have while camping, or hiking, or sparring. It's fun, but it's exhausting, and we would both be complete wrecks if we had to do it full-time.

You’re doing a specific high intensity form of childcare. There are lower intensity approaches. When full time child care was the norm, parents didn’t fuss over their kids. “Is she dying or soaking in shit/piss? Ok, then she’s fine for an hour”

But even with a minimal approach, I still wouldn't be able to work from home with any level of effectiveness, because at some point she would be soaked in shit and piss, or would need something, or would be about to injure herself. Kids need some minimal amount of supervision below a certain age.

None of this would really be a problem if the economic system actually worked. If people actually made enough to afford FT care of their children and home stay for the very early years then the economy would seriously employ many more people. But instead people have to essentially win the economic lottery.

I am very much in favor of large, generous subsidies to new parents. For many people, having a child effectively means their ejection from the workforce for a decade.

> worry that with a young child, we'd still have childcare expenses - except that instead of paying with money, we'd be paying with our time.

Yes, that's called raising a child...

> I worry that with a young child, we'd still have childcare expenses - except that instead of paying with money, we'd be paying with our time.

You don't pay income tax on your time. That's the advantage of doing yourself what you would otherwise pay for with after-tax income.

I imagine raising a child on a farm is much different from raising a child in a city.

My FiL was a farmer. He farmed 88 acres in NE Indiana. He raised chickens, eventually 40,000 at a time.

The work was hard beyond belief. To make the farm pay, he bought used farm equipment from farmers who failed, built his own buildings, mixed his own feed, and did well in marketing to find buyers.

He used USDA Extension advice and research on chicken breeding, nutrition, and disease control. When he started, progress in these three made chicken raising suddenly a hot field. But eventually the business mostly moved to the US South with warmer winters and cheaper labor.

He then was able to get a good job in the local county seat: He became the head of the local Rural Electric Membership Cooperative (REMC). In part he got that job because he was respected in the community from his participation in the church, the Bank BoD, Lions, the school board, etc.

For the land, he leased that year by year to someone with good, large scale equipment farming 1000 or so leased acres.

At one time, 90+% of the US population lived on farms. Now it's 10-%. Farmer productivity has made fantastic gains.

So, now, it's tough to make much money farming. One approach is specialized products for high end markets, maybe pheasants, ducks, goat cheese, mushrooms, etc.

There's a lot nice about farm living, but life can be nearly as nice in rural areas still near a town and with work not in farming. A good Internet connection can eliminate some of the effects of a lot of geographic distances.

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 left.

Maybe I can shine some light on the adjustment, as I have quite some experience with moving and living in small towns.

I did lose a great many friends whenever I moved from one place to another. Usually meeting up once-twice a month keeps the thread alive, but closest people will stay in touch online probably forever.

That being said, if you put some work into it, you will find new friends. This requires a mindset of getting involved in any open event that you're even slightly interested in. The bigger the town, the easier it seems to come across those.

In the other hand, talking to neighbors is easier when there's no one else around. I have an impression this creates a tighter knit community, where you can find new long-term friends.

This would probably happen in my case if I didn't relocate again :)

Thanks, that's interesting. I have moved around a lot, so I'm used to adjustments there, I'm just concerned with moving to a small rural town here in Texas and being 3-4 hours away from the few friends family we do have left.

my guess is that it depends on what kind of person you are and how good you are about keeping in touch. your mileage will vary. if you live like you essentially died instead of simply moved, then you'll have no friends. but if you invite friends over and actually make it a priority to meet up at least once every X weeks/months, then i'm sure you'll be fine

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.

> 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?

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).

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.

So you started in 2011-2012. What happens when the next downturn comes and people stop buying "expensive pasture fed eggs etc"?

This is my fear about doing something like this. Boutique farming seems like it would similar to the oil industry in how especially sensitive it is to economic cyclicality. Having spent the past 5+ years farming surely complicates the process of getting a job in tech during a contraction.

Not worried about it. First, we're not really "boutique". We don't dress anything up. It's all used machines and old bags. We charge more because that's our real cost plus a small profit...

I figure thing happening in food right now is not so much a trend. Food prices are artificially low by historical measures. As the subsidies granted by cheap oil-based fertilizers goes away and diesel-powered harvesting starts to be less cost-competitive, the prices will go back to historical norms. People want the industrial system to stop cutting the corners they have been (believe me they tell us) so we make profit from those who are ahead of the curve.

The way I look at it: normal food has been getting more expensive over the past 100 years and is now considered "boutique" by some. There has been a fad in cheap food that is starting to wind up as it is no longer possible to maintain. It's time to get in front of that before your food costs rise. More importantly it's time to start teaching kids how to do it too as they're going to really be in the post-climate-change world where viable solar-powered food is the most valuable thing to have a startup in.

Yeah, I spend each winter contracting for funded startups and the vision of new tractor implement or some new gizmo makes it easier to work on the stuff.

I guess the big part of better lifestyle is just giving up on ambitions. You know that you are not building next billion dollar company and you also know that you are not going to buy new BMW every year anyway so there is no pressure in keeping with Jones.

You don't actually have to become a farmer to adopt the latter viewpoint and reap all the resulting life benefits.

True. I live a minimalist lifestyle by design but I don't live on a farm or anything. Unless your main source of pleasure is having the nicest car, newest gadgets, various status symbols, etc, then you can trade your labor hours towards those things in for more time doing what you really enjoy.

>Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective.

Amen, brother.

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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 beach was no more than four streets away no matter where you were in the town, and you always had friends and family around the corner.

I am glad I left at 17, because once you have gone through school ambition takes you out into the greater world to explore. But I would never want to have grown up in the city.

Most of the benefits of the city are really only enjoyed once you are an adult anyway.

Perhaps rural towns are different now, I haven't been back since I left.

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.

I live in the city but grew up in the country too (minus the beach, although I have lived near once), I would definitely want that for my kids, the city isn't kid friendly.

The problem is, as an adult, you don't want to leave the city with all it's cultural charms.

>cultural charms.

I believe you misspelled "opportunities for acquiring wealth" ;)

It's great if you're white and a boy, and straight.

I came to say something similar. I can even expand this - it isn't so bad being a straight white girl either. The main thing is that you need to be a pretty average person. Most small towns this basically says you are white, straight, fairly traditionally minded and christian.

Being an outcast in a high school with a population of less than 400 isn't easy because most folks know everyone else.

> Maybe one day i'll productize it and sell it as a package, 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?

I really admire that you made something "useful" with Haskell! When you say you're making enough does that include savings for retirement? That's my biggest worry as someone who just started saving for retirement (I'm 27).

> 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?

What is the retirement plan for a farmer?

Sell the farm. I have friends in farming. The ones who own farms will do pretty well in retirement. The ones who farm rented land have to combine farming with any other source of income that they can scrape up. One of them farms, drives trucks, and is a moderately successful bandleader. His dad is in his 80s, and still works on the farm.

This. I agree 100% that modern life is not as great as everyone thinks it is. Just getting outside and hiking was enough to convince me.

Hiking and camping can be part of a modern life. It is for me.

> Modern life is a dystopic hellscape from this perspective

Hellscape, yes, but that hellscape also has funded your farm and that is something that I'd keep in mind. It is pretty big luxury to be able to (financially) go and live on the countryside, doing farming more as a lifestyle rather than means to livelihood.

I think this is a hugely important point. The article highlights some of the systematic hurdles facing would-be farmers, including the cost of land and student loan payments. However, it also highlights some possible solutions.

This is a throwaway point in the article, but I think it's key to imagining a food system and economy that can support this kind of farm:

> Young farmers are also creating their own “food hubs,” allowing them to store, process and market food collectively, and supply grocery and restaurant chains at a price competitive with national suppliers.

Sure, monetary wealth from corporate desk jobs may be necessary to fund farms right now, but small farmers have a lot more power to shape our food system when they band together. Agricultural cooperatives have a long history in the United States [0] and may have a role to play in keeping the new crop of small farmers in business.

[0] http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/whatisacoop/History/#Development_in...

True, and it's also not for everyone. Maybe things will change when I'm older but speaking from my perspective, I was born and raised in a dense suburb, moved to the countryside because my folks grew up in the country and wanted to leave the dense suburb/corporate dystopia or what have you. Its just not for me, I'm a city boy. I like being close to other people. I feel comfortable with busy areas (like a downtown district or a beach). My teenage years spent on a 1.5 acre lot was filled with lots of manual labor (help build a retaining wall, care for horses and other livestock) so in my mind I see living in a metropolitan area as an easier life.

That's not to say I don't appreciate the outdoors and nature, I do immensely. I just think the whole 'gotta get away from it all' attitude is interesting because it's the exact opposite for me, what I guess could be described as the 'feeling of missing out'.

I grew up in a dense city, and feel the same way. Currently work in a suburb and live in SF, and I especially enjoy the close proximity to lots of people. That said it is nice to spend some time outdoors and walk the soil barefoot!

It's a personal choice, do what works for you.

Also don't forget that without the 'hellscape' that pays for the expensive pasture fed eggs (and other things), they may not have such a cushy income to sustain a countryside life. I always consider what happens when everyone switches to this lifestyle. Unless and otherwise we have robots who can go work at the factories that build everything from a tractor to a cellphone, other people have to live in the 'hellscape'

It's a point of view. To some coding all day is a hellscape, to others managing a network, to others managing a business. I don't think we have to worry about people flocking to the countryside, especially with technology like LED grow lights which were not possible 4 years ago and other technologies which make it possible, maybe even efficient, to run a small garden in an apartment.

Check this article out, it touches on how efficient farming can be, and I think it could be applied in a smaller scale.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...

I disagree with your sentiment. Rural living and small-scale farming can be very inexpensive compared to city living, and easily supported by a remote tech worker salary or the part-time work clord mentions. Yes you need capital to get started, but this can be much less than buying a house in an urban area. I think the tech industry would be a much better place if more people chose to work remotely to improve their quality of life.

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 food prices spiked for any reason, they’re boned.

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.

  > Then I think of how we practically dance and shout at the
  > sky in joy when we all finish digging up all the potatoes.

I grew up on the small farm. Got to deal with pigs, cows, patatoes and hay. Do not miss it at all. What's more I used to want to have a houe in the countryside. Then somehow that desire completely wanished.

It may return with time.

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