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Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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