So you want to buy a farm?
zenx.medium.com
zenx.medium.com
I don't have any (at least many) false thoughts about how cool and romantic it will be. It will be hard and frustrating at times but waay more fulfilling than the current tech job. We're planning to start scaling little by little, year by year, me working still remotely. The main reasons we're doing this are that I've dreamed about this past 15 years and to raise our kids in a healthier surrounding and teach them how to grow food and take care of animals.
For anyone having similar dreams checkout Richard Perkins' educational job in the regenerative agriculture space. He has written excellent book Making Small Farms Work[1] and he has active Youtube channel[1] as well as internet courses.
[1]: http://www.ridgedalepermaculture.com/blog/new-book-making-sm... [2]: https://www.youtube.com/user/mrintegralpermanence
(There are many opinions so I don’t put one particular source here.)
3-4 acres should be more than enough for the basics for a _small_ family, if you accept to buy the more exotic items from a store, and that you will probably never grow fat.
The typical term is 'homesteading' and there are tons of resources for it. My aunt does it and is part of a collective and it's nearly a full time job.
I worked really hard on our family "farm" all my childhood and that's maybe the only thing that helped us survive. Although we did experience hunger from time to time.
It's not even a question of land, it's a question of how much work you can put into that land. It's a backbreaking work every day.
It's a good option if society collapses and there's no other option to survive. Otherwise, it's just not worth it. Millions of current Russia population hate working on the land because they already have that inoculation from 90s.
Our agriculture (Ger) is completely dependent on workers from abroad. If you send the average office worker on a field, he will probably collapse after a day or two.
Friends of mine have some chickens and that alone causes so much work everyday... They give away the eggs which is nice for us. Selling them wouldn't even pay for the fuel to transport them anywhere. Same with most other kinds of produce.
"Self sufficient" where you buy things from the supermarket is just greenwashing cosplay. Just like a "self driving" car where you can't take your hands off the steering wheel.
Of course you could scrap the electricity and get your water from the nearest river, but I doubt many people would want to put up with that.
Most people wouldn't want true self sufficiency if they could have it. I admire people who "go into the woods" for years (they are generally more hunter/gathers than farmers); but even as introverted as I am, I still like to have a larger group of people around me.
Where do you get the iron for your implements? Or are you going to use wooden hoes?
Where do you get medicine, when you need it?
Where do you get clothes?
Et cetera.
For clothing, you grow it. Between Flax, wool, furs, and cotton you can grow something anywhere (except near the poles). Having to grow clothing and shelter more than doubles your needed land area in some places.
Sill it requires a lot of work. And I doubt that it is possible to be 100% self-sufficient.
There're many things farmer needs that are produced by other people. From tools like shovels to water pumps to animal fodder (which is also very expensive).
It's a nice thing to try though, to prepare oneself for some nasty events. When COVID-19 started I was thinking that if the world comes to an end, at least I'll be able to survive somewhat longer than others with my skills. I know how to grow my food. Didn't do it for a long time, but it's hard to forget the basics.
It does require quite a bit of machinery though- several tractors plus all the attachments (plowing, harvesting, cutting etc).
It's nowhere near self sufficiency though. The amount and the variety of things you eat today is tremendous and coming from many places, you're not going to cultivate a fraction of that at home.
If you're talking bare subsistence, 1-2 acres of wheat should be enough to feed a family in grain/bread.
Maybe the permaculture people, or intentional communities that seek to be self-sufficient (as a community); perhaps kibbutzim hold useful knowledge here?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24827234
Edit: Also, Aanandaa Farms, started and run by a couple of ex-city-job professionals, the Guptas, in the Morni hills near Chandigarh, Punjab, is another good example of success, this one in India, although there are many others in India as well. They too have good instructive videos about starting and runnning a small-scale permaculture farm on YouTube. I believe they are starting a PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) course in the near future too, which may be a combination of online, and learning time on their farm.
Mentioned it before too, in that same recent thread:
https://regenerativeagricultureonlinecourse.com/
Just got that link from his email newsletter, which I subscribe to.
Here are some of the problems I encountered: 1.) Deer - we are overrun with white tail deer. If I don't surround anything I grow with 6ft welded wire fence, it doesn't last a week. I have set up electric fence wired in many different configurations, but the deer seem to figure it out. Usually just as I think I found something that works. 2.) soil - we don't have quality top soil and amending the soil take time and money 3.) rodents - initially we had great success with raised beds (4ft x 8ft) but after several years they eat the roots (really bad in terms of carrots and potatoes) and pretty bad for aquash and beans. We have cats, but they can't kill the rodents fast enough. 4.) time - working full time and trying to pull everything together is really hard. When a crop is ready it needs picked and doesn't care that you are trying to meet a deadline at work. Especially for crops like peas where it seems you have a three day window to pick them at their peak. 5.) time2 - I have equipment so that I can use diesel fuel instead of muscle power. This allows me to get a lot more done, but there are two type of equipment, broken and about to break. I find it impossible to have the time to fix everthing. My back hoe has a broken hydraulic line for over a year now. 6.) selling produce - nothing in more annoying than the customer at the farmers market that comes at the end of the day and tried to buy whatever you have left at a huge discount. Also, there is a fine line between collusion and competitiveness when it comes to pricing at a farmers market. There seems to always be a guy that buys a stall once because he has too many tomatoes and sells them at a price I would lose money at if I had to match it. 7.) seasonal animals are easier than crops because you have more control. We lost all of the produce this year because of drought, but did well on eggs and free range chicken. I'm thinking about a small number of pigs or lamb next year. We don't keep anything but egg layers over winter.
One thing to mind is that I work damn hard at physical labor. My parents are in good health in their eighties, but I don't see me getting there. The toll on my body is very evident to me. I really hope I don't live that long as it won't be pleasant.
I do love growing things though. we have a beautiful orchard of pears, apples, plums, and cherries. Rasberries and blueberries that I can pick at any time. Probably the highest quality chicken and eggs you can find. Great parties when the sweet corn comes in.
I realized the equipment issues with my lawnmower recently. I had to maintain the lawnmower in order to maintain my house. Then you have to maintain the tools that maintain the lawn mower that maintains your house.
It's a spiral of complexity.
1) I have heard about how tremendously troublesome deer are, but have also heard good things about the "impossible to purchase in quantities less than a ton" Dippel's Oil ... has that worked at all for you?
2) So the rodents are burrowing under the raised beds and up to get to the roots? I didn't realize they would go that far down. How far down are the "walls" of the raised beds?
Our raised beds contain about 15 inches of soil. The rodents burrow up from the bottom. You can't see them, but there are tunnels all through there. I've thought about putting hardware cloth on the bottom, but again I'm back to how much do I want to spent in order to make growing produce even more expensive.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that you need to be proficient with a gun. A .17 or .410 is adequate. Racoons, are my nemesis. If they get in a coop, they will kill a crap top of chickens and only eat the heads off of them. We free range our chickens and have several small coops they go into at night which we close up. I'm a light sleeper and can hear the racoons drop down on the roofs from the trees. We need the trees and bushes to protect the chickens from the hawks and eagles. Owls are another more minor problem as are the coyotes. Foxes as well. Having good dogs helps a lot.
Also, for the love of god avoid Guinea fowl. They have the survival instincts of a brick. They are also very loud. We bought 30 as an experiment and sold them off to a chef as soon as we could. There were only 12 left at that point.
The amount of time and physical labor to get anything done is crazy. We have rodent problems, too, and our collection of six-towed barn cats do the best they can. Chickens do an amazing job on rodents, BTW. Chicken and duck eggs fresh from the farm are amazing.
We had an opossum get into the barn last night and killed some of our ducks. Normally these aren't hard to get rid of but this one was very aggressive and I had to shoot it. Earlier in the year it was raccoons and they were able to break into a cage and do an amazing amount of carnage.
Bugs got to our pear and apple trees this year before we did so that was a bust.
I've been trying to get bees going but mites are killing everything.
Oh, back-hoes. Mine is new but even new farm equipment has problems. I cut the end off one of my fingers working on our tractor/back-hoe earlier in the year. Which is fun since my day job is software.
So, yeah, farming isn't for the faint of heart.
I am working on a small acreage/homesteader farm robot. It is not sensors or measuring nitrogen in soil etc. but it’s suitable for replacing 10-15 man hours/week (a seasonal part timer I usually have to employ) for a 1-5 acres farm. Small acreage = sub 100 acres in California. But the first package deal will be for homesteaders and also starting with medicinal herb co-op.
It's the same with van life. It sounds great in practice, but simple things like showering, defecating and preserving food become very difficult.
I suspect that with farming or homesteading, you forego things like financial safety and the ability to take vacations. I value those things a lot.
In my opinion, the best way out is a lifestyle business, or spaced out consulting gigs. Work all winter, play all summer. Alternatively, spend a few hours a week on your project, and the rest of your time doing what interests you.
This is what I do, and it made me realise a few things:
- I really like programming when it's not for someone else. It's what I end up doing the most with my free time.
- The biggest benefit is having so much free time to fill with things you enjoy. This probably isn't the case if you try to live off what you grow.
- I don't spend nearly as much time in the garage as I thought. Woodworking or motorcycle repair are hard, and the initial setbacks are extremely demotivating. You won't hit the ground running, so you better prepare for disappointment.
My initial dream was to work on motorcycles all day, but I can barely find the courage to work on my daily ride, let alone the 40 year old Honda gumption trap that's spread all over the shelves. It's hard to jump from something you're proficient at to something that you completely suck at. I'm just glad that my life doesn't depend on it.
This mirrors my experience as well - also there is a dollar cost to each try, and no undo button, which puts more pressure on each attempt.
I still enjoy doing hobby woodworking, but it's not quite as zen in the beginning as I imagined.
This sounds like there's a need for some kind of part-time deal.
* farm work share - maybe also called a kibbutz or commune - you can take vacations and share the ownership, work, and benefit
* farm-b-and-b - there's a regular owner keeping things on the rails but you can stay a week, eat fresh eggs and clean the barns, and then go home at the end
My grandparents and relatives farmed quite a bit and I helped during summers. It's not glamorous but its less stressful than most positions I've recently worked in and has more opportunity to take necessary breaks.
I have to both agree and disagree. I've been living in my converted bus for about 3.5 years. It's harder and more complex than living in a fixed location but it depends a lot on the setup of your vehicle and how you use it.
If you have a low end conversion with no shower or toilet it's a lot more complex, especially in COVID times with limited access to public facilities.
If you have an RV or something like my bus with a full conversion it's not bad. I have to refill my fresh water every 2-3 weeks, that's it.
The hardest part is dealing with repairs. Typically when something in your home needs repair you don't have to move out.
Out of curiosity, then how did you become a good software engineer? Doesn't programming follow that exact trajectory?
Excellent comment btw.
At those stages of life time is essentially free and unlimited. You can easily pull allnighters and 40 hour hacking weekends and 80 hour weeks - and you do it because it's exciting and fun, and it has only very minor opportunity costs - you might miss a school or college assignment deadline, or a few shifts at your minimum wage part time job. Your bedroom at your parents house or you college dorm is paid for already (even if just by usurious student loans).
Once you get to the "disillusioned with the damned tech industry" stage of your life though, you have responsibilities and rent/loans/bills to pay and probably family you need/want to spend time with and a circle of friends who're in the same stage of life who can't on zero notice order in pizza and mountain dew and hack from 6pm on Friday thru to midnight Sunday catching only naps on the couch as needed.
I reckon there's almost as much of a hill to climb for a "woodworker since junior high" looking at programming as a way out of a woodworking career they've become jaded with - as there is for a thirty-something software engineer dreaming of building timber boats for a living instead of being part of "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." -- Jeff Hammerbacher
(But yeah, you don't need to buy new timber when you accidentally "move fast and break things" as a programmer. On the other hand, at least the tools you buy as a woodworker will still work and be useful in a decade or century's time...)
> Seven years ago I moved from the city to a farm where I taught myself to garden, raise animals & cook "farm to table". I show you how.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tjic/escape-the-city-a-...
If you're interested there's a button on the Kickstarter page to buy copies via BackerKit. IIRC you get immediate access to a GitHub repo with most of the book already in it, although don't quote me on that.
Interviewing three people is also apparently worth 5K.
And the book's photos are black & white ...
Despite all the defensive language, kickstarters are really pre-sales. 90k sales for a book is very respectable but not overwhelming. It means he's found a great market for this book.
I didn't "need" $90k to write the book.
I chose to sell copies of a book, at typical book prices. Thousands of people chose to buy the book. That's where the $90k number comes from.
> And the book's photos are black & white ...
"The food is terrible...and the portions are so small".
The wonderful thing about the free market is that those who want to buy a thing can, and those who don't, need not.
Cheers!
If we want to be technical you weren't selling copies of a book, you were selling the promise of finished copies of a book.
> "The food is terrible...and the portions are so small".
It's great to see how you take valid criticism.
> The wonderful thing about the free market is that those who want to buy a thing can, and those who don't, need not.
Absolutely correct. However, that doesn't prevent me from expressing valid criticism.
But good on you for writing this book. I think it's a very interesting topic and will probably buy a copy.
I just wish people were a bit more honest about their goals sometimes.
Although I find things like farming and agriculture and outdoors to have a less capitalistic shade and more of a genuine "i want to help people achieve their goals and not die" shade.
I'll be very upfront: homesteading is a money losing proposition. It's a consumption good - it costs more than any (monetary) profit it brings.
And my writing about it is ALSO money losing. I'm a coder. When I write and sell novels, the opportunity cost is huge - at an hourly rate, I lose about 90% of what I could otherwise be making coding.
Writing about homesteading is much better - I only lose about 50% of what I could otherwise be making.
I write because (a) I am more driven to create and share my ideas with people than I am to make a marginal dollar, (b) I am ideologically in favor of people moving to the countryside and living a different lifestyle, so writing is an ideological / political choice.
If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.
With land priced like that, especially when you lease it out, it's even harder to make money. If there's a house on the property and it's halfway close to a town, you might make more leasing the house than the property.
At least when people get into buying apartment buildings they're not competing with someone who will pay a premium so they have room for a horse and can watch the sunset over their field.
I want to emphasize the last bit though about “building an empire”. It depends on what your metric is. You can be rich and be broke. You can be poor but wealthy. The empire here would be in community and not in money. Giving back by selling your produce, locally, and helping the community. That, is satisfaction. On top of the satisfaction you have from growing your own food of course.
I go to a farmers' market in the Bay Area. It draws farmers from a 100-150 mile radius. Being California, you get produce from a lot of different climates; some things need a cool coastal climate, some need the heat of the central valley. You also see the season of crops move. Things usually start in the south where it's a bit warmer, and the season (and vendors carrying) that crop moves north over the next few months.
The community approach can really only get you some amount of diversity in produce that does well in your area, and maybe a bit from the soil type. Talk to anyone who's grown squash will tell you there's a month where their one plant has more squash than they know what to do with. The problem is everyone in the community has the same squash surplus at the same time.
I appreciate the idea, I just think that produce production will always tent towards hobbyists and professionals because of economies of scale.
(Kennedy Farms in Stony Creek, VA if you’re curious).
There are many reasons that a society may choose to subsidize someone who isn't contributing their fair share. I agree with some of those reasons, not others.
Your body rewards you for eating fresh food and I think it's because it is really really good for you. Same with fresh air and a little sunshine.
So there's something to be said for growing food and spending time outside. I think it's what our bodies were designed for.
Also, a lot of people don't get that a farm (anything other than subsistence farming) is a business. It requires careful long term planning, crop rotation, dealing with buyers, collectives, auctions, risk mitigation and pricing. The farmers I know are all extremely proficient with spreadsheet software and most of them attended the Agricultural University two towns from here. Farmers are often regarded as a bit simplistic country boys, but the opposite is true.
I don't envy them.
Edit: Having done a bit of both (and a lot of family in both areas) I'd rather be a fisherman than a farmer and I really don't want to be a fisherman!
NB The "highly mechanised" part just adds to the fear factor - winches and other heavy equipment are scary enough at the best of times, but when the sea is rough, its dark they are (for me) terrifying.
Edit: This was 30 years ago...
"La terra è bassa."
(translates to "the earth is low" implying that to get food out of it you have to kneel and bend a lot, i.e. it is hard, hard, backbreaking work)
With animals, it is (IMHO) even harder, another saying (Tuscany) goes like:
"Le bestie non conoscono feste comandate"
(translates to "animals know nothing about holidays", it is a 7 day a week (from dawn to sunset) 365 days a year job)
Yup, it's a full time job, the land doesn't go on vacation.
Yes it can give enormous satisfaction. Every time I'm at the store buying fruit I sigh at how much fruits our grandad used to bring home, for free, it was way better than the fruit I guy at the grocery stores, and it was the surplus from the sales...
You're going to have a cash crop or market the hell out of your product, both seem opposite to the goal of starting the farm in the first place.
I
And that's before you get into all the indirect subsidies like zoning, fuel subsidies for industrial use etc. that are largely aimed at subsidizing farmers.
1. https://www.arc2020.eu/flower-power-commission-somehow-appro...
But the life satisifaction of being a hotelier compared to someone who works the land and raises livestock would not be nearly the same.
* Accounting (cost of production, allocating overhead expenses, cash flow analysis, financing terms and outcomes)
* Efficiency calculations and cost benefit analysis for equipment comparison
* Buying and selling commodities contracts
* Marketing your product (locking in the price optimally)
* Biology for dealing with animals and anything you plant
* Ever changing government subsidies and regulations
* Maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting of equipment. This helps keep you productive when the weather is good and the vendor techs are busy. Welding is really handy.
If you mess a couple of those up to a moderate degree, you'll probably lose gobs of money. Do it too bad or for too long and you'll be visiting my dad or brother for a bankruptcy.
However...
... all my grandparents were spry into their 80s and lived to their 90s. There was a an article awhile back that the most longed lived or healthy groups were New Jersey Asian females and South Dakota male farmers.
I’ve been at a desk for 20 years and I’m almost crippled.
The difference is the variety of work. Fix fence in the morning, do the manual stuff before it gets too hot. In the afternoon get in the ACed tractor (if you’re lucky). Get back in the house at 10pm. Maybe not till age midnight if the combine breaks, etc.
Lots of physical activity, lots of fresh veggies and a bit of fruit seems to be the recipe for a long healthy life. Wealth not likely or guaranteed.
For better or worse that life is economically impossible now.
This is indeed an India based pov. And based on real life experiences and learnings over 4 years now at this farm. Lots more to learn and understand, surely. I'm sure there's some stuff that translates well across geography too, especially the patience bit.
Do want to see regenerative farming grow, because as it happens today is eventually a dead end.
I'm from the latter, own some ancestral land there. Here, we're always on the lookout for ways to counter the extreme aridity of the region. We know it's not easy and like asking the impossible.
Sure I'll check out what they do and how they do it. I'm in the thick of it :)
Check out my latest video here: https://youtu.be/IAaBBjMFWEs
I'm trying to get to 1k subs to unlock mobile streaming so I can stream my garden chores to show the work involved. If you are into this stuff please subscribe, I look forward to answering your comments.
Especially starting out, there are plenty of places to waste time and energy and the feedback loop of waiting multiple years to see results of a test is too slow, if we are to gain adoption we need a better way to transfer to each other what works and what doesn't.
A video is one way to do that.
A person might watch a 5 minute YouTube video and take with them something which took me years to get right. That 5 minutes could translate into many years of learnings which may be applied immediately to their system if they share a similar context.
Being rich is a mindset, and therefore anyone who identifies as it, is it. In most ways, I'm already rich.
Sharing my journey could be considered philanthropy for the planet and all living things on it.
Yes, I spend time making videos but I think this is my most important work so far, if I don't share then the experience dies with me.
I will have no regrets for trying.
I'm only one person after all, and we need global change so I need help and community. This post is a call-to-action, will you join me?
As a person who lived my whole life in cities, I have a very hard time to find an appeal in a lifestyle like the one described in an article.Can someone share what they like / appreciate about the life on a farm?
Thankfully, I have family members living out this dream so I don't have to do all the hard work myself :)
* Peace and quiet. It's quite evident whenever I visit a city, but it is, of course, a matter of getting used to it.
* Safety. Out here I only need to worry about the casual pack of wolves, or getting run over by a drunk neighbour out on the road with a tractor. Where I lived before, getting stabbed or shot during a mugging was an actual risk.
* It's away from the grind. Working from home, no matter if you do farm work or just work remotely, is much quieter than being in an office and you are able to concentrate and work uninterrupted in a way that simply isn't possible in most office environments.
* No commuting.
* An active lifestyle without having to resort to things like going to the gym.
* Community. Most people don't know their own neighbours. Out here, people stick together because there really isn't many other options. That's both a blessing and a curse, though.
Independence and self-reliance are nice bonuses, but they really just come with the lifestyle; you can't live on a farm without some of both.
There's nothing good about it if you need the farm to make a living.
The wisdom for the past few decades is to have a city job to subsidize the farm.
I have relatives (a couple) who sadly quit their city jobs and bought a farm without local office jobs. They lost everything, even though the husband grew up on a family farm. Common sense isn't that common.
On the other hand, I have friends who grew flowers until weed was legalized, and they switched crops and are making millions now. Already had the land, greenhouses and equipment, just changed the seeds one year. Bam!
(1) I can not see me neighbours. They can not see me. Cities just seem live hives of scum and villainy now.
(2) I can see the stars at night. All of them. The milky way is milky.
(3) The sky is not yellow-brown. It's blue and doesn't smell like car exhaust and human urine.
(4) It is quiet. Really, really quiet. No roar of traffic. You get annoyed by how loud the loon calls are at 06:00 because it disturbs the quiet, but then you smile because you can hear the loon calls.
There are, of course, down sides.
(a) rural internet speeds (b) you want the trades to come or a delivery service? No. (c) the snakes in the house keep the mouse population under control (d) where I live, there are a million little things that want to suck your blood and spread disease until the snow falls, then there is lots of snow and you're left wondering which hell is worse
A long time ago a friend of mine was trying to convince me to try surfing. He finally got me in the water when he said, "Dude, when was the last time your were tired out from having fun?"
(It didn't go well. At one point I managed to actually land on his back, surfboard and all. But that's beside the point.)
If I took you out of the city and forced you to work for me as farm labor (yet somehow as a free person not a slave) you would hate the first year or two. However after a few years you would learn the things you can do in the country. One day you would find yourself shooting a deer off your back deck and realize that you used to think guns should be illegal...
Hobby farmers in India should stick to fruit orchards(coconut/mango) or spices.
The govt incentivises small farmers a lot. Also, in India..you can’t buy farmland unless your family..father or grandfather has been a farmer or land owning farmer. Indian origin foreign citizens cannot buy farmland. Altho some states are trying to change it(Karnataka where Coorg is being one of them)
I am disappointed with this article. It has the opportunity to create new farmers and guide them but ended up like rah rah self help fluff piece.
this article repeats a lot of common "sustainable farming" and "save the soil" type phases, but what most people think is sustainable is in fact harmful in the long run. Other things might be okay, but your local university knows something even better to build up your soil.
Many of the things people think of as good actually harm soil, while what you think of as harming the soil may in fact harm it. Most of the people talking about Organic good are using their voice to make money, not spread the truth.
My understanding is that oeganic farming uses less inputs overall (including pesticides and herbicides ) and some organic farmers use no pesticides or herbicides at all depending on the crop.
If they use less herbicides it is because they are not counting diesel fuel to run their tractor as herbicide. Sure they don't apply roundup, but they spend a lot more money and emit a lot more CO2 pulling steel through the ground to destroy weeds because they are not allowed to use a good herbicide.
Also beware of less inputs in other ways: you can mine the land for nutrients by not putting fertilizer on it as well. Fertilizer isn't only about more crops, it is also about the fact that everything you take off the land includes a certain amount of various nutrients that are forever taken off too. This isn't a problem for pure subsistence farming (subsistence farmers carefully save their poop), but as soon as anything leaves the farm you need to replace what is lost.
The survivorship bias of this movement is akin to vanlife. A lot of people burn out.
I've seen some get themselves into a poverty trap they can't get out of. Can't pay off the farm, can't make enough to survive, can't make enough to sell up and move back to the city, been out of job market too long to get a job on their old industry and would be stuck unemployed / on povo wages.
We have lots of farmland in my family that is passed down. It's a beef cattle ranch. And it's really not even that profitable even though the land is fully paid for. My grandparents farmed it their whole lives, but they also worked as teachers and now get that pension as well as social security. The farm is more of a way of life than a way to make a good living.
Also, I have found that the old timers are pretty slow to change, but there is actually good reason for that. They have seen the trends come and go, some have jumped on those trends and eventually gotten burned (in my area, it was ostrich and emu farming).
Also, the slow methodical farm build-up over the years tends to evolve out a pretty efficient and effective farming method. I remember a few years ago, my brother and I got on this kick thinking there was a lot of money to be made on the farm by further fattening or "finishing" the cows before selling them. As traditionally, a lot of farms will sell yearlings to feedlots for a lower price. The feedlot then fattens them up and sells for a profit. But after a lot of research and number crunching, we found that the math just didn't work because we would have to pay to ship in the grain, since it isn't grown very locally and then we would also have to eat the higher cost of shipping those heavier cows to the auctions which are also not that close.
The old timers knew this wasn't a profitable pathway even though they didn't all necessarily know the whole story of why it isn't a profitable pathway. We have found this to be true in a lot of cases with older farmers. They know some things won't work, even if they don't fully know the details why.
Note that even though the farm is worth millions, what you can income in the above plan is never more than $50,000/year.
Selling the dream is always more profitable than living it.
Eating your own produce means being a producer in the economy. It's not a hobby if it feeds you.
Others have, too. Search for those comments by searching for his name in the search box at the bottom of HN thread pages, powered by Algolia, or directly do it at hn.algolia.com.
[1]:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24996445
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24827234
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24669509
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24669458
Make sure to watch some of his videos too, not missing Treating The Farm as an Ecosystem", a 3-part series by Living Web Farms on YouTube.
As a related aside, Living Web has other good videos too, including one called "Ferment Everything" (or "Anything") or such name, by Meredith Leigh.
First hit:
https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/authors/379-gabe-brown#:~:text....
Correction, if the extract below is true (and emphasis mine):
“Gabe Brown was just named one of the 25 most influential people in agriculture. In the entire world,” says NRCS’ Ray Archuleta. “It is an honor that he is coming to visit NC, and no one knows ecological farming like he does.”
From:
https://organicgrowersschool.org/gabe-brown-lectures-in-west...
Realistic? Idealistic? Impractical? I don't know and I'm sure others with more knowledge will comment, but I thought it was interesting and entertaining.
My dad bought a farm (UK) and it did far better as an investment than the wealth advisor "investment portfolio" in terms of capital appreciation. Also the UK has great tax breaks on farms. Just saying it can be a mistake to disregard that stuff.
Yeah the subject is a little clickbaity but hey, as long as many do read it :p
And yep, this is from an Indian pov and for those with cash to spare looking to get involved again, but some of our experiences at TVC will likely be universally relevant.
Of course, it's a journey and we're still learning much.
So yeah, I agree with the author. As an engineer, doing this to make money is stupid. But as a lifestyle thing I think it's a lot of fun. And then you also get to eat what you grow, in addition to the "lifestyle".
Any preferred go-to guide on setting that up? I'm thinking of something with an IBC, and some type of moisture sensing automation, so I can pre-fertilize the water and walk away for 2 weeks if I wanted to without coming back to death.
How often do you add manure through the soil?
If I wanted to maximize yield, fertilization would have to be customized more (and I'd probably just use liquid fertilizer out of a watering can). What I have is adequate for my simple set up.
My parents were concerned about yields (because they sold part of the produce for extra income), so they fertilized several times a year, mostly either with manure or with guano (chicken poop), but they used granulated nitrogen fertilizer as well. Then again, they harvested three crops every year, and I only harvest one. It's not hot enough where I live to grow more than that.
I have a tiny terrace garden with several potted plants and a part from slug pellets I also run into leaf miners and aphids and whatnot. So I see myself inspecting my plants daily and often spraying or manually removing bugs. This is much more time-consuming than the watering aspect.
When I started my backyard growing habit, it was never meant as a self-sustaining venture. It became part of my morning routine, I'd water the plants and just keep an eye on things. Watching the plant's growth from day to day is rather impressive. It's amazing how fast different plants grow in 24hrs. I even did a timelapse overnight of a squash plant's journey. I also started checking things out with a flash light right after dark. The slug hunting became sport. TL;DR if you honestly think you can have a small raised bed/container garden survive with nothing more than drip irrigation, then disappointment is in your future.
Even got several mystery squash that took over the lawn.
I start it all from seed myself (have good South exposure at the apartment), but once the last frost is out of the way, out of the city and in the ground they go.
I disagree. I installed Home Assistant, got some smart plugs and ESP chips and bought a solenoid. Sitting on the deck and seeing the sprinkler go at sundown +30mins or getting the Slack alert as it turns on and off is very satisfying.
There is plenty of hard work to do, but I really believe that automating the watering is more efficient when done by my automation. It was quite inexpensive too.
My thought process went from "not really, but let's see what the author is on about" to "ohhh, the kind with acreage not caskets, got it."
Not for the deceased, at least.
To them, it was a dark colloquialism from the world wars. Infantry would often talk to each other about how they were looking forward to "buying a farm" once the war was over and they went home to their families.
When the soldiers died in the trenches, as they often did, it was said that they had "bought the farm" as a euphemism. Usually it was better than saying how they actually died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_policy_of_the_Uni...
In my experience, farming is 24x7 hard work;