I worked full time as a software dev from about 1999 until 2010. It was never really all that fulfilling for me, although I was pretty good at what I did. I was laid off in 2010, and spent the rest of the year milking goats and sheep, and making cheese in France and the UK. When I returned home in late 2010, my wife and I moved to a more rural location, bought a small herd of goats, and started building a cheese plant.

We've been making cheese going on 8 years now, and have expanded into sheep and cow's milk production, in addition to our goat's milk varieties. Unlike most of the cheese producers around us, we focus on raw milk cheeses with natural rinds. Many of our varieties are inspired by cheese I encountered while working in Europe.

  Here's a small gallery of some of our cheeses: https://imgur.com/a/zg0eaTz

We're just emerging from our kidding season and heading into lambing. It's the most challenging period of the year, as we'll have 150+ kids and lambs arrive over a couple of weeks.

  https://imgur.com/a/USmPghf 

The shift has been fulfilling overall, and I still do work on some tech related projects which has been great. I have to some degree begrudgingly watched my peers' income shoot up dramatically over the last 12 years, while I have to work twice as hard to bring home the same amount.

Overall though, it's been net positive for my family, and while I've tried to quit farming at least half a dozen times, I was never able to bring myself to make the break.