Comment by BatteryMountain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BatteryMountain | Hacker News Reader

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BatteryMountain

Farming is a hard and unforgiving activity. Most guys who have a dream to become farmers fail miserably since it requires a ton of grit, know-how, problem-solving and luck. With the help of science (measuring soil, pests, weather and so on) and capital input to buy tools (hand tools, sprays/pesticides (if really needed), farmhands, vehicles, watering systems, monitoring systems and so on), you might succeed.

If you are willing to be honest with yourself, you might find that being a farmer is not for you and it might be better to sell. You can also run it purely as a business, aka being a kind of farm manager and not be too close to the ground but employ good people that knows the plants/cultivars and the local environment (weather, soil, pests), listen to your people, treat them well, treat your new neighbours extremely well, as they will assist with a ton of knowledge and sometime physical help. Most importantly, honour the land & the plants; take good care of them and your environment and everything might fall into place a bit easier.

This is tough thing to be given/gifted, to be honest. Please prepare for the worst, emotionally and physically. It might also be the most rewarding and freeing thing you can do with your life and/or become.

Do not discount alternative income streams: if there are more land available, plant some other low maintenance crops or small stocks like chickens and so on for cash flow. If there is a river/stream, forest, small mountains etc, it can be worthwhile to build a handful of cabins or a camping terrain (but small, you want to stay niche, have good ablution blocks, skip electricity, just supply clean water) and so on. Multiple income streams can do wonders for farms. All depends how much money you have upfront to invest into the property. Luckily, you already have the 8K trees.

Good luck mate, hope that the journey ahead works out!

Anecdotally, I spent the last two years trying to grow various stuff in planters on my balcony. I invested quite a bit of time and effort into it, including good soil, fertilizers, monitoring..etc. I kinda figured that while I might not get amazing yields, I have done as much as I could to at least get decent yields.

Reality had a lot to say to the contrary. Between the various pests, weather and nutrient problems, I ended up with relatively unproductive gardens both years (Except the peppers, for some reason those ended up being both very productive and very spicy.)

All of this is to say that your comments on farming are pretty spot on. Growing stuff is hard. Growing stuff so that you make some profit to sustain yourself is even harder.

> (Except the peppers, for some reason those ended up being both very productive and very spicy.)

Sounds like you need to look at your soil. What else did you try to grow?

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why "just stop growing fodder crops for livestock and grow things humans can eat!" doesn't exactly work.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, various herbs, peas, green beans..etc.

It's not that these were unproductive, I got a good amount of vegetables and herbs from my garden, but it would have been much cheaper to hit up the farmers market to get the same amount of stuff. My anecdote was more speaking to the capriciousness of farming/gardening. Time and effort make no guarantee of the result.

> Time and effort make no guarantee of the result.

True enough! Growing things successfully is all about education. Actually growing what you grew might have been next to free with the right know-how (composting and natural alterations for good soil, harvesting seeds from organic foods, natural pest control, etc). But of course you don't know that until you get years worth of education!

> it would have been much cheaper to hit up the farmers market to get the same amount of stuff

It seems to me generally true in the modern world that it's cheaper to buy mass-produced goods than to make things yourselves. There are exceptions, but they're increasingly rare.

I mentioned the farmers market purposefully. The ones I visit tend to not be mass-produced stuff, but even with the commensurate price increase that carries, it's still cheaper than anything I've grown myself.

I'd imagine even a farmer's market is likely to have crops grown on a scale larger than you are growing them, even if that scale is still much smaller than mainstream commercial farms.

Bet they tasted pretty good though!

Peppers are some of the most resilient plants on earth as long as the temperature is right.

They can survive and produce with too much/too little water, don't have _tons_ of pests (although hornworms will strip the leaves if you don't remove them fast enough) and are tolerant to a lot of soil conditions.

> including good soil, fertilizers, monitoring.. etc.

Similarly, I could afford some pots, hand-picked hot pepper seedlings and "Chilli Focus Premium Fertiliser", and to inspect them daily.

And on a good year I had a great crop, some is still in the freezer. On a bad year, the weather waterlogs them and pests finish them off.

But none of this scales to 8K plants. None of this was intended to show a net profit.

>very spicy

means the plants had a lot of stress :)

The farmer manager is likely how I will handle it. I have no interest in being a farmer (for now) but still want it as a business that I oversee, hence the need to learn at least a few things about how things work. I'll looking to hire people then. I realise it will be hard and will require a lot from me, but that's why I want to try, the new venture is exciting. Money is not a problem because I live in a third world country, labors and lands are still cheap.

I'm into coffee and understand the processing bit. There is a real market for quality specialty coffee. What varieties are you growing?

It's 60% Robusta 40% Arabica.

Try to also find what specific varieties of Arabica, if you can. That matters a lot for specialty coffee.

There is not a lot of Robusta specialty, and for a reason: it isn't known for being great tasting coffee.

On the to do list. But here, not a lot is documented. I will probably have to call a lab when looking for certification in order to have a proper labelling when selling. That would settle it. I'll be more careful if later I have to plant though.

I actually prefer Robusta but it's getting hard to find since some marketing genious figured out that you could charge a little more with that "100% Arabica" on the bag.

The thing is, for Arabica to be good the roast has to be right and the brew has to be right. Robusta, not as flowery but it can take a lot if abuse and still taste quite good.

To most "coffee people"'s palette, Robusta is like burnt shoe leather strained through an old gym sock. Vietnamese drink a lot of it since they grow it there, and it's been successfully marketed in the US by "extreme amounts of caffeine" brands.

> for Arabica to be good the roast has to be right and the brew has to be right

But the OP doesn't have to worry about that, they just need to find a way to market their beans to a specialty roaster. Small batch single origin Arabica can make a tidy little profit.

> But the OP doesn't have to worry about that, they just need to find a way to market their beans to a specialty roaster. Small batch single origin Arabica can make a tidy little profit.

This, I'll probably switch to mainly Arabica as soon as I can (Bourbon and Arabica Elita)

Yeah. I suggest don't get into roasting. But definitely approach roasters with the robusta offering. Maybe they would be interested in doing a blend.

There are people who prefer robusta. Just .. not many.

Exportation and local consumption tends to mainly prefer Robusta. I prefer Robusta also, way stronger, wakes me better.

This is true. But there is plenty of good speciality robusta. It just tastes often like rubber! (Imo)

Good on you for trying to grow food, and seeing how hard it is! Over time I've grown more and more fond of people just doing hard things, not necessarily new things, admiring the willingness to "wade through reality" to see what it's really like. With gardening and food growing, I think the public view is very wrong - that its easy grunt work that anyone could learn in an afternoon. The same belief is held about most skills, like plumbing, carpentry, or electrical repair. Once you start executing a project, you get to learn how wrong you were. Which, I think, is fascinating and fun!

Speaking from experience?

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