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Comment by harshaw | Hacker News Reader

This farm is in Harvard MA - e.g the exurbs of Boston. Harvard is one of these communities that has large minimum lot sizes and restrictions on commercial property so it retains its rural feel. It's pretty, possibly not the best use of property in Boston these days, kinda snooty, and is certainly not a cheap place to run a family farm.

A couple towns south where I live there are many active small farms. They either specialize in CSAs or have farmstands that sell a mix of their own produce and imported (e.g California) produce. It certainly is possible to farm - but you have to adapt to the times I guess.

My family also has a large commercial dairy farm in upstate NY. Very different farm then when I was growing up. Went from milking 70 cows to 1100+. From what my cousin's say - the only way is to go big or go home.

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Agreed you have to go big or go retail. There is no other option. However, at some point 1K or 2K dairy cows hardly feels much like a "family farm" anymore.

I believe most big farms in the US are family farms. It's not synonymous with small scale.

family farm becomes a different thing when you start milking 1100 cows, it's usually a few of the family working with several undocumented immigrants. I live in upstate NY also tho our family sold the farm a couple of decades ago.

The farm we used to own has gone towards organic milk to get a premium for their product, and the family that bought it now relies heavily on undocumented immigrants.

America relies heavily undocumented immigrants, from dairy to produce farm ag to meat processing to restaurants to landscaping.

An open secret is that ICE doesn't touch meat ag's workers except for token enforcement. It's a dangerous occupation that includes underage child labor, deaths, and amputations without a social security net.

If its an open secret (like the open mystery in Ephesians 3:9,10), can you provide some sources to substantiate your claim? Thanks!

An open secret is something which is widely known to be true amongst people, but which is denied officially, for that very reason, providing sources is more usually than not possible for an open secret.

I have no idea if an open secret is like the open mystery of Ephesians 3:9,10.

Indeed. That seems like a loaded cultural reference point considering the majority of the world (including Christendom) do fine not keeping up with bronze age letters as jargon. Maybe they mean an open secret like the Panama papers?

Your definition of an open secret is the best I've ever read, thx.

As a person of faith, the reference listed above was in poor taste. Scripture should never be used in cryptic ways.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/20/meat-pa...

https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-...

This is the literal definition of an open secret: https://twitter.com/neeneinnyetno/status/1655217749495361536. It is common knowledge, even in the deep midwest where I am, that there is no construction happening anywhere which doesn't have a large undocumented labor component.

This comment lacks sources and has a biased tone.

What is “ag”?

A common abbreviation for agriculture.

In italy, if you run a traditional farm + milk/meat animals, you need to have at least 2-3M $ in capital investments to be "safe", most smaller operations have to be run as "second jobs" bcs there isnt enough margins to sustain yourself as a single family, if you have to share with other family members its worse

NZ dairy farming become very intensified. Less than 200 acres is not worth it I heard. The effect on our environment is not good.

Meat and dairy ag are terrible for the following reasons:

- climate change - 15% of GHGs not counting total inputs of fuel and feed

- antibiotic resistance - antibiotics are used excessively to raise production, similar enough to the ones used in humans to evolve drug-resistant pathogens

- pandemics - many animals peeing and pooping together, in close proximity, create an "institutional" Petri dish effect plus regular cross-contamination with humans and random wildlife

- pollution - of water, air, and soil

Taking this course soon to learn more about environmental impacts of insects as a food source.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35882520

Are they those awesome self-service milkers where the cow just walks up and gets milked automatically?

That close to Boston, they have an 8-figure net worth.

That must be why they can't hire help and want to hold onto the land to bequeath to their daughter.

Harvard isn't particularly close to Boston. It's 25-30 miles outside of Boston and outside of even I-495, the outer loop highway encircling Boston. (Still River, where the farm is, is on the far end of Harvard.)

Article says they used to farm two fields they owned and three they leased and have backing away from some of the leased land. From a quick search (unverified/fact-checked), it looks like it's a <20 acres of owned farmland, which would fetch close to $3M in all likelihood. Add $1M for buildings and equipment and, assuming no debt, it's a modest 7-figure estate, seemingly split two ways. Many regular employees on this board have more in investments than each of the owners of this farm and didn't have to farm for 60 years to get there.

The farmers didn't need to farm for 60 years either, if they just let land till I follow, it would still be worth just as much to a developer.

They gave to farm to keep their taxes down.

Probably not even that expensive. I live a town or two further out. One of my neighbors has a small apple tree orchard and the other has a Christmas tree farm. It's pretty accessible to Boston for the day but not really close. My old farmhouse was the original property for about a 75 acre farm. It's been renovated but certainly not a multi-million dollar property. You can actually get out of Boston fairly quickly to reasonably priced real estate.

It's mostly a very Bay area thing to imagine that being a 60-90 minute drive from the city means you're talking multi-million dollar real estate. That mostly isn't true of even relatively expensive cities.

But yeah my neighbor has scaled down you-pick apples over the years as it's really not worth the effort.

IMO it's due go higher property taxes, the New England states have some of the highest property taxes and high taxes overall which makes land speculation expensive. CA has extremely low property taxes with a loopholes that push the average even lower

Even just a few miles outside NYC, you can get a decent house in NJ for 500K but the property taxes alone will be around 5-10K.

Which is literally why you have to farm the land. The agricultural rate can be substantially lower than the residential rate.

I don’t know about MA, but in NY for 7 acres or more you just need to average $10,000 in sales for 2 years. Interestingly if you have les than 7 acres the threshold goes up, but you can lease land to bring yourself over the 7 acres. Additionally, since property tax rates are set at the local municipality level an ag assessment uses state law to cap what the municipality can claim.

This is not tax advice, and I don’t know the law in MA, but probably not to far from NY’s.

You've just described all those "low cost of housing" homes in Texas. Rundown 30-year old stick homes will run you $400k to $600k and $10k to $15k in property tax.

No state income tax is a lie, it's paid through small home property taxes. Larger land owners invariably go for rural/ag exemptions and reductions.

There's also the cost of heating in the winter. People budget monthly and housing prices tend to rise to consume surplus income (at least over the past few decades of ZIRP). So rather than dreading your heating bills in the winter, you should appreciate that it's a bill you don't have to pay in the summer. Whereas warmer climates end up paying a higher mortgage year round.

"You can actually get out of Boston fairly quickly to reasonably priced real estate" Maybe compared to SV. I'd argue that it's surprisingly still very expensive even an hour out of Boston. I always wonder who are these wealthy people that can afford these million+ dollar mansions not even close to Boston.

It depends a lot on the town and the property. Massachusetts is certainly not cheap in general but get outside of 495 and there are many decent properties for far less than a million. It's also the case that a ton of Massachusetts companies are not in the city. Tech was historically not in the city much at all. So living 45 minutes plus outside the city can actually be a lot more convenient to many jobs than closer in.

A lot of people who live that relatively far out just don't go into Boston much.

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