I am a programmer and run a dairy and egg farm. The two professions go very well together.
I expect farming goes well with just about any profession, though. The data shows that almost all farms also have on an off-farm income, and the large majority of farmers have their primary income come from an off-farm job.
Perhaps even more useful is the engineering mindset in general. For example, when equipment breaks, troubleshooting an repairing it isn't really a whole lot different than debugging software. Although, having grown up on a farm, I'm not sure if that came before or after my foray into programming.
I have wanted to move away from software as a career and start doing something else in a different industry, but have always hoped that I could keep writing software as a tool to help automate the boring bits of the new work. Very cool to hear that you've done that!
If willing and able, I'd be quite interested to know more about what you were working on.
> I'd say you could probabaly sell what you built
I think so too, and have considered it, but I foresee reliable access to data becoming an issue when others see money being made. That's a problem I am not sure I want to try to solve.
> but then you run the risk of accidentally having a software career again.
Oh, I still have a software career. That's in large part why I was struggling to keep up with the markets and work on my own projects!