If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.
I found it difficult to get a job in tech at the start of COVID after working in it for ~25 years. I moved to Michigan, and now live in the woods. My Cost of Living is a fraction of what it was. My mortgage is only 80% of what I was paying for rent in the SFBay area. Its peaceful and quiet here. It actually gets dark too. I no longer hear BART screeching on the rails at 2am or the constant flow of traffic. I.. do once again work in tech though at a much 'smaller' scale. My company is small and work demands don't dominate my life. I have balance.
This year I've planted ~200 onions, ~100 potatoes, ~100 garlic, ~60 strawberry. I have blueberry from a few years back starting to flourish. I have wild blackberry, and mushrooms galore. "touching grass" is a daily activity as we manage our small flock of chickens.
I personally couldn’t do it… I prefer loud noises and bright lights but I lived in Rincon Hill and Times Square at various times…
How old are you?
You don’t have to answer, but I’m guessing you’re probably not past 45.
At some point, you start to prefer quiet.
I haven’t lived in a really large city, but have been around noise enough that I’m hoping our next move will distance us from neighbors and highway noise.
And yes, maybe we’ll have a farm animal or two.
It doesn't matter if the parent's assumptions are "quite a few" or don't match you, what matters is if they match a big segment of the population to be statistically useful. There are always outliers who love to grow old in a big city and have their ashes scaterred in the middle of Manhattan.
- Lived in a big city
- Lived in a rural community
Or as I heard it quipped -- you don't love something for it's best bits; you love it because you can tolerate its worst bits.
For our purposes (which in this subthread is determining whether grandparents idea that "45+ prefer more quiet and wish to move to the country" is valid), this distinction doesn't matter - since this is not about whether that group is justified in preferring the country, but whether they prefer it or not.
Whether there are a large number of people who believe in something that's incorrect is immaterial, as is over-counting kvetching without any intent to follow through.
Good for you. Not on my subthread though :)
I've also lived from the deeply blue-collar (father's small business moving machinery) to the tech world. I find myself marketing my consulting business to small to medium-sized blue-collar/manufacturing businesses. Even though their Trumpist attitudes irritate me, I understand their world better than I do that of urban-centric, and their political views do not stop me from taking their money. It makes it easier for me to charge them the rates that I do.
I think the quip is a good one. However, I feel it could be better phrased as, "You need to seek out the best bits to remind you why you tolerate the worst bits."
When I'm having a bad day, and I wonder why I'm putting up the crap in my life, I walk into my yard, look at my garden with cucumbers, beans, cauliflower, and something like 20 tomato plants next to raspberries, blueberries, sour cherry tree, and Apple tree. And if it's a really really bad day, I will go and settle into the hammock and stare at the sky.
When I can finally feel gratitude for the life I have, then I go back and deal with the crap that lets me afford the life I have.
On one of my worst days of dealing with needlessly pedantic and blocking colleagues at a previous job, I sat out in the rain under an umbrella and watched ducks enjoy a pond.
Came back in, my coworker asked me if I was okay, and I just told him "Ducks don't mind when it rains."
It's become my mantra for rough days.
There is so much to be said for nature, and I feel like you can get 80% of the nature benefit by investing 20% time into it.
Why build a yurt, when you can get most of the benefit from a hammock? Why farm commercially, when you can get most of the benefit from a hobby farm?
I think a dial is preferable to either of the (urban, rural) choices.
I love dense, urban places and I also love quiet, secluded rural places.
In my mind, the ideal living situation allows one to quickly toggle between the two.
This is possible in the Bay Area and is the reason I moved here 15 years ago.
Growing up I yearned with a passion to live in a big city, but having lived a quite a few, I'm much less enamored with city life, at least in the US. Traffic sucks and often where you want to go is spread out geographically, so you're forced to deal with traffic. I also hate that there is so little greenery, except in a handful of places that are super expensive to afford to live near.
That said, cities do offer quite a few positives. Way more things to do and more people to meet.
I think many European cities seem better designed for foot traffic and bikes, with more nature interspersed, than US cities. Having only visited Europe, I feel like I'd much prefer to live in a European style city than many of the major US cities. Then again, since I didn't live in Europe it could be that many of the places I want to go to on a regular basis (like a climbing gym) are in out of the way places. Obviously not all European cities are the ideal (really hated the hustle and bustle in Rome for example), but many more cities I've visited there seem like nice places to live (I even fantasized about moving to Copenhagen for a while).
Doesn't that possibly reflect your social circle more than a statement about the public at large?
But I'll confess, I find people who talk like that a little obnoxious and I'll admit I may self select and avoid those people.
Some people do find a more rural life unappealing.
> I haven’t lived in a really large city, but have been around noise enough that I’m hoping our next move will distance us from neighbors and highway noise.
I feel this, and I'm mid 40s. I keep my eyes open for places to live which are somehow both remote and near decent healthcare options. I don't need the healthcare options now, but I am aware that I am only going to get older and that's something that I'd want.
I do my best to keep my yard full of life and tend to my plants and my gardens, but there's always the noise from the highway a mile or so away. It's less annoying when it's hot out, but the drone bothers me in the winter months.
Generalizing, I'd say younger people (18-35) are more default-comfortable in novel situations. As we age, people's tolerance for that seems to decrease.
And, on the whole, I'd say that rural life provides less novelty than city life. Or at least novelty within tighter bounds.
It's the same in Poland, in this period of the year the sunset is at 10 pm and dusk at 11.
If you think about how most of Europe is at the same latitude as Canada, you really start to appreciate how important the Gulf Stream is for our climate...
Except whenever they came to Portland to play the Trailblazers, the arena commentators would mock it with signs like "We The North-er" etc. Portland is just over 2 degrees further north than Toronto.
I'm with ya, I tend to rise with the sun and 5:00 AM gets very old. Morning's like "Can I just sneak by you? Ope[0], sorry 'bout that, didn't mean to wake you up"
[0] I couldn't resist.
Want a house? Get ready to replace: The foundation, the roof, the sewer lateral, oh and the addition wasn't done with a permit so its not to code at all. All for the low low price of $500k! On a lovely 1/4th acre plot, you'll be hearing your neighbor while they fart in the bathroom. What, you only got $500k? Don't worry, this other person here has $550k and they don't have a problem with the house need to be rebuilt!
Oh I'm looking at $500k houses? I should be looking at 1.1mil houses to not deal with all those problems? Now I've got 1.1mil mortgage for 30 years. I don't want to work into my 70's for a house.
Compared to... come to Michigan, you can get 5 acres for less than $300k and your house is functional, maybe it needs a new roof within 5 years. My mortgage is 15 years and will be paid off before that.
I think "competition" is the big thing that drove me back home. I was tired of competing with my neighbors (people who live in the same city) for _everything_. I don't mind people, I loved meeting people in every city I lived. I just felt like I had to fight for every "inch" in most "big cities" (but especially SFBay area).
It's very peaceful here. I love it. Maybe I'll go to the big lake (Michigan) later and swim.
Once it gets big enough that "good" restaurants require a reservation any day of the week, and those reservations are difficult to get, I'm moving somewhere else.
Why work to fight to win... what you can just enjoy somewhere else?
But there's a pretty big swath of cities between {Cheesecake Factory} and {Manhattan}.
You mentioned the 300,000 on 5 acres, and that's definitely possible, but you're not getting that in the desirable parts of Macomb or Oakland County[0], nor anywhere in Wayne outside of Detroit/Detroit-ish areas.
I watched a house on a busy city road (one where "pulling out of the driveway means an immediate traffic backup to the light" between 7-9 and 4-6 every day) which was 2,200 sq ft, 4 BR 2.0 BA, though it was new construction (relatively modern/upgraded interior) go for $550,000 in 2022 after multiple bids. The home I own (1800/3BR/1.5BA) which I purchased for $175,000 in 2001 and would have lost money had I sold it between 2007~2018, is worth about $330,000. This is partly due to the value increasing due to local changes and "what's happening everywhere in the country" housing prices-wise. I know folks who moved to Plymouth to a home with similar specs but paid a quarter million in 2017.
Cool. And because I didn't re-finance, I don't have a mortgage any longer. Except I want to upgrade. And had I done that in 2008, I could have afforded it. Now that upgrade is twice as much but my salary has not followed suit. My desire to upgrade went to near zero, already, once I paid it off. But now I couldn't even afford to if I wanted to. I figure I'll downgrade and move near the kids when they're older and take home some cash in the process.
One thing I love about where I live in Michigan, though ... it's rare that a house doesn't have a basement. Even in places you wouldn't expect -- our next-door neighbor on Lake Huron had a full basement with 12ft ceilings (and a hell of a system to keep it bone dry). And newer homes tend to have excellent ones you can make useful -- if not always up-to-code -- living/lab spaces out of. SFBay hacks in their garage. We hack in our basements.
[0] When people say they "Live in Detroit" that's probably where they live. Just like the Detroit Zoo.
Best I've been able to do is work for employers out of state/country but I'm currently employed locally at a remote-only shop.
The weather. I get it. Everyone uses the same "5 minutes and it'll change" joke, but we're unique here. I thought I read somewhere that we see fewer cloudless days than the Pacific Northwest, but I can't find a reference so I suspect that's false, but we spend, basically, December to April with few sunny days. We live in a place of extremes, as well. Ten below (Fahrenheit) in the coldest winter days, 99 degrees a couple of days ago. Had one day in July when I was in High School where it was 85 degrees in the morning and in about a 15-minute period of time dropped to 45 due to a Derecho[0] rolling through (which almost picked me up off the ground due to 75 MPH winds and sent a large Oak Tree through our master bedroom).
We don't get Spring or Autumn, we get Winter, Summer, and a period of time where the two are at war and it may be Winter or Summer depending on what day/hour it is. A decade ago, I was in the ER on the first week of March. The hospital couldn't "turn on the Air Conditioning" at will, they had to switch over seasonally, so when we had an unexpected 85 degree day, that meant it was about 85 degrees in the ER. That was fun.
It is a beautiful place if you get out of the more populated parts, but I work here and that's where I live. Still, nice that it's an hour drive to get to something that qualifies as "Up North[1]"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho
[1] A phrase that has little to do with direction around here ... mostly just means "resort-ish small town, a lot of which survives due to summer 'Cabin Up North' folks." Ours is in Port Sanilac. But, really, Lake Orion and Walled Lake used to be "Up North" communities :)
Michigan summers are much much milder (and shorter) than Texas summers (I lived in Houston for a few years).
Michigan is also cool in the winter
A: Be a billionaire and then start farming.
At some point the owner told us "I'm sorry guys, we'll fix this field. If I win the lottery, I'm gonna fix all of this, and I'm gonna hire a bunch of hot brazilian dancers to entertain us while we work".
It didn't even occur to him that he could stop doing it.
In farming, something is always broken or less than it should be. But there is literally not enough time in the day (or money) to fix and maintain everything perfectly. So you do the best you can.
Similarly, in waterwork, the ocean beats the hell out of everything. Docks, boats, houses, machinery, etc. And so why fix that solid but beat-up dock, if there's a chance this year brings the hurricane that rips it away? Functionality is more important than form.
IE someone who is not depending on the "farm" to be a commercially successful operation or is even attempting to run it as a profitable business.
I think that everyone should own some land to feed himself in the event of economy fallout.
A large garden, some chickens, and perhaps a few goats are more than enough to keep a hobbyist tinkering all day, and is still what I'd call 'farming', though YMMV.
Hmm, why?
You could end up:
- living off the land
- paying low taxes on your homestead
(house + 1 acre)
- paying almost no taxes on your ag
land (all but 1 acre)
- stretching your savings for many
more years than you'd have any
right to otherwiseBecause they have two of every animal, but an uneconomically small herd.
In that regard Jeremy Clarkson paints a much more realistic picture, even though that show is very over the top and mostly scripted.
I grew up on a farm and was on track to take it over. I know how hard it is. And it was not the live I wanted, so I pivoted to online marketing and web development instead.
I went to college instead and work a regular job. Grandpa has been on that farm since he was born in 1922. Until he retired in 2006, he took two days off work the entire time.
No. Thank. You.
i've herded cattle on an aussie ranch as part of a working holiday. fun experience as a young man, but absolutely convinced me that IT was the right choice.
YouTube pays his bills mostly, not the farm.
> Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have.
It depends on the scale, I know 80+ years old people living in the countryside, still splitting their own wood, growing their own garden/orchard, manually removing potatoe bugs from their decently sized potatoe field, cutting grass with a scythe, taking care of their chickens/goats/sheeps... they're 100% self sustained and use tools from the 19th century they inherited from their parents. They're in better physical and mental shape than most code monkeys I know while being 50+ years older
I do too, and not a single one of them is happy about it. Every person I talked to, starting from my grandparents, wants to move to a city where heating etc is taken care of for you, but in their age it's easier to continue doing what they've always been doing instead of enduring massive changes like that.
Of course, it's not our primary source of income, as that is my work as software engineer. For her it's a nice hobby.
I don't think you'd need a degree anyhow. Plenty of stuff can be learned online these days. And you don't need a lot of equipment either, if it's just to take care of yourself or your family. Depending on your community, you might also be able to rent some equipment if you need it at times (my girlfriend rents some equipment, tractor or some such with a driver, to cut the rice, about 2 times a year, as do most people in our village).
If you have a bit of a garden, can easily start as a hobby, I think.
Farmers can make a lot of money, or at least somebody does. A single family Saskatchewan dryland wheat farm is typically worth $10M in land and equipment so either the farmer makes enough money to pay the interest on a multi-million dollar bank loan or enough money so that continuing to farm is preferable to retiring and living on the interest.
The problem is of course the variability due to weather and wild swings in commodity prices. A farm can produce a high six figure income one year and lose six figures the next.
But as you noted, if you're not looking to pull six figures per year from your farm, then it does become quite a bit simpler.
On the other hand, livestock farming is incredibly hard work (cows need to be milked 365 days a year) and you more or less always lose money.
Pests, bad weather etc. are definitely issues even with modern farming techniques, so in a good year you make a bit of money but in a bad year you can lose most of the crop
Are we talking industrial scale? Because not every farming venture needs to reach that, and most smaller farmers don't have "college degress and millions in equipment".
And you can pick up a lot in a couple of years, I've had friends who made the switch (and extended family who worked on farming).
Not in the US though, but judging from the decent sized subculture of "living off the grid" (or close), it's probably even easier there.
At some point sitting at a computer becomes unfulfilling and some point some people can’t take it anymore.
One of my neighbours produces 10,000 litres of wine/year on ~4 acres of vines. An acquaintence runs a market garden on less than an acre. Another raises pigs in a barn on half that.
Take a trip through rural America sometime and look around. You'll see lots of very poor-looking households, but if you look carefully you might notice that they keep chickens and have a garden, and larger properties have more in the way of animals. Many are dirt poor, but they live off the land, and can afford to be dirt poor. Not romanticizing it or anything -- the homesteadies I know are not into being dirt poor, but they are into being more independent and living off the land so as to stretch their savings.
I'm not suggesting everyone can be Jean-Martin Fortier, but with sufficiently low overheads and access to somewhat affluent markets, it is possible to make a living on an acre.
This seems like an unnecessary distinction with no purpose other than to gatekeep. A bartender is still a bartender if they only work weekends. An artist is still an artist if it's not their dayjob. A barber is still a barber if they have to work another job to make ends meet.
No, you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking that farming an acre or two is going to replace the income of most 9 to 5 jobs, but at a time in history where we absolutely need to be working to preserve and promote small-scale farming, we shouldn't be gatekeeping people.
This will entirely depend on local market conditions and suchlike, of course.
Interesting side topic: did you know that while John Deere's top of the line combine is well over $1 million retail (and of course everyone else's models are similarly priced), that a model 42 combine from the 1960s will still go for under $1000 at auction, even as recently as last October, and is more than sufficient to harvest oh, probably even up to 50 acres over a few days? If one sells wheat or oats or whatever, there's no way to compete at market but if one only wants enough wheat to feed themselves for the coming year (and not have to buy seed again next), it's some absurdly small acreage. You might need like a fifth of an acre. There's still plenty of hard work, but mechanization solved some of the worst parts of that before we were even born.
But there are other things there's demand for, or demand can even be created for, that do not have such vast efficient scales. Hand-reared escargot, or spinach grown within resonance of a woodpecker pecking at dawn, just two examples.
Please tell me this is a real thing freaks overpay for…
With very few exceptions, hating your customers is not good for your business.
Distant family member of mine started a hobby farm in retirement and lived on it for probably 30 years until his death. He lived off his pension and savings, not his crops.
Yes you can 'farm' on an industrial scale, or you can 'farm' on your parking strip. You're right when it comes to the former, and couldn't be more wrong when it comes to the latter.
> Student: I've struggled with math in the past, what do I need to do to be ready for your class?
> Me: Take the previous class first. You'll get easy A's in both, you'll actually understand the material when you need it, and there's no real downside since you have a minimum of 120 credits to fill to be able to graduate anyway.
In some ways it ties into the "big fish in a small pond" theory of life. People who take that sort of advice have easy, stable lives. I'll keep giving it. Likewise, most people probably shouldn't jump into farming unprepared.
That said, life is short, and a year is a long time. If you can stomach the downside risk (losing every dime you poured into farming, having to work hard at it), by all means just jump in. There are vibrant communities willing to teach you everything you need to know, and you'll learn faster working on real problems you're personally experiencing than rote memorizing the tasks a seasoned master tells you to do.
If you want to mitigate some of the risks, perhaps start with something small enough you could manage it without millions in equipment (high-margin products like mushrooms and arugula -- and if you go with those, focus on distribution as a primary concern).
I would love to "farm", but only as a retirement "job", and only with specific products.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336880 (255 points on March 4, 2021 | 80 comments )
My bias is not to go directly to factory farming or industrial agriculture, which sound depressing. I'd rather a smart and lazy approach, helping the land recover to a point and then stopping succession, as has been done with fire in the PNW mountain meadows for berry crops. I'm not under the illusion that the land-management practices of the Nisqually or Puyallup, say, didn't involve consistent work, just a different sort of work, one more within individual and small-group control.
If petroleum-fueled agriculture is "necessary", it's a mess we've gotten ourselves into.
I was a staff architect at a public company and started a trash cooperative this year
I 1000% prefer making my neighbors better off than some idiot CEO and all the assholes on the board and investors
I’ve had a few ideas in the direction of collecting certain types of trash to recycle (eg: food waste, garden waste, paper/cardboard) due to a personal interest in composting and related topics.
There’s certain stuff though that I have no idea how to recycle (yet). Would one negotiate with a larger waste management company for these items? Or simply offer it as a way for neighbours to reduce their trash collection bills?
Send me a message at Andrew@seegull.org if you want
"I love tomatoes! I'm going to grow my own!"
wow what a coincidence so do these little baby moths
Don't get me wrong, growing your own food is neat, but you're going to trade the money you'd spend on veggies for time and effort trying to keep even a small back porch of plants alive. You have to be fastidious about everything from soil maintenance/security (from pests) to pesticide application.
But if it’s for sustaining yourself, it’s not so bad.
Personally, the only “farming” I would pivot into is vertical farming. The idea of turning what would normally be a massive operation out in the country into a self sustainable, climate controlled operation in an urban environment is fascinating to me.
Optimize crops for taste rather than pest or weather resistance. Combine it with the fact that transportation can be reduced significantly; and it’s a recipe for a circular and self sustainable ecosystem.
A lot of actually viable commercial farms where I live are smaller than many hobby farms in the US, for a start.
What a lot of people mean when they say they are quitting to take up farming is pretty much hobby farming - where you may break even or turn a miniscule profit, but the main “goal” is to simply become a bit more self sufficient and do it for some sense of enjoyment.
The interesting thing is some small “hobby farms” are effectively experiments in permaculture or other forms of regenerative “living” that can be extremely cost efficient or even profitable.
The number one killer of open source projects is funding. It is demoralizing to spend years on something that isn't going to really put food on the table, and we do not live in a society that allows us to fully chase our hobbies and passions with complete abandon to that fact.
I miss the physical world and being able to touch and understand mechanical objects. In time I have become a decent bike mechanic and I can do some plumbing and electrical work.
This is just to say that some of us end up craving contact with the physical world more, not less.
I know a dev who's stopped working in his 40s (made huge money by being in the right startup at the right moment) and took up on farming, but not as a mean to survive rather than "fun".
He even ended up having quite some profit after few years by focusing on exotic edibles for gourmet restaurants, but obviously he doesn't make anywhere near the money he did as a developer, but he does love his life.
I can't lie, I aspire to do kinda the same and pick up on farming, but just for myself and family. The food industry is beyond disgusting and you just can't trust what you're eating, no matter how deep your wallet it.
For example: a “enclosed” mushroom growing op (a few sheds or cabins) can be made incredibly efficient using various sensors, automation solutions, and environmental controls to maintain the optimal growing environment. It can be as complex or as simple as you want.
I just wish these things were more common place. All these technological advances...it should be easy option for people to live in communities where they can do few hours of work a day and live simply. Yet this is somehow a complete luxury!
Instead we need cars, roads, computers, phones, to work 8-10 hours a day just to provide ourselves with shelter food and clothing.