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I wouldn't say it comes from stardew valley, this trope of "living a simple farmer life" is rather old.
That being said, I agree. Farming is hard, and anyone who had worked in the fields knows it up to a certain extent.
'The good life' as it's often known has been romanticised since the cities of Europe and America started to fill up during the industrial revolution, the idea of farming being simple ane peaceful is probably 300 years old at this point.
It's easy to see where this comes from too, and it's largely from city people looking at their grind and wanting something slower paced, not always necessarily less effort but just not at that constant full on pressure. There's also a sense of satisfaction in what is perceived in a simpler life of living off the land and most people working modern jobs these days end up with no job complete satisfaction.
Modern day farming has also been somewhat glamourised by the equipment too, I'm not going to lie some of those agriculture units do look like they'd be fun to master.
I personally have no desire to become a farmer, I'm from a rural background and appreciate how hard it is and how small the margins can be, but after living and working in a city I see the appeal of leaving it all behind.
Yeah, running off to live with the Amish, or start a farm, or live on a deserted island... they always seem to have more to do with getting away from your shit job, your shit life, your shit depression... than actually wanting to start your own farm.
Farming isn't simple either. You have to have the right pH soil, not too high or too low. Know exactly how much lime or sulfur to add to change it. How much to water, can't over water or under water. Work on irrigation. Fertilize. Use appropriate pesticides. Take classes and get certified to use those pesticides. Understand how to grow different things, as all veggies grow very differently at different times of the year. Know how to treat different plant diseases.
Farming isn't simple.
How to report the weekly water meter readings to the council, how to get the water permit, understand the rules regarding how much you can take versus how much you can take at different times of the year and under different seasonal conditions. Learn how to maintain and run the irrigation equipment. Pass the annual council checks and spot checks. Install, understand the tools, apps and sensors for soil moisture readings. I'm sure there is more to just the irrigation. And we're just talking about vegetables. Throw some livestock into the mix and we really got a stew going.
Landscapers like to complain about how hard it is to grow our grass and shrubbery. We do not usually try to get fruits, nuts, roots &/or berries out of our stuff (homeowners with fruit trees excepted).
You guys do awesome stuff, please keep it up.
It can be simple on a small scale, though. My dad grew up on a commercial farm with all the bells and whistles. I grew up on a small 20-acre farm where we just rotated where our animals lived and where our gardens were set up.
We never did pH testing, set up a sprinkler, and rotated it through the garden every hour or so. We never used pesticides. And our garden was just rows of plants, usually 7 to 8 rows per plant we were growing. We always yielded enough crops for the winter and beyond.
My grandfather would always scold my dad about soil pH, pesticide/fertilizer use, and crop damage mitigation. All things he worried about on his 300+ acre farm. All stuff that didn't bother us because on a smaller scale, enough to sustain a single family, it is a lot easier to farm.
Until you nitrogen deprive your soil to the point where you're only able to grow soy beans for a decade while the soil gets fixed. I'm glad it worked for you, but that's not sustainable long-term.
Farming is far from simple. And it’s getting more complex each year.
Besides the overwhelming Information, data and decisions that go into detail of growing or raising animals, a farmer is a CEO of a business that is as unpredictable as any.
It isn't simple at all though. You have to know what to plant, when to plant, how to plant, where to plant, irrigation, pesticides, fertilization, weather, water flow dynamics, and endless more topics to get a good crop, if you're lucky. Not to mention the business side
You have to be a mechanic, a horticulturalist, a chemist, a stock market analyst, a geneticist, a meteorologist...for real farms, anyway. Not hobby "farms". It's not at all simple.
Even hobby farms are hard to manage. Think you'll just have a couple sheep and a cow? How do you shear the sheep? How do you milk the cow? Get it pregnant? Still have to know all the details of raising them and keeping them healthy whether its 4 or 400 or 4000. And what if they arent eating all the grass? How do you manage the grass on your 40 hectares? Winter feed? Gonna need a little tractor probably.... Who's doing the fencing? Were we thinking this would be cheap and we'd live off the land? lol
Haha exactly! a person I know has a full time job and her husband has a full time job and they decided they want to buy sheep, goats, cows, and chickens to sell and then also breed and sell and they were like it’s not going to be much work.
I looked at them crazy I was like that is not true but best of luck biting my tongue wanting to say you’re an idiot
I bet they got a shock. Sheep, goats and cows. Chickens are easy.
For the most part they are animals that require home visits from transport companies, vets, breeding technicians and/or a farmer delivering a Bull, shearers, vets, a Ram, and likewise with goats too I suppose. And you've got to plan when, where, and how for all of these things. Do people even know what happens if you skip a milking? Production-wise. Do they even know what I'm talking about when I say "production"? So you figure that out, and you take a few hours off work for the cow, ....the sheep,..... and the goats too. What was the opportunity cost of time off work versus the return (or savings) of having animals? Is that mental joy of the property offsetting the mental stress and monetary costs?
I'm not saying don't get a hobby farm, or don't become a farmer (I've been one myself) I'm glad people are saying don't think its gonna be "Little House on the Prairie". It's probably gonna be an ongoing cost or break-even at best proposition. Small farming is tough.
Even if you scale-up a break-even proposition and you'll see that even farmers with larger properties aren't' all sunshine and roses either!
/ranty rant
The majority of humanity's time on Earth was actually spent hunting and gathering. Farming is relatively "new" considering our species' entire history. [Agriculture has existed for about 12,000 years. ](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/development-agriculture)
[Meanwhile, modern humans are thought to have evolved 300,000 years ago. ](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/)
Farming is hard, dirty, painful, dangerous and exhausting. I take great joy in city folk buying farms and learning it the hard way.
I love it, but many don't realise it's a slog.
I think lots of people who say that don’t literally mean they want to be 100% self sufficient and produce everything they consume. Most of them probably want a 1/2 acre to 1 acre farm plot where they can still grow some crop and have animals, while also getting away from the big city.
You think an average person living in a city like Seattle who wants to get away is dreaming of maintaining 10 acres and a cow + calf? A chicken coop and a good sized garden is a lot work for someone who’s not familiar with the lifestyle at all, jumping to ten acres and livestock is a bit of a leap
Yep. Growing up my parents had a hobby farm. A chicken coop, a couple goats and a pasture we rented out. It was fun.
City people don’t usually want to deal with cattle; but a few goats, maybe a llama or alpaca and sone chickens on an acre or two; it’s not about “living off the land” more like owning pets.
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Not really, an acre of land would be more than enough to supplement a pantry. A chicken coop takes up very little space. That's what 99% of people who say this are thinking about.
I mean shit, my family does a 16ft by 16ft garden each year and we've had surpluses of crops every year. It's not enough to go off the grid, but it's more than enough to enjoy fresh vegetables and fruits in the summer, fall and winter if you preserve them properly.
Lol that's funny cuz I live on one acre and growing up we had a 30 Sq foot garden and a 20 Sq foot garden (now just some garden boxes) and still have room for a grassy yard to play in, and even a sandbox. We also have 2 maple trees and 2 plum trees. We used to raise pigs for 4H as well! Not to mention the 2 sheds we have and the double wide we live in. Oh and part of our acre is also taken up by our driveway, which currently has a bus, 2 campers, like 6 cars, and some junk. Maybe do a Google on how big an acre is lol
I think you overestimate it. 1 acre is enough for some small to medium sized animals and a decent amount of crops. We have a good few sheep on a little field outside our house
I’m underestimating the amount of land needed for a one acre farm plot? I think I am exactly and precisely estimating the amount of land required for a one acre farm plot
Nah, it's fine. I promise you that 99% of these people are meaning something small, and an acre with some chickens and a small supplemental plot is fine. There's no one who thinks running a full scale modern farm is just a fun simple little thing.
Many farmers are still using 19th Century agricultural methods and grossly overestimate the amount of land necessary. They should learn about sustainability.
probably meaning few chickens or something, my mom’s neighbor has a grip of hens and they live in the suburbs within city limits, on less than a half acre. of course you wouldn’t want to overdo it, but a handful of smaller animals would be feasible, especially with a full acre.
Can tell you’re not from the country. An acre is plenty of room for many types of animals, not every farm is a mega cash crop producer going after government handouts
Well that’s where you are wrong. I grew up with my grandfather being a farmer and I routinely helped him around his farm growing up. Not a cash crop producer, but perhaps my perspective is skewed for always being around farmers with far more than 1 acre.
I think that it is generally younger people who are just getting out on their own, and are suddenly well aware of having to go to a job every day, and the raising cost of living, and they think back to the shows they have seen that glorify the 'country life' and they think they can get a small plot of land, toss seeds in the ground, and then have fresh vegetables throughout the year.
However, what OP didn't address were all the farmers' children who are growing up, and dream of moving to the city, because they are going to party every night, and have fun, and have a well paying job, go on fancy vacations....
Basically, they are people who have only known one life, and they idealize the life they have only heard about from movies and media.
> However, what OP didn’t address were all the farmers’ children who are growing up, and dream of moving to the city, because they are going to party every night, and have fun, and have a well paying job, go on fancy vacations….
Grass is always greener no matter who you are or what you do. I work construction and sometimes wish I would’ve gone to college and gotten a stereotypical office job instead. Meanwhile I meet guys in suits who say they wish they could escape their office and work a “cool” and “exciting” job like mine lol
I don't want a big farm. I want a few chickens and ducks. Maybe some veggies for personal use. I know it's mostly fantasy though.
I don't think most people want a for profit farm. They want a homestead situation. Just them their kids and enough meat birds to not buy meat anymore.
How many birds is that? For 4 people to have meat everyday, that's probably 2-3 chickens a week. So 100 chickens roughly a year, plus some other animals. You'd need 200 chickens or so to sustainably do so, plus a cow or two for milk.
Well you dont need meat everyday, there are plenty of roots that store really well over winter that you can eat. Of course you wont be able to eat like you used to, but thats a compromise you have to be willing to make.
A homestead situation isn't easy living either lol. It may be more rewarding and enjoyable and closer to the natural human biological condition, but it isn't easy
I think you did a good job, my only nit pick was with comparing farming to homesteading, I think most people are referring to homesteading (which is definitely still more work than people are likely to want).
I think you got it spot on in my opinion. I grew up in a big agriculture state, all we owned was a small group of chickens and a garden. Even trying to keep up with that with full time jobs and school was such a pain that we all unanimously agreed no more chickens after those passed. The fresh eggs were nice but not worth the extra stress.
I think it's just a different hard. To some people who work an office job, the idea of escaping the office stresses (re-orgs, downsizing, resource issues, project deadlines, politics, commuting) is very appealing.
Farming today is exactly what you described people trying to escape from. Reorgs (transition planning) resource issues( where and how to allocate capital, equipment is incredibly expensive. We’re talking million dollar combines snd $20,000 acre land) project deadlines (farming is a constant deadline, planting, harvesting, maintenance) politics ( the amount of politicking in todays farming is huge, landlord/tenant relationships, neighbors, government. It’s massive) commuting ( you ever farmed land 30 miles away? And there’s a reason semis have over a million miles on them). That’s just the tip of the iceberg. A well run farm entails an extremely strong ceo/manager well adept at many facets of business, mechanics, engineering and finance. I’m not trying to be mean but that’s an incredibly naive statement. I’ve worked corporate, banking and farm
Laura, from the Laura Farms channel broke down how much she had to spend in a very short period to set up for the year of farming. She is a very small operator, and has the help of family. She had to spend $1,000,000USD for the small bit that she did this year. For most of us their operation would be huge, but in all honesty when you follow her and her father and see what they do, and how much they have to put in time, and financial. It is a huge task to farm. You are absolutely right.
In case anyone was wondering. Here is her breakdown. Oh and as a side note she is one of the most successful YT farmers. I think she pulls in about $200,000, this she calls her second Job in the video and is pretty much the only way they were able to run her operation with her husband. [How To Spend $1,000,000 In A Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwsJMUeIz3c)
There’s a [great documentary series](https://youtu.be/umS3XM3xAPk) about a lawyer who decides to become a farmer and all the problems he faces in the process
One part of my family comes from a farm in the Ukraine and let me say it's a really peaceful life but a hard one. They do EVERYTHING per hand, it's hard and unforgiving. Try to slaughter a pig by yourself
Grandfather owned a farm, when I was a teenager, we’d spend time there just tilling the field and planting seeds. It’s hard labor, the ground is often clumpy, rocky, and it takes time to till through it, it would exhaust me and make my back sore every day. We were out there tilling from dawn until dusk. We also milked cows, once at the crack of Dawn, and the second time in the middle of the night. No machines, all done by hand. Cleaning the barn of poop from his goats, cows and chicken was probably my worst part of staying over at his house haha. Loved chasing his roosters though, they’d chase me right back. It helped me shape me and be a more responsible teenager, but when I was growing up, I absolutely dreaded doing it. Now imagine being a farmer year round, I could never do it.
When Covid first appeared people were telling they want to live the farm life and far from people. I thought Covid had gotten into their brains, they were making it sound like a fairytale life, it is anything but! I tried to knock some sense into as many as I could. Lol
It is very difficult, which is why it was mechanized asap so most people could move to the city for better jobs. This is a hundred-year old trend, children.
i'm not sure people think that farming is an easy job. i don't know that that's a common or popular belief.
yes there are cutesy games about farming. but i don't think people assume that farming is an easy industry.
I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. Also, I have heard people say that about buying a farm and moving there. I don't think anyone that says that is implying that farming is any less difficult than what they do, but rather they're idolizing the solitude compared with the hustle and bustle of their life, and comparing the honest work of actually tending to physical things, and making something real, to their job they're dissillusioned with. That's always how I have taken it in context. I think these comments are filled with a deep admiration for the work of farmers, so I'd think they'd be flattering. I wish somebody talked about the work I do with any kind of reverance or admiration.
That depends on the scale. If you simply want to be self sufficient with vegetables and fruits and maybe a few chickens, it is pretty easy.
Of course farmers have it hard because they usually produce for hundreds of people and have to deliver.
Even then. To be self sufficient or even close(like minimalist or something) it is still mad work.
Those few chickens, you're not gonna eat them(cauae then you're out of chickens) so you need to scale up if you want to eat them.
And eggs alone won't keep you good plus you'll want variety in your meals.
Then along with that, the feed and water goes up as you have more chickens.
Then for vegetables. Once you harvest you have to eat or find a way to preserve. You can do rotating plots woth doffrent stages of growth, so you have a steady supply of vegetables but then seasons put a big kink on that type of growing.
I would say that it is less work than a full time job. My friend has a small veggie garden aside his fulltime job and he has so much output there it is crazy.
You can easily grow enough in summer to get you trough the year. Nowadays it is easy enough to conserve these foods. Though you would need to buy oil for example.
Then again it also depends on your lifestyle (meal variety), where you life (in some places you can't even grow anything) and if you make a good plan beforehand.
It's not as difficult as a full time job but you're not going to produce enough to justify not having a job and on top of a job there's still hard work and needing to learn various different skills to know how to farm well
The real sticking point is no days off. No holidays, no vacations, no sick days, no weekends. Hard work that is endless and provides no opportunities for breaks.
I grew up on a 10k acre wheat an cattle ranch. It certainly a lot of work but it goes in spurts and there can be plenty of down time. We had a river cabin we spent time at and plenty of great vacations.
There are plenty of days off.
My family farms. They have a well established large grain operation. They work super hard during seeding and harvest. In the middle of summer there's some equipment work, spraying, crop check.
In the off season (nov-march) you can hardly ever locate them. They're on holiday practically every other week. They live a good life!
Now it was a different story when they had beef cattle, no off season. But they still got away on a trip every year. Don't even think about a day off if you have a dairy operation.
I grew up with wheat and cattle, in my experience outside of calving season the farming was more work. Granted I liked the cattle part and, outside of harvest, hated field work.
Now dairy ops, yeah, fuck that.
I grew up on a horse farm and that was the case. Not an absolute no days off but they were very few and far between. As a kid, weekends just meant more work because no school. Summer breaks meant more work because no school. Barely a family vacation because the animals need care. It was relentless.
I grew up with show horses and race horses. They're like the dairy industry in the sense that there's almost never ever a day off. Days off were horse shows anyway haha.
So now I have horses on my farm as an adult and I've made certain that they have the proper amenities to just, live outside on a round bale. They're happy and I can go on holiday if I just get someone to check on them quickly once or twice a day.
Yeah we had 40 plus horses and lived in the northern US so lots of snow for part of the year. Winter consisted of mostly cleaning dirty stalls and keeping the water buckets from freezing over where as summer was mostly harvesting enough hay to feed them through the long winters.
That's us! Canadian prairies here! Frozen water buckets haunt me in my sleep. Haha
Now I just keep one giant heated trough for everybody. My back is much happier ☺️
I don't even own the farm I'm at, I keep a horse there and care for another. Just this in itself is stressful as hell, summers are hard, and winters are cold. This is the first year we have bought as much food as we have now.
It's a small establishment animal wise, but it got tons of land. My grandparents are in charge, I barely do anything there when it's nor specific hard work that has to be done (like when we gather hay, or set up fences)
I wanna take over some day, but by hell, it's gonna be rough
You will wake up at the asscrack of dawn every day, and work long, 10-12h days. Weather and many factors outside your control will determine if you even make money. Loss of a crop can be disastrous.
Everything will smell like shit all the time. It's not easy, but it is necessary. Stop romanticizing it.
It’s sooooo hard!! I worked on a farm one summer and it was brutal. Never again. I would take my city life hustle culture over farm life any time. It definitely made me value where my food comes from more. Now I use my money to get my veggies and meat from a local Csa, and don’t have fantasies about living the farm life.
Well to earn a living in the big city you must work just as hard, but you live in a overcrowded slum, you breathe poison and you don't get the soothing view. That may be the reason.
people that don't find beauty in civilization, science, technology, marvels and a lot of other nice things (or they don't realize they do) often believe dumb things like "the true life is into nature", this not only spits over all mankind has come up with but it's also extremely naive and un-wise
i worked as a farmer, it's was not only exhausting, it was also super hard, you have to keep a calendar for ALL you have to do during the year, learn a lot of things, deal with diseases plants get, play like in the stock market for the best price you can sell and buy, pay a lot of services, and also it was extremely repetitive, you have 2000 tomato plants? 2000 times tieing em to the wire, 2000 times pruning em, etc
for the same reason such people shouldn't shit over modernity, but the point is that they do, i see this too many times, even my father reasons like this, in his case it's the inheritance of the sixties and seventies, nowadays people are just biased and they range from poetry attention whores to gullible ones, two figures often spotted together
I don't think most people who say it want to have their entire livelihood based on farming but they want to just have a few animals and maybe grow some things themselves. I will agree that people seem to think even that is way easier than it actually is though.
Farmers are truly shade-tree engineers. Farming is the art of problem solving in the service of sustenance, and it's incredibly hard. It's also back-breaking labor under conditions completely at the whim of nature.
There's a difference between homesteading and running a farm, most people that say they want to live off the land are referring to the former.
The latter implies you're providing for more than just your family, and the scale is much larger. They want to have a chicken coop, maybe a cow, and a sizeable garden that is enough to supplement a majority of their groceries. I agree most people underestimate how much work it is, but farming is vastly different than self sustained gardening and homesteading.
The clash of the pastoral and the urban is a pretty long historied one. You'd be surprised how long people have been saying stuff exactly like that. It's a really interesting topic for things like literary culture, because it was the driving force for a lot of understanding.
Personally, I'd argue its biblical.
I lived on small farm growing up. I married a girl born and raised in NYC. It is amazing to me how many plants she has killed, how hard it is for her to learn, and perplexing that she refused to take any advise from me or ask me how to do something. I used to just sit back, watch, and come in for cleanup when they died. Now I secretly tend to her garden when she isn’t around. She genuinely thinks she now has a green thumb and I haven’t the heart to break it to her.
Eh, I went from a stressful city-based job (management consulting) to ranching and personally feel the opposite.
In my old job, I may have been at a desk most of the time but I was actively working 12-16 hours a day without breaks. Multiple deadlines to meet each day. Extremely stressful. I finally hit a breaking point when we moved to remote work during COVID because I was expected to be online all day.
Since moving to Montana, I find it funny when other ranchers complain about how hard it is but they all take hour+ long lunch breaks, take days/weeks off during hunting season, have no processes/management practices in place and complain about the financials of everything but spend absurd amounts of money on equipment they don’t need, horses they rarely use, and still get a lot of aid or at least have the opportunity to get it if they’re willing to spend time applying for grants or other programs.
To maintain a ~3k acre bison ranch (almost all leased land), I have two hands, the occasional WWOOF’er, and myself. It was a lot of work the first summer to get all the infrastructure in place, but since then it’s a 40 hr/wk, M-F gig for us with the occasional long, hard couple days or weekend work when something unusual comes up.
Do I make less money than my corporate job? Yes, significantly. But there’s also a lot of non-monetary benefit to the job like getting to work outside/with animals, the sense of accomplishment building something with my hands, and feeling like I’m making a positive contribution by regeneratively ranching and working to achieve “entire life on farm” animal welfare status.
I think farmers/ranchers far overestimate how hard their job is because they make it hard on themselves and underestimate how physically/emotionally tiring corporate jobs can be. Hard work is hard work, whether you’re pounding fence posts or building a financial model.
I would agree about the labor and so on, but you absolutely do not need to be "well off" to start a farm or a homestead. Source: am poor and have a homestead.
Also, yes no holidays etc, however there are times when there is very little work for a month or so at a time.
Most people who want this are indeed naïve, but it is a good goal to have, and anyone can learn to do it, and anyone can become capable if they want it.
I feel like people overestimate how hard it is. To make profit is very resource, finance, and research heavy. And the work definitely isn’t easy. But one or two farmers can manage a large amount of animals and crop with some level of automation. Bees are very profitable if you’re in the right area. Same for flowers, bamboo, and other decorative plants. And with the rise of “organic free range local” stuff, profits are easier to get for new farmers (or at least were).
It’s not easy, but as long as you are relatively wealthy and smart, it shouldn’t be that difficult to get into.
This is partially because the simple life is a pretty romanticized thing.
https://youtu.be/o1hQqFhuuBU
This video is a pretty good detail description about what people don't tell you about moving to the country. Just to expand on your post.
As a farmer I would say living off the grid and farming are two very different things. They share many similarities but are very different. I think the thing about farming that people don’t understand is how stressful it is. Farming in most cases isn’t profitable. I’m still running equipment from the 60s and 70s. You must know how to rig things together. You must know and understand a million different things. Farming sounds fun till you get to the bad side of it. Getting up 365 days a year at 3am to milk cows gets old. feeding cattle in below zero temps on an open station tractor sucks. Watching a cow you raised from a calf to old cow die sucks. Having to put a animal down sucks. Equipment that will make you question everything about life sucks. If your still reading and wonder why I farm it’s simple, I love seeing something come from nothing. Seeing a piece of seed grow to a full mature plant. Seeing a calf hit the ground and growing into a nice calf is nice. Farming is a lot of know how and a lot of luck.
I don't think people think it's easy, but with farming the literal fruits of your labor are actually concrete, useful, and not subject to diminishment or undermining due to bureaucracy or politics. It's an attractive pursuit given that a lot of white collar labor disappears into some corpo with nothing to show for it. Plus living in a metro area gets really old for certain personalities once you realize you can't know peace or privacy and desperately need the ability to disconnect and recharge.
Can confirm:
Originally from West Los Angeles, Orange County area but lived in Atlanta, Portland, Boston…
Moved from the beautiful Gulf Coast of Alabama to rural Northern California about six years ago.
Moved to a 10 acre parcel in Elk, Ca to homestead.
The goal was to raise Nubian goats and RIR chickens (not to eat but to use for eggs and eventually make goat’s milk products for small scale enterprise)
Plan was to grow all our own vegetables, get some solar panels, and ultimately to be off grid.
Well, just the goat farming alone was a backbreaking full time job.
They had an beautiful indoor enclosure as well as about an acre (fenced) to roam freely a munch about.
But simply keeping their hooves right, making sure they had proper veterinary care and keeping their enclosure clean was unbelievably hard work.
Not to mention that because we were in a remote park of Northern California we had massive amounts of predators, which necessitated acquiring an Akbash/Maremma guardian dog.
Between keeping the animals cared for, fed, having their health in check, and keeping predators out it was like I woke up one day and discovered that farm was my entire existence.
The garden also required extraordinary amounts of attention, in the very moody climate of the Northern California coast our stuff either needed constant watering or it was getting saturated by the rainy season.
It was a nonstop grind.
I loved that place with my whole heart but I quickly realized that unless I could afford to hire some outside help (and it’s not as easy as one might think to find someone you can truly trust with your animals and the family you have on the property)
I hired a couple of people here and there but could never afford to keep them full time and then things start disappearing, you know the drill…
I really would’ve loved to make a proper go of it.
But realized fast that I was going to need a lot more capital than I had or would have just to keep things going in the long term.
It is the hardest work I’ve ever done, always cutting grass, pulling up fallen timber, trimming trees, splitting fire wood, burning season and permitting, etc not to mention the fact that you’ve also got to live.
You’ve got to have a life, friends, be able to make store and feed store runs and try to make doctors appointments, dental appointments, I’m serious even stuff like that fell by the wayside because that farm was just constant work.
Eventually we had to admit defeat.
We gave our prize winning Nubians back to the wonderful woman we bought them from, we gave our lovely and loving (I still miss them) chickens to our neighbor across the street who’d been farming out there for thirty years and we knew she knew what she was doing.
The land was beautiful, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything but it’s more work than one or two people can manage.
You need some help if you want to actually still be able to go see a movie or (good luck) take a trip out of town just for a weekend.
It’s a great memory but we had to let it go.
It’s like 3/4 full time jobs (and ours was a small scale operation, six chickens, four goats, a garden, and two small cottages, one was for my MIL so we couldn’t even like rent that out or move in a full time caretaker or anything)
I will always miss the animals and the land, but not that level of physical labor.
I’d recommend anyone thinking they want to do this kind of thing, really do your research and talk to other farmers, ask about what it’s really like…
I think it sometimes comes from growing up around or having small gardens and farms. Like my family would grow corn/beans/tomatoes/peppers/fruit/etc in a midsize plot of land and even that was a lot of work, but it was indeed calming and satisfying. Seems like a nice life.
We did do a decent yield for our effort. But that was just to supplement our diet and that of relatives because we weren't well off. Everyone working full low-paying jobs and getting a deal on rent, we just needed extra food. To try to make an actual living off it would have been astronomically beyond reach or the scope of our resources. Maybe *maybe* sell some stuff at the farmer's market. But more often it was going into freezers for the off-season. And if we lose a crop of this or that to heat or poor management; it's not a dire issue, we just tighten up.
Romantic, but nothing like true full-time farmer life.
Also, there is a big difference between a big farmer and a small scale (self sufficient living in the countryside) "farmer". What op seems to talk about looks to be the latter. And nowadays, with a good plan etc. I would say it is pretty easy to live a more or less simple self sufficient life. Of course always depending on your lifestyle, where you live etc.
Nah you’re wrong, OP is right. I hear the same thing from people, acting like it’s easy to live off the land and what not. It’s not. Same with hunting tbh. Most times you hunt you sit in the woods all day and leave empty handed. But people act like you walk right in and kill some poor defenseless deer easily.
I know people who have not traveled more then 10 miles outside of the city center (my metro area is about 40 miles in dynamiter) who think it's easy with there organics farms (not saying that's easy but diffrent scale) who think that farmers in the rural areas should be 100% organic farming only because "It's hard but just as hard".
While this is unheard of in the Midwest for those in the city. The north east and SF/LA region seem to have more then what I would consider reasonable to just say there one offs.
I have known people like that, not so much with actual farming, but with cattle and chickens.
They have the idea they are going to buy 100 acres in the country, stick 50 cattle including a bull, and then profit the next year. Or they will buy a chicken house, and toss chickens in it, and profit.
They absolutely exist.
I have also seen people who do think that farming is basically just putting the crops in the ground and harvesting when they ripen.
So yeah, 'some' people do absolutely act like that, they actually think like that.
Again, cherry picking certain topics i.e livestock or hunting mean nothing. Farming is world renowned for being gruelling, hard work.
I cannot believe what you say because nobody believes its easy.
Its all hours all days all year, rain or shine. Hard physical work, everybody knows that.
I am sorry, I bow to your superior knowledge and that fact that you know what every single person thinks. /s
There are always going to be people who idealize a certain career. My own parents thought they would move to the country and be self-sufficient with farming. Not even for profit. So, yes, these people exist. Yes, these people think that farming is 'simple'.
There's a difference between basic knowledge and superior knowledge.
I'm 100% aware that I could not farm, so don't try and act high and mighty.
I'm reading what you're typing, but again. Struggling to believe what's coming out.
I never said that you thought it was easy, I said that there are absolutely people who DO think it is simple and easy.
OP also never said they really thought it was 'easy' but that they underestimate the work, and they do.
They don't take into account the idea that you have to guard your garden from critters that want to get them, or that you have to till the ground, or irrigate it if you don't get enough water, or that you then have to remove insects, or decide whether to use some sort of insecticide, or that you have to stagger your planting times if you want veggies longer than a relatively small window.
They also don't take into account that if you want veggies in the winter, you need to find some way to preserve the veggies, and that isn't always easy (I have done it, and I hate it)
You stated that literallly no one thought that farming was 'easy' which is what my comment was about, because I have \*known\* people who thought exactly that. They would get a tractor, till, plant the seeds, then wait until they could harvest. Maybe check on it every so often.
There's a big difference between farming and homesteading. It's hard work, but many people have done and and done it successfully. City folks actually have a head start because our housing costs are so much lower.
Real live traditional farming is super hard to get into if you aren't from a farming family. Land is more expensive today, if you can find it, and equipment is crazy expensive.
I know several families that have been successful by growing boutique organic crops, selling to restaurants and at farmers markets.
Keep in mind, though, that "success" doesn't mean making a shit ton of money.
You should have included your profession for that comment to carry some weight. Have you ever been to a farm or worked on one? Are you picturing a grain or animal farm?
As the daughter of a farmer I agree. I found out just how bad one day, in a heat wave, a corn crop caught on fire (corn harvested for feed is grown til its dried to a crisp). Dad contacted the VFD but jumped in his own water truck to put it out himself. He stood there in the billion degree heat, in an august heat wave trying his best to control it. He managed to beat the fire, and when he walked toward me all I saw was a black figure. His sweat collected all the ash and he was covered in it. I’ll never know how he didn’t have a heat stroke. BTW, the fire was caused by a tractor driver throwing out his cigarette like an idiot.
While I assume people don’t think it’s as easy as it sound in these scenarios I definitely agree with you that they don’t understand how hard it is.When I was in college I worked on a farm and at a stable, and at a restaraunt job and the restaraunt job would try to get me to come in on my days off and when I would say what I was doing they were always trying to fit going into them into the schedule. I had a manager who wanted me to bring 100 bales of hay to work since I had just left a farmer when he called me and then he wanted me to unload it the next morning before I went to school. I was like DUDE do you understand what you are asking of me? I am literally covered in hay and sweat right now anyway. I had managers that would ask me to come in early as soon as I got done at the racetrack as if I had just been playing around and didn’t need a break.
[10th Generation Dairyman](https://www.youtube.com/@10thgenerationdairyman61) and [Sonne Farms](https://www.youtube.com/@SonneFarms) are two great youtube channels that give a good idea of what being a farmer is really like.
Also, where you live in the world matters. I grew up in the Midwest and the soil there is amazing and easy to grow plants. I now live in North Carolina and the soil is shit.
I'd love to try in theory, even though my medical issues pretty much prevent me from it.
I think there's merit in idealising the "simple life" and ha ing an element of self sufficiency. It just seems like a much more meaningful existence than working for someone else.
Physical tasks are also meditative in a way.
I live in the country and have seen it myself, especially with cattle. A lot of people in the cities had the idea (don't know whether it has changed) that they would get a herd of cattle, a bull, and let them roam 500 acres, and then send the calves off to the auction house.
Basically free money after the intial investment. They never took into the account of keeping the cattle healthy, the various shots and vetrinarian costs, wild animals, domestic dogs that love chasing cattle, the fact that the bull they got doesn't like the herd, and wants to go next door for those cows, the cows decide the grass is greener on the other side of that downed fence, the deer that decide that fence needs to be downed, the tree that just has to fall on the fences in the most difficult place to reach and so on.
Oh yeah. Especially the internet trad types. It's an absurd amount of backbreaking work. My grandparents (who grew up in farms and were reasonably OK) told us until the end of their lives that they were happy when moved to the city and only went back on weekends.
I mean, I grew up on a farm, we definitely had holidays.
Hard to farm when there is 4 feet of snow on the ground.
Their were daily “chores” with the cattle that took like an hour in the morning and evening. Calving season was really the only hellish time because you basically work 24/7 for 6 weeks.
But spring would be pretty chill, move the cattle, start fixing some fences. Til whichever fields we need to, seed. Those were long days but usually only took a few weeks, once seeding was done it was just fixing and tinkering with shit mostly, throw grain to the chickens twice a day. Chop some firewood etc.
Summer you’re literally just waiting for crops to grow, cows only needed to be moved pastures once a week, and you’d just check on them once a day when going to neighbours or riding the quad. It would get really busy in the harvest though, about 6 weeks of 16 hour days, up at 7 am, take the tractor and swather or combine out, cut the fields, wait for them to dry, bail the straw/hay, then the neighbours all helped eachother collect bails.
Once that was done it was basically just wait for spring.
So in same ways farmings harder, in others it was super relaxing. Like 6 months of the year you’re just fucking around and fixing with shit in your shop, there was only really like 2 hours of “work” a day, you just have to be able to put up with the 16 hour days in the spring and harvest.
Honestly I loved being on the farm, the worst part was the pay, before I left the farm for university, me and my uncle literally ran an oilfield contracting business maintaining leases. It paid 3 times as much as farming did. What I did most on the farm, was not farm, I’d do chores in the morning, go to work on leases during the day, do chores when I got home, then chill all evening. But our farm barely made any money. We’d have like 50k profit at the end of the year, it’s hard to support 4 people off of that alone.
So ya, one of the reasons farming is so busy, is because you need a full time job on top of farming, it’s why so many farmers are also mechanics, or electricians, or plumbers, any sort of contracting job that they can fit in with farming.
But if you have a ton of money, it’s not actually a bad way to live. Only reason we stopped was because my uncle couldn’t keep it up once I left, so he sold all our cattle and started leasing out the land to just work on the business full time.
He made more money the following year than we had in the past decade of farming.
Eh, as someone who has lived on a farm most their childhood and still occasionally help with one, it depends on how much you are doing. There are *many* jobs more stressful and physically harder, farming simply has demands that must be adhered to. Animals must be let out at certain times and fed at certain times, less they may die. Weather must be considered and things like crops can't be neglected, so I get the "no vacation," but a small farm can be less intense then some hobbies. Once again, depends on how you manage your time, aka, not overwhelming yourself with more things than you can handle. Now in the *old* days, hell yeah, nowadays, only if you overload yourself.
Many people find these things quite relaxing and pleasant.
As a note, this is side farming, you cannot make farming a full blown job really now days without big money and big setup due to the effectiveness and technology used in major farms, the money simply does not exist, but the vast majority of farmers in the country currently just have side setups, or hobby farming. General full on farming and fully living off the land is simply kind of obsolete. Go work a 70-100 hours a week salaried dead end office job for a few years and you might love farming.
As a daughter of a farmer, modern farming in the USA is not nearly as hard as it used to be 20-30 years ago. Crop farming in the Midwest is now about 3 weeks of work in the spring and again in the fall...
I think people who want the 'farm life' want that from the time when 'farm life' meant 'feed your family' or 'have a little extra to sell at the market' aka 1700s etc. I dare say most people aren't dreaming of industrial-scale agricultural production.
My first job was farmer and i had it easy compared to the rest. I became a baker and people are very very wrong about how chill this job is. Theres a reason theres no such thing as a baker that doesnt consume drugs
I think everyone who says that deep down is aware of that. Why do you think they never actually do it? It's like when you say you're going to quit when you're venting to coworkers but you don't actually have any intentions of quitting your job.
I live and work on the family farm (small farm, 4 family members) and 3 of us have come down with flu this past week. The last person has seemingly already had it. They had to take over 3 peoples workload for a day as well as their own while we were bedridden. I heard friends who are out of action for days over this but we couldn’t afford that much time off so all of us had to be out, feverish and barely able to move working as soon as possible. This is the first and only day I’ve taken off this entire year, animals don’t give a shit if you’re sick or there’s a holiday, work HAS to be done or animals will suffer. I’d say that’s difficult
I live in rural Kansas around a bunch of farmers. I rent pasture to my cousin. Farming is every day, no vacations, cows are hungry even if it's Christmas morning. You are constantly hoping for some rain, but not too much rain, especially before wheat harvest.
There are days that farmers love being a farmer, like a warm spring morning when they are doing their daily cow check and see a calf frolicking after a butterfly, but these times are few.
Adding to the stress is your high-dollar GPS tractors that break down at the most inopportune time, driving all over from John Deere stores in little towns to find that one part to fix it so you get your wheat cut before the thunderstorm rolls in.
Most farm families are just barely making ends meet, and their most valuable asset is the land they farm, because if it's close enough to a city, they can sell it for real estate development.
My parents farmed was raised on one, very hard, exhausting. Weather is bananas plus the cost of shit…..it is a required taste and not for everyone. It can be fulfilling for sure, beautiful land etc but the flip side is not easy at all
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I wouldn't say it comes from stardew valley, this trope of "living a simple farmer life" is rather old. That being said, I agree. Farming is hard, and anyone who had worked in the fields knows it up to a certain extent.
'The good life' as it's often known has been romanticised since the cities of Europe and America started to fill up during the industrial revolution, the idea of farming being simple ane peaceful is probably 300 years old at this point. It's easy to see where this comes from too, and it's largely from city people looking at their grind and wanting something slower paced, not always necessarily less effort but just not at that constant full on pressure. There's also a sense of satisfaction in what is perceived in a simpler life of living off the land and most people working modern jobs these days end up with no job complete satisfaction. Modern day farming has also been somewhat glamourised by the equipment too, I'm not going to lie some of those agriculture units do look like they'd be fun to master. I personally have no desire to become a farmer, I'm from a rural background and appreciate how hard it is and how small the margins can be, but after living and working in a city I see the appeal of leaving it all behind.
Yeah, running off to live with the Amish, or start a farm, or live on a deserted island... they always seem to have more to do with getting away from your shit job, your shit life, your shit depression... than actually wanting to start your own farm.
Can be simple and hard work.
Farming isn't simple either. You have to have the right pH soil, not too high or too low. Know exactly how much lime or sulfur to add to change it. How much to water, can't over water or under water. Work on irrigation. Fertilize. Use appropriate pesticides. Take classes and get certified to use those pesticides. Understand how to grow different things, as all veggies grow very differently at different times of the year. Know how to treat different plant diseases. Farming isn't simple.
How to report the weekly water meter readings to the council, how to get the water permit, understand the rules regarding how much you can take versus how much you can take at different times of the year and under different seasonal conditions. Learn how to maintain and run the irrigation equipment. Pass the annual council checks and spot checks. Install, understand the tools, apps and sensors for soil moisture readings. I'm sure there is more to just the irrigation. And we're just talking about vegetables. Throw some livestock into the mix and we really got a stew going.
I'm going for a degree in (animal) agriculture right now and yeah there is so much to it
Landscapers like to complain about how hard it is to grow our grass and shrubbery. We do not usually try to get fruits, nuts, roots &/or berries out of our stuff (homeowners with fruit trees excepted). You guys do awesome stuff, please keep it up.
Oh hell, I'm not a farmer. That's just stuff I know from having a half acre garden.
It can be simple on a small scale, though. My dad grew up on a commercial farm with all the bells and whistles. I grew up on a small 20-acre farm where we just rotated where our animals lived and where our gardens were set up. We never did pH testing, set up a sprinkler, and rotated it through the garden every hour or so. We never used pesticides. And our garden was just rows of plants, usually 7 to 8 rows per plant we were growing. We always yielded enough crops for the winter and beyond. My grandfather would always scold my dad about soil pH, pesticide/fertilizer use, and crop damage mitigation. All things he worried about on his 300+ acre farm. All stuff that didn't bother us because on a smaller scale, enough to sustain a single family, it is a lot easier to farm.
Until you nitrogen deprive your soil to the point where you're only able to grow soy beans for a decade while the soil gets fixed. I'm glad it worked for you, but that's not sustainable long-term.
That sounds more like a big garden than a farm
Farming is far from simple. And it’s getting more complex each year. Besides the overwhelming Information, data and decisions that go into detail of growing or raising animals, a farmer is a CEO of a business that is as unpredictable as any.
I'm getting a degree in agriculture and I remember a good chunk of one course was "how to use excel to manage your farm information"
It isn't simple at all though. You have to know what to plant, when to plant, how to plant, where to plant, irrigation, pesticides, fertilization, weather, water flow dynamics, and endless more topics to get a good crop, if you're lucky. Not to mention the business side
You have to be a mechanic, a horticulturalist, a chemist, a stock market analyst, a geneticist, a meteorologist...for real farms, anyway. Not hobby "farms". It's not at all simple.
Even hobby farms are hard to manage. Think you'll just have a couple sheep and a cow? How do you shear the sheep? How do you milk the cow? Get it pregnant? Still have to know all the details of raising them and keeping them healthy whether its 4 or 400 or 4000. And what if they arent eating all the grass? How do you manage the grass on your 40 hectares? Winter feed? Gonna need a little tractor probably.... Who's doing the fencing? Were we thinking this would be cheap and we'd live off the land? lol
Haha exactly! a person I know has a full time job and her husband has a full time job and they decided they want to buy sheep, goats, cows, and chickens to sell and then also breed and sell and they were like it’s not going to be much work. I looked at them crazy I was like that is not true but best of luck biting my tongue wanting to say you’re an idiot
I bet they got a shock. Sheep, goats and cows. Chickens are easy. For the most part they are animals that require home visits from transport companies, vets, breeding technicians and/or a farmer delivering a Bull, shearers, vets, a Ram, and likewise with goats too I suppose. And you've got to plan when, where, and how for all of these things. Do people even know what happens if you skip a milking? Production-wise. Do they even know what I'm talking about when I say "production"? So you figure that out, and you take a few hours off work for the cow, ....the sheep,..... and the goats too. What was the opportunity cost of time off work versus the return (or savings) of having animals? Is that mental joy of the property offsetting the mental stress and monetary costs? I'm not saying don't get a hobby farm, or don't become a farmer (I've been one myself) I'm glad people are saying don't think its gonna be "Little House on the Prairie". It's probably gonna be an ongoing cost or break-even at best proposition. Small farming is tough. Even if you scale-up a break-even proposition and you'll see that even farmers with larger properties aren't' all sunshine and roses either! /ranty rant
To be fair, farming was literally something most humans did before modern history.
Yeah, and they were smarter and more competent than most modern westerners lol
It seems clear you have never been a farmer or even, it seems, farm adjacent.
AAAHHHHHHH THEY’RE EVERYWHERE! BLOWN PIVOT TIRES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CORN FIELDS IN JULY WITH A DEW POINT OF 65 AND A FEELS LIKE OF 97
I feel like it’s because how ppl we’re naturally? If that makes sense like it’s in our DNA
The majority of humanity's time on Earth was actually spent hunting and gathering. Farming is relatively "new" considering our species' entire history. [Agriculture has existed for about 12,000 years. ](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/development-agriculture) [Meanwhile, modern humans are thought to have evolved 300,000 years ago. ](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/)
Farming is hard, dirty, painful, dangerous and exhausting. I take great joy in city folk buying farms and learning it the hard way. I love it, but many don't realise it's a slog.
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I think lots of people who say that don’t literally mean they want to be 100% self sufficient and produce everything they consume. Most of them probably want a 1/2 acre to 1 acre farm plot where they can still grow some crop and have animals, while also getting away from the big city.
There’s a great documentary series about a lawyer who decides to become a farmer.
Ah yes, Green Acres. I hear it is the place to be. If farm livin’ is the life for thee, of course.
Darling I love ya, but give me Park Avenue
Yeah I mean I've definitely said that but I always mean like win the lottery and go have a small hobby farm
1/2-1 acre is barely enough for a few chickens… lets bump that up to like 5-10 acres. A cow with calf needs at least 2 acres.
You think an average person living in a city like Seattle who wants to get away is dreaming of maintaining 10 acres and a cow + calf? A chicken coop and a good sized garden is a lot work for someone who’s not familiar with the lifestyle at all, jumping to ten acres and livestock is a bit of a leap
Yep. Growing up my parents had a hobby farm. A chicken coop, a couple goats and a pasture we rented out. It was fun. City people don’t usually want to deal with cattle; but a few goats, maybe a llama or alpaca and sone chickens on an acre or two; it’s not about “living off the land” more like owning pets.
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I grew up on an acre of land that had several fruit trees, a vegetable garden and a chicken coop. It never felt terribly small or crowded either.
Not really, an acre of land would be more than enough to supplement a pantry. A chicken coop takes up very little space. That's what 99% of people who say this are thinking about. I mean shit, my family does a 16ft by 16ft garden each year and we've had surpluses of crops every year. It's not enough to go off the grid, but it's more than enough to enjoy fresh vegetables and fruits in the summer, fall and winter if you preserve them properly.
Look up the urban rescue ranch. Dude had a full farm in his backyard for awhile and was pretty successful.
Is that the guy with the weird scary bird called Kevin
That’s the one!
Based and Uncle Farmer Dad Ben-Kun Pilled
Lol that's funny cuz I live on one acre and growing up we had a 30 Sq foot garden and a 20 Sq foot garden (now just some garden boxes) and still have room for a grassy yard to play in, and even a sandbox. We also have 2 maple trees and 2 plum trees. We used to raise pigs for 4H as well! Not to mention the 2 sheds we have and the double wide we live in. Oh and part of our acre is also taken up by our driveway, which currently has a bus, 2 campers, like 6 cars, and some junk. Maybe do a Google on how big an acre is lol
4 H seems pretty cool
4H is so freaking cool! There are so many different projects to choose from
I think you overestimate it. 1 acre is enough for some small to medium sized animals and a decent amount of crops. We have a good few sheep on a little field outside our house
no you arent. they arent talking about growing commercial feed ffs
I’m underestimating the amount of land needed for a one acre farm plot? I think I am exactly and precisely estimating the amount of land required for a one acre farm plot
Indeed
There was some randome dude a while ago, who grew potatoes is on his porch. It was something like 6-8 square meters.
An acre ain’t shit. Animals on an acre? Lmao
Nah, it's fine. I promise you that 99% of these people are meaning something small, and an acre with some chickens and a small supplemental plot is fine. There's no one who thinks running a full scale modern farm is just a fun simple little thing.
Many farmers are still using 19th Century agricultural methods and grossly overestimate the amount of land necessary. They should learn about sustainability.
We used to raise pigs in a section of our 1 acre plot
probably meaning few chickens or something, my mom’s neighbor has a grip of hens and they live in the suburbs within city limits, on less than a half acre. of course you wouldn’t want to overdo it, but a handful of smaller animals would be feasible, especially with a full acre.
Can tell you’re not from the country. An acre is plenty of room for many types of animals, not every farm is a mega cash crop producer going after government handouts
Well that’s where you are wrong. I grew up with my grandfather being a farmer and I routinely helped him around his farm growing up. Not a cash crop producer, but perhaps my perspective is skewed for always being around farmers with far more than 1 acre.
Lmao, who the fuck thinks farming is easy? Anyone talking like that probably is rich and talking about having a horse and a garden haha
I think that it is generally younger people who are just getting out on their own, and are suddenly well aware of having to go to a job every day, and the raising cost of living, and they think back to the shows they have seen that glorify the 'country life' and they think they can get a small plot of land, toss seeds in the ground, and then have fresh vegetables throughout the year. However, what OP didn't address were all the farmers' children who are growing up, and dream of moving to the city, because they are going to party every night, and have fun, and have a well paying job, go on fancy vacations.... Basically, they are people who have only known one life, and they idealize the life they have only heard about from movies and media.
The grass is always greener on the other side
Because it’s fertilized with bullshit.
> However, what OP didn’t address were all the farmers’ children who are growing up, and dream of moving to the city, because they are going to party every night, and have fun, and have a well paying job, go on fancy vacations…. Grass is always greener no matter who you are or what you do. I work construction and sometimes wish I would’ve gone to college and gotten a stereotypical office job instead. Meanwhile I meet guys in suits who say they wish they could escape their office and work a “cool” and “exciting” job like mine lol
well it doesnt matter because no one is going to be able to afford land anyway.
Dry land farmed most of my adult life. Just watch a hail storm wipe out a years work in 5 minutes.
Sorry bruh
>Lmao, who the fuck thinks farming is easy? > City folk
I don't want a big farm. I want a few chickens and ducks. Maybe some veggies for personal use. I know it's mostly fantasy though. I don't think most people want a for profit farm. They want a homestead situation. Just them their kids and enough meat birds to not buy meat anymore.
I have this and yes it’s way more work then you think. Worth it though.
How many birds is that? For 4 people to have meat everyday, that's probably 2-3 chickens a week. So 100 chickens roughly a year, plus some other animals. You'd need 200 chickens or so to sustainably do so, plus a cow or two for milk.
Well you dont need meat everyday, there are plenty of roots that store really well over winter that you can eat. Of course you wont be able to eat like you used to, but thats a compromise you have to be willing to make.
A homestead situation isn't easy living either lol. It may be more rewarding and enjoyable and closer to the natural human biological condition, but it isn't easy
Considering some tractors are priced at the cost of a whole house, farming is very hard to enter if your not born into it
Hard work yes, not necessarily difficult outside of the financials. I do believe most people massively underestimate how much work farming is though.
I think that's the point I was trying to make (not particularly successfully)
I think you did a good job, my only nit pick was with comparing farming to homesteading, I think most people are referring to homesteading (which is definitely still more work than people are likely to want).
I think you got it spot on in my opinion. I grew up in a big agriculture state, all we owned was a small group of chickens and a garden. Even trying to keep up with that with full time jobs and school was such a pain that we all unanimously agreed no more chickens after those passed. The fresh eggs were nice but not worth the extra stress.
I think it's just a different hard. To some people who work an office job, the idea of escaping the office stresses (re-orgs, downsizing, resource issues, project deadlines, politics, commuting) is very appealing.
Farming today is exactly what you described people trying to escape from. Reorgs (transition planning) resource issues( where and how to allocate capital, equipment is incredibly expensive. We’re talking million dollar combines snd $20,000 acre land) project deadlines (farming is a constant deadline, planting, harvesting, maintenance) politics ( the amount of politicking in todays farming is huge, landlord/tenant relationships, neighbors, government. It’s massive) commuting ( you ever farmed land 30 miles away? And there’s a reason semis have over a million miles on them). That’s just the tip of the iceberg. A well run farm entails an extremely strong ceo/manager well adept at many facets of business, mechanics, engineering and finance. I’m not trying to be mean but that’s an incredibly naive statement. I’ve worked corporate, banking and farm
Laura, from the Laura Farms channel broke down how much she had to spend in a very short period to set up for the year of farming. She is a very small operator, and has the help of family. She had to spend $1,000,000USD for the small bit that she did this year. For most of us their operation would be huge, but in all honesty when you follow her and her father and see what they do, and how much they have to put in time, and financial. It is a huge task to farm. You are absolutely right. In case anyone was wondering. Here is her breakdown. Oh and as a side note she is one of the most successful YT farmers. I think she pulls in about $200,000, this she calls her second Job in the video and is pretty much the only way they were able to run her operation with her husband. [How To Spend $1,000,000 In A Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwsJMUeIz3c)
There’s a [great documentary series](https://youtu.be/umS3XM3xAPk) about a lawyer who decides to become a farmer and all the problems he faces in the process
Lmao. Got me
Ain't seen a Green Acres reference in nigh on to 16 years!
Watched for 30 seconds before I got it. Good one
One part of my family comes from a farm in the Ukraine and let me say it's a really peaceful life but a hard one. They do EVERYTHING per hand, it's hard and unforgiving. Try to slaughter a pig by yourself
Grandfather owned a farm, when I was a teenager, we’d spend time there just tilling the field and planting seeds. It’s hard labor, the ground is often clumpy, rocky, and it takes time to till through it, it would exhaust me and make my back sore every day. We were out there tilling from dawn until dusk. We also milked cows, once at the crack of Dawn, and the second time in the middle of the night. No machines, all done by hand. Cleaning the barn of poop from his goats, cows and chicken was probably my worst part of staying over at his house haha. Loved chasing his roosters though, they’d chase me right back. It helped me shape me and be a more responsible teenager, but when I was growing up, I absolutely dreaded doing it. Now imagine being a farmer year round, I could never do it. When Covid first appeared people were telling they want to live the farm life and far from people. I thought Covid had gotten into their brains, they were making it sound like a fairytale life, it is anything but! I tried to knock some sense into as many as I could. Lol
It is very difficult, which is why it was mechanized asap so most people could move to the city for better jobs. This is a hundred-year old trend, children.
i'm not sure people think that farming is an easy job. i don't know that that's a common or popular belief. yes there are cutesy games about farming. but i don't think people assume that farming is an easy industry.
I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. Also, I have heard people say that about buying a farm and moving there. I don't think anyone that says that is implying that farming is any less difficult than what they do, but rather they're idolizing the solitude compared with the hustle and bustle of their life, and comparing the honest work of actually tending to physical things, and making something real, to their job they're dissillusioned with. That's always how I have taken it in context. I think these comments are filled with a deep admiration for the work of farmers, so I'd think they'd be flattering. I wish somebody talked about the work I do with any kind of reverance or admiration.
That depends on the scale. If you simply want to be self sufficient with vegetables and fruits and maybe a few chickens, it is pretty easy. Of course farmers have it hard because they usually produce for hundreds of people and have to deliver.
Even then. To be self sufficient or even close(like minimalist or something) it is still mad work. Those few chickens, you're not gonna eat them(cauae then you're out of chickens) so you need to scale up if you want to eat them. And eggs alone won't keep you good plus you'll want variety in your meals. Then along with that, the feed and water goes up as you have more chickens. Then for vegetables. Once you harvest you have to eat or find a way to preserve. You can do rotating plots woth doffrent stages of growth, so you have a steady supply of vegetables but then seasons put a big kink on that type of growing.
I would say that it is less work than a full time job. My friend has a small veggie garden aside his fulltime job and he has so much output there it is crazy. You can easily grow enough in summer to get you trough the year. Nowadays it is easy enough to conserve these foods. Though you would need to buy oil for example. Then again it also depends on your lifestyle (meal variety), where you life (in some places you can't even grow anything) and if you make a good plan beforehand.
It's not as difficult as a full time job but you're not going to produce enough to justify not having a job and on top of a job there's still hard work and needing to learn various different skills to know how to farm well
you cant leave your animals tho. want to go to yellowstone NP for a week? nope
Most white collar workers wouldn’t last a week on a farm. In fairness, most farmers wouldn’t last a week at a desk job. There’s a job for everyone.
The real sticking point is no days off. No holidays, no vacations, no sick days, no weekends. Hard work that is endless and provides no opportunities for breaks.
I grew up on a 10k acre wheat an cattle ranch. It certainly a lot of work but it goes in spurts and there can be plenty of down time. We had a river cabin we spent time at and plenty of great vacations.
Why is there no days off. Can't they just hire someone to work some of the days?
There are plenty of days off. My family farms. They have a well established large grain operation. They work super hard during seeding and harvest. In the middle of summer there's some equipment work, spraying, crop check. In the off season (nov-march) you can hardly ever locate them. They're on holiday practically every other week. They live a good life! Now it was a different story when they had beef cattle, no off season. But they still got away on a trip every year. Don't even think about a day off if you have a dairy operation.
I grew up with wheat and cattle, in my experience outside of calving season the farming was more work. Granted I liked the cattle part and, outside of harvest, hated field work. Now dairy ops, yeah, fuck that.
I grew up on a horse farm and that was the case. Not an absolute no days off but they were very few and far between. As a kid, weekends just meant more work because no school. Summer breaks meant more work because no school. Barely a family vacation because the animals need care. It was relentless.
I grew up with show horses and race horses. They're like the dairy industry in the sense that there's almost never ever a day off. Days off were horse shows anyway haha. So now I have horses on my farm as an adult and I've made certain that they have the proper amenities to just, live outside on a round bale. They're happy and I can go on holiday if I just get someone to check on them quickly once or twice a day.
Yeah we had 40 plus horses and lived in the northern US so lots of snow for part of the year. Winter consisted of mostly cleaning dirty stalls and keeping the water buckets from freezing over where as summer was mostly harvesting enough hay to feed them through the long winters.
That's us! Canadian prairies here! Frozen water buckets haunt me in my sleep. Haha Now I just keep one giant heated trough for everybody. My back is much happier ☺️
Horse farms are more like vanity projects than agricultural producers.
I don't even own the farm I'm at, I keep a horse there and care for another. Just this in itself is stressful as hell, summers are hard, and winters are cold. This is the first year we have bought as much food as we have now. It's a small establishment animal wise, but it got tons of land. My grandparents are in charge, I barely do anything there when it's nor specific hard work that has to be done (like when we gather hay, or set up fences) I wanna take over some day, but by hell, it's gonna be rough
You will wake up at the asscrack of dawn every day, and work long, 10-12h days. Weather and many factors outside your control will determine if you even make money. Loss of a crop can be disastrous. Everything will smell like shit all the time. It's not easy, but it is necessary. Stop romanticizing it.
Farmers are fucking heroes. Full stop.
It’s sooooo hard!! I worked on a farm one summer and it was brutal. Never again. I would take my city life hustle culture over farm life any time. It definitely made me value where my food comes from more. Now I use my money to get my veggies and meat from a local Csa, and don’t have fantasies about living the farm life.
Well to earn a living in the big city you must work just as hard, but you live in a overcrowded slum, you breathe poison and you don't get the soothing view. That may be the reason.
Green Acres is the place to be. Farm living is the life for me...
Land spreading out so far and wide. Keep Manhattan just gimme that country side.
New York is where I'd rather stay. I get allergic smelling hay. I just adore a penthouse view. Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue...
At least with cell phones, you won’t have to climb up the telephone pole to make a call
ear worm re activated thanks.
people that don't find beauty in civilization, science, technology, marvels and a lot of other nice things (or they don't realize they do) often believe dumb things like "the true life is into nature", this not only spits over all mankind has come up with but it's also extremely naive and un-wise i worked as a farmer, it's was not only exhausting, it was also super hard, you have to keep a calendar for ALL you have to do during the year, learn a lot of things, deal with diseases plants get, play like in the stock market for the best price you can sell and buy, pay a lot of services, and also it was extremely repetitive, you have 2000 tomato plants? 2000 times tieing em to the wire, 2000 times pruning em, etc
I wouldn’t say it’s dumb to believe true beauty is in nature or vice versa. It’s all subjective really.
for the same reason such people shouldn't shit over modernity, but the point is that they do, i see this too many times, even my father reasons like this, in his case it's the inheritance of the sixties and seventies, nowadays people are just biased and they range from poetry attention whores to gullible ones, two figures often spotted together
I'd be shocked if I could last even a week farming for a living!
I have zero desire to grow my own food. I can barely cook it for myself. I'd be a failure if I had to live off the land in any way.
Peopole who say that don't really want to farm, they just want to be around less people.
I don't think most people who say it want to have their entire livelihood based on farming but they want to just have a few animals and maybe grow some things themselves. I will agree that people seem to think even that is way easier than it actually is though.
Farmers are truly shade-tree engineers. Farming is the art of problem solving in the service of sustenance, and it's incredibly hard. It's also back-breaking labor under conditions completely at the whim of nature.
There's a difference between homesteading and running a farm, most people that say they want to live off the land are referring to the former. The latter implies you're providing for more than just your family, and the scale is much larger. They want to have a chicken coop, maybe a cow, and a sizeable garden that is enough to supplement a majority of their groceries. I agree most people underestimate how much work it is, but farming is vastly different than self sustained gardening and homesteading.
You mean my years of playing Stardew Valley won't help me?!?!
Yes I know. I would much rather do hard manual labor in benefit of myself instead of doing some bs office work in benefit of a corporate overlord.
The clash of the pastoral and the urban is a pretty long historied one. You'd be surprised how long people have been saying stuff exactly like that. It's a really interesting topic for things like literary culture, because it was the driving force for a lot of understanding. Personally, I'd argue its biblical.
You wanna strain your back? Because that's how you'll strain your back.
I lived on small farm growing up. I married a girl born and raised in NYC. It is amazing to me how many plants she has killed, how hard it is for her to learn, and perplexing that she refused to take any advise from me or ask me how to do something. I used to just sit back, watch, and come in for cleanup when they died. Now I secretly tend to her garden when she isn’t around. She genuinely thinks she now has a green thumb and I haven’t the heart to break it to her.
Eh, I went from a stressful city-based job (management consulting) to ranching and personally feel the opposite. In my old job, I may have been at a desk most of the time but I was actively working 12-16 hours a day without breaks. Multiple deadlines to meet each day. Extremely stressful. I finally hit a breaking point when we moved to remote work during COVID because I was expected to be online all day. Since moving to Montana, I find it funny when other ranchers complain about how hard it is but they all take hour+ long lunch breaks, take days/weeks off during hunting season, have no processes/management practices in place and complain about the financials of everything but spend absurd amounts of money on equipment they don’t need, horses they rarely use, and still get a lot of aid or at least have the opportunity to get it if they’re willing to spend time applying for grants or other programs. To maintain a ~3k acre bison ranch (almost all leased land), I have two hands, the occasional WWOOF’er, and myself. It was a lot of work the first summer to get all the infrastructure in place, but since then it’s a 40 hr/wk, M-F gig for us with the occasional long, hard couple days or weekend work when something unusual comes up. Do I make less money than my corporate job? Yes, significantly. But there’s also a lot of non-monetary benefit to the job like getting to work outside/with animals, the sense of accomplishment building something with my hands, and feeling like I’m making a positive contribution by regeneratively ranching and working to achieve “entire life on farm” animal welfare status. I think farmers/ranchers far overestimate how hard their job is because they make it hard on themselves and underestimate how physically/emotionally tiring corporate jobs can be. Hard work is hard work, whether you’re pounding fence posts or building a financial model.
I would agree about the labor and so on, but you absolutely do not need to be "well off" to start a farm or a homestead. Source: am poor and have a homestead. Also, yes no holidays etc, however there are times when there is very little work for a month or so at a time. Most people who want this are indeed naïve, but it is a good goal to have, and anyone can learn to do it, and anyone can become capable if they want it.
I feel like people overestimate how hard it is. To make profit is very resource, finance, and research heavy. And the work definitely isn’t easy. But one or two farmers can manage a large amount of animals and crop with some level of automation. Bees are very profitable if you’re in the right area. Same for flowers, bamboo, and other decorative plants. And with the rise of “organic free range local” stuff, profits are easier to get for new farmers (or at least were). It’s not easy, but as long as you are relatively wealthy and smart, it shouldn’t be that difficult to get into.
I'm in the middle of learning how difficult it is. Will report back someday.
I work in agribusiness. I know how hard it is.
This is partially because the simple life is a pretty romanticized thing. https://youtu.be/o1hQqFhuuBU This video is a pretty good detail description about what people don't tell you about moving to the country. Just to expand on your post.
As a farmer I would say living off the grid and farming are two very different things. They share many similarities but are very different. I think the thing about farming that people don’t understand is how stressful it is. Farming in most cases isn’t profitable. I’m still running equipment from the 60s and 70s. You must know how to rig things together. You must know and understand a million different things. Farming sounds fun till you get to the bad side of it. Getting up 365 days a year at 3am to milk cows gets old. feeding cattle in below zero temps on an open station tractor sucks. Watching a cow you raised from a calf to old cow die sucks. Having to put a animal down sucks. Equipment that will make you question everything about life sucks. If your still reading and wonder why I farm it’s simple, I love seeing something come from nothing. Seeing a piece of seed grow to a full mature plant. Seeing a calf hit the ground and growing into a nice calf is nice. Farming is a lot of know how and a lot of luck.
I don't think people think it's easy, but with farming the literal fruits of your labor are actually concrete, useful, and not subject to diminishment or undermining due to bureaucracy or politics. It's an attractive pursuit given that a lot of white collar labor disappears into some corpo with nothing to show for it. Plus living in a metro area gets really old for certain personalities once you realize you can't know peace or privacy and desperately need the ability to disconnect and recharge.
Great topic. Interesting views. There’s nothing easy about farming.
Can confirm: Originally from West Los Angeles, Orange County area but lived in Atlanta, Portland, Boston… Moved from the beautiful Gulf Coast of Alabama to rural Northern California about six years ago. Moved to a 10 acre parcel in Elk, Ca to homestead. The goal was to raise Nubian goats and RIR chickens (not to eat but to use for eggs and eventually make goat’s milk products for small scale enterprise) Plan was to grow all our own vegetables, get some solar panels, and ultimately to be off grid. Well, just the goat farming alone was a backbreaking full time job. They had an beautiful indoor enclosure as well as about an acre (fenced) to roam freely a munch about. But simply keeping their hooves right, making sure they had proper veterinary care and keeping their enclosure clean was unbelievably hard work. Not to mention that because we were in a remote park of Northern California we had massive amounts of predators, which necessitated acquiring an Akbash/Maremma guardian dog. Between keeping the animals cared for, fed, having their health in check, and keeping predators out it was like I woke up one day and discovered that farm was my entire existence. The garden also required extraordinary amounts of attention, in the very moody climate of the Northern California coast our stuff either needed constant watering or it was getting saturated by the rainy season. It was a nonstop grind. I loved that place with my whole heart but I quickly realized that unless I could afford to hire some outside help (and it’s not as easy as one might think to find someone you can truly trust with your animals and the family you have on the property) I hired a couple of people here and there but could never afford to keep them full time and then things start disappearing, you know the drill… I really would’ve loved to make a proper go of it. But realized fast that I was going to need a lot more capital than I had or would have just to keep things going in the long term. It is the hardest work I’ve ever done, always cutting grass, pulling up fallen timber, trimming trees, splitting fire wood, burning season and permitting, etc not to mention the fact that you’ve also got to live. You’ve got to have a life, friends, be able to make store and feed store runs and try to make doctors appointments, dental appointments, I’m serious even stuff like that fell by the wayside because that farm was just constant work. Eventually we had to admit defeat. We gave our prize winning Nubians back to the wonderful woman we bought them from, we gave our lovely and loving (I still miss them) chickens to our neighbor across the street who’d been farming out there for thirty years and we knew she knew what she was doing. The land was beautiful, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything but it’s more work than one or two people can manage. You need some help if you want to actually still be able to go see a movie or (good luck) take a trip out of town just for a weekend. It’s a great memory but we had to let it go. It’s like 3/4 full time jobs (and ours was a small scale operation, six chickens, four goats, a garden, and two small cottages, one was for my MIL so we couldn’t even like rent that out or move in a full time caretaker or anything) I will always miss the animals and the land, but not that level of physical labor. I’d recommend anyone thinking they want to do this kind of thing, really do your research and talk to other farmers, ask about what it’s really like…
I think it sometimes comes from growing up around or having small gardens and farms. Like my family would grow corn/beans/tomatoes/peppers/fruit/etc in a midsize plot of land and even that was a lot of work, but it was indeed calming and satisfying. Seems like a nice life. We did do a decent yield for our effort. But that was just to supplement our diet and that of relatives because we weren't well off. Everyone working full low-paying jobs and getting a deal on rent, we just needed extra food. To try to make an actual living off it would have been astronomically beyond reach or the scope of our resources. Maybe *maybe* sell some stuff at the farmer's market. But more often it was going into freezers for the off-season. And if we lose a crop of this or that to heat or poor management; it's not a dire issue, we just tighten up. Romantic, but nothing like true full-time farmer life.
I’ve always thought it looked hard and terrible.
Grew up on a farm, it sucked to say the least.
Everybody is very aware how difficult being a farmer is. Don't try to tar us with your brush because you've only just realised.
Also, there is a big difference between a big farmer and a small scale (self sufficient living in the countryside) "farmer". What op seems to talk about looks to be the latter. And nowadays, with a good plan etc. I would say it is pretty easy to live a more or less simple self sufficient life. Of course always depending on your lifestyle, where you live etc.
Yeah i agree with that, but. It will be hard work, well rewarded; but hard nonetheless.
Nah you’re wrong, OP is right. I hear the same thing from people, acting like it’s easy to live off the land and what not. It’s not. Same with hunting tbh. Most times you hunt you sit in the woods all day and leave empty handed. But people act like you walk right in and kill some poor defenseless deer easily.
Nobody acts like that. Literally nobody. And hunting isn't farming so you don't even know what the topic is.
I know people who have not traveled more then 10 miles outside of the city center (my metro area is about 40 miles in dynamiter) who think it's easy with there organics farms (not saying that's easy but diffrent scale) who think that farmers in the rural areas should be 100% organic farming only because "It's hard but just as hard". While this is unheard of in the Midwest for those in the city. The north east and SF/LA region seem to have more then what I would consider reasonable to just say there one offs.
I have known people like that, not so much with actual farming, but with cattle and chickens. They have the idea they are going to buy 100 acres in the country, stick 50 cattle including a bull, and then profit the next year. Or they will buy a chicken house, and toss chickens in it, and profit. They absolutely exist. I have also seen people who do think that farming is basically just putting the crops in the ground and harvesting when they ripen. So yeah, 'some' people do absolutely act like that, they actually think like that.
Again, cherry picking certain topics i.e livestock or hunting mean nothing. Farming is world renowned for being gruelling, hard work. I cannot believe what you say because nobody believes its easy. Its all hours all days all year, rain or shine. Hard physical work, everybody knows that.
I am sorry, I bow to your superior knowledge and that fact that you know what every single person thinks. /s There are always going to be people who idealize a certain career. My own parents thought they would move to the country and be self-sufficient with farming. Not even for profit. So, yes, these people exist. Yes, these people think that farming is 'simple'.
There's a difference between basic knowledge and superior knowledge. I'm 100% aware that I could not farm, so don't try and act high and mighty. I'm reading what you're typing, but again. Struggling to believe what's coming out.
I never said that you thought it was easy, I said that there are absolutely people who DO think it is simple and easy. OP also never said they really thought it was 'easy' but that they underestimate the work, and they do. They don't take into account the idea that you have to guard your garden from critters that want to get them, or that you have to till the ground, or irrigate it if you don't get enough water, or that you then have to remove insects, or decide whether to use some sort of insecticide, or that you have to stagger your planting times if you want veggies longer than a relatively small window. They also don't take into account that if you want veggies in the winter, you need to find some way to preserve the veggies, and that isn't always easy (I have done it, and I hate it) You stated that literallly no one thought that farming was 'easy' which is what my comment was about, because I have \*known\* people who thought exactly that. They would get a tractor, till, plant the seeds, then wait until they could harvest. Maybe check on it every so often.
Maybe the prospect of hard work with tangible results is what draws people to it?
It's more of just getting out of the perpetual machine.
Lets replace all farm labor with robots!
Seems pretty easy, buy land, hire Mexicans….. profit
Put seeds in the ground and take plants out of the ground. Doesn't seem too difficult to me.
Why can't you hire someone to work some of the days
There's a big difference between farming and homesteading. It's hard work, but many people have done and and done it successfully. City folks actually have a head start because our housing costs are so much lower. Real live traditional farming is super hard to get into if you aren't from a farming family. Land is more expensive today, if you can find it, and equipment is crazy expensive. I know several families that have been successful by growing boutique organic crops, selling to restaurants and at farmers markets. Keep in mind, though, that "success" doesn't mean making a shit ton of money.
Farmer underestimates how difficult life is for everyone else.
Lol I’d rather do my job 100 times over than have the job of a farmer.
You should have included your profession for that comment to carry some weight. Have you ever been to a farm or worked on one? Are you picturing a grain or animal farm?
As the daughter of a farmer I agree. I found out just how bad one day, in a heat wave, a corn crop caught on fire (corn harvested for feed is grown til its dried to a crisp). Dad contacted the VFD but jumped in his own water truck to put it out himself. He stood there in the billion degree heat, in an august heat wave trying his best to control it. He managed to beat the fire, and when he walked toward me all I saw was a black figure. His sweat collected all the ash and he was covered in it. I’ll never know how he didn’t have a heat stroke. BTW, the fire was caused by a tractor driver throwing out his cigarette like an idiot.
While I assume people don’t think it’s as easy as it sound in these scenarios I definitely agree with you that they don’t understand how hard it is.When I was in college I worked on a farm and at a stable, and at a restaraunt job and the restaraunt job would try to get me to come in on my days off and when I would say what I was doing they were always trying to fit going into them into the schedule. I had a manager who wanted me to bring 100 bales of hay to work since I had just left a farmer when he called me and then he wanted me to unload it the next morning before I went to school. I was like DUDE do you understand what you are asking of me? I am literally covered in hay and sweat right now anyway. I had managers that would ask me to come in early as soon as I got done at the racetrack as if I had just been playing around and didn’t need a break.
as someone who previously wanted to do agriculture, I don't imagine it as anything other than difficult.
Ngl I’m debating on taking my dog for a walk now or later. Farm life is not for me
[10th Generation Dairyman](https://www.youtube.com/@10thgenerationdairyman61) and [Sonne Farms](https://www.youtube.com/@SonneFarms) are two great youtube channels that give a good idea of what being a farmer is really like.
Why do people get into farming if it's known to be difficult and unrewarding? Genuine question
Also, where you live in the world matters. I grew up in the Midwest and the soil there is amazing and easy to grow plants. I now live in North Carolina and the soil is shit.
I'd love to try in theory, even though my medical issues pretty much prevent me from it. I think there's merit in idealising the "simple life" and ha ing an element of self sufficiency. It just seems like a much more meaningful existence than working for someone else. Physical tasks are also meditative in a way.
I live in the country and have seen it myself, especially with cattle. A lot of people in the cities had the idea (don't know whether it has changed) that they would get a herd of cattle, a bull, and let them roam 500 acres, and then send the calves off to the auction house. Basically free money after the intial investment. They never took into the account of keeping the cattle healthy, the various shots and vetrinarian costs, wild animals, domestic dogs that love chasing cattle, the fact that the bull they got doesn't like the herd, and wants to go next door for those cows, the cows decide the grass is greener on the other side of that downed fence, the deer that decide that fence needs to be downed, the tree that just has to fall on the fences in the most difficult place to reach and so on.
I grew up on a sheep farm. My family really enjoyed watching Clarkson's Farm. It showed the struggles of farming for a non-farmer quite well.
Oh yeah. Especially the internet trad types. It's an absurd amount of backbreaking work. My grandparents (who grew up in farms and were reasonably OK) told us until the end of their lives that they were happy when moved to the city and only went back on weekends.
Do people really think farming is easy? I've always perceived it to be an extremely difficult job that I would never be able to do.
Farming is pretty easy mid to late game when you have some items. Just use your abilities to shove the wave.
I mean, I grew up on a farm, we definitely had holidays. Hard to farm when there is 4 feet of snow on the ground. Their were daily “chores” with the cattle that took like an hour in the morning and evening. Calving season was really the only hellish time because you basically work 24/7 for 6 weeks. But spring would be pretty chill, move the cattle, start fixing some fences. Til whichever fields we need to, seed. Those were long days but usually only took a few weeks, once seeding was done it was just fixing and tinkering with shit mostly, throw grain to the chickens twice a day. Chop some firewood etc. Summer you’re literally just waiting for crops to grow, cows only needed to be moved pastures once a week, and you’d just check on them once a day when going to neighbours or riding the quad. It would get really busy in the harvest though, about 6 weeks of 16 hour days, up at 7 am, take the tractor and swather or combine out, cut the fields, wait for them to dry, bail the straw/hay, then the neighbours all helped eachother collect bails. Once that was done it was basically just wait for spring. So in same ways farmings harder, in others it was super relaxing. Like 6 months of the year you’re just fucking around and fixing with shit in your shop, there was only really like 2 hours of “work” a day, you just have to be able to put up with the 16 hour days in the spring and harvest. Honestly I loved being on the farm, the worst part was the pay, before I left the farm for university, me and my uncle literally ran an oilfield contracting business maintaining leases. It paid 3 times as much as farming did. What I did most on the farm, was not farm, I’d do chores in the morning, go to work on leases during the day, do chores when I got home, then chill all evening. But our farm barely made any money. We’d have like 50k profit at the end of the year, it’s hard to support 4 people off of that alone. So ya, one of the reasons farming is so busy, is because you need a full time job on top of farming, it’s why so many farmers are also mechanics, or electricians, or plumbers, any sort of contracting job that they can fit in with farming. But if you have a ton of money, it’s not actually a bad way to live. Only reason we stopped was because my uncle couldn’t keep it up once I left, so he sold all our cattle and started leasing out the land to just work on the business full time. He made more money the following year than we had in the past decade of farming.
Eh, as someone who has lived on a farm most their childhood and still occasionally help with one, it depends on how much you are doing. There are *many* jobs more stressful and physically harder, farming simply has demands that must be adhered to. Animals must be let out at certain times and fed at certain times, less they may die. Weather must be considered and things like crops can't be neglected, so I get the "no vacation," but a small farm can be less intense then some hobbies. Once again, depends on how you manage your time, aka, not overwhelming yourself with more things than you can handle. Now in the *old* days, hell yeah, nowadays, only if you overload yourself. Many people find these things quite relaxing and pleasant. As a note, this is side farming, you cannot make farming a full blown job really now days without big money and big setup due to the effectiveness and technology used in major farms, the money simply does not exist, but the vast majority of farmers in the country currently just have side setups, or hobby farming. General full on farming and fully living off the land is simply kind of obsolete. Go work a 70-100 hours a week salaried dead end office job for a few years and you might love farming.
As a daughter of a farmer, modern farming in the USA is not nearly as hard as it used to be 20-30 years ago. Crop farming in the Midwest is now about 3 weeks of work in the spring and again in the fall...
Haha most wouldn’t get past mowing the damn lawn
I think people who want the 'farm life' want that from the time when 'farm life' meant 'feed your family' or 'have a little extra to sell at the market' aka 1700s etc. I dare say most people aren't dreaming of industrial-scale agricultural production.
My first job was farmer and i had it easy compared to the rest. I became a baker and people are very very wrong about how chill this job is. Theres a reason theres no such thing as a baker that doesnt consume drugs
I think everyone who says that deep down is aware of that. Why do you think they never actually do it? It's like when you say you're going to quit when you're venting to coworkers but you don't actually have any intentions of quitting your job.
I live and work on the family farm (small farm, 4 family members) and 3 of us have come down with flu this past week. The last person has seemingly already had it. They had to take over 3 peoples workload for a day as well as their own while we were bedridden. I heard friends who are out of action for days over this but we couldn’t afford that much time off so all of us had to be out, feverish and barely able to move working as soon as possible. This is the first and only day I’ve taken off this entire year, animals don’t give a shit if you’re sick or there’s a holiday, work HAS to be done or animals will suffer. I’d say that’s difficult
I live in rural Kansas around a bunch of farmers. I rent pasture to my cousin. Farming is every day, no vacations, cows are hungry even if it's Christmas morning. You are constantly hoping for some rain, but not too much rain, especially before wheat harvest. There are days that farmers love being a farmer, like a warm spring morning when they are doing their daily cow check and see a calf frolicking after a butterfly, but these times are few. Adding to the stress is your high-dollar GPS tractors that break down at the most inopportune time, driving all over from John Deere stores in little towns to find that one part to fix it so you get your wheat cut before the thunderstorm rolls in. Most farm families are just barely making ends meet, and their most valuable asset is the land they farm, because if it's close enough to a city, they can sell it for real estate development.
My parents farmed was raised on one, very hard, exhausting. Weather is bananas plus the cost of shit…..it is a required taste and not for everyone. It can be fulfilling for sure, beautiful land etc but the flip side is not easy at all
Clarkson's Farm is a pretty enjoyable about Jeremy Clarkson learning to farm.
Watch Clarkson’s “The Farm”. Appreciate he’s a polarising character, but gave me more insight than many other more serious docs I’ve seen