>

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?
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. >

Can be simple and hard work. >

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 >

Exactly!! They said that they were looking for another stream of income and it would be something easy and low maintenance to do. I was happy for my self control (this is a client of mine, if they were a friend or family member I would of tore into them but had to keep it professional and just give my opinion without insulting them) haha all I said was it’s going to be a lot more work than you think it is haha. I wanted to say you’re crazy if you think it’s going to be easy >

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. >

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. >

Hello there! I am a bot raising awareness of Alpacas
Here is an Alpaca Fact:
A cow consumes 10% its body weight in water per day. Alpacas need just 4 to 6% per day.

| Info| Code| Feedback| Contribute Fact
###### You don't get a fact, you earn it. If you got this fact then AlpacaBot thinks you deserved it! >

Who called the alpaca bot?? >

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 >

It also helps that we don't run cattle, so the grass on our side of the fence isn't fully of unwanted weeds and things the cattle don't want to eat. >

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. >

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 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 >

There’s a great documentary series about a lawyer who decides to become a farmer and all the problems he faces in the process >

Lmao. Got me >

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 >

Been there too. >

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 >

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. >

Shit sometimes smells like money. Like about every 10 or so raising fat cattle. >

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 problem is most dream jobs come with a catch either they aren't a stable income or they are even more work then just a  regular old job in a supermarket of office. Or they simply can't be jobs at all since there's no real way to make money from them. Youtuber and streamer for example its not a secure income and it takes years of work and luck to even make a living off it and it could just be all taken away easily if people lose interest in your content. Maybe its best just to stick to regular jobs and have these things be hobbys. >

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. >

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 >

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! >

ugh yes. we didnt even have a big farm growing up, we raised chickens, meat rabbits, and mules. I was up every morning at 4 am to feed them all, then after finishing school ( i was homeschooled) id have to go right back out and grab eggs, clean a rabbit for dinner, and had daily work with the mules to keep them well-trained enough to sell. it was backbreaking >

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. >

A dispute with a long and storied legacy, and yet this current period is the first time anyone has been able to discuss it with anyone else from any place at any time, and if this thread is anything to go off of, that distribution of knowledge seems to have softened and made empathetic most of the points being made regardless of their actual stance. 
That’s the wildest part to me reading through these comments, very few people are being outwardly disrespectful over this historic misunderstanding and that’s a thing uniquely afforded to us by the internet. >

I think it's solved one of the main issues of the pastoral-urban clash, which is that both sides had a demonised or perfected image of the other.
In reality, both sides shared entirely regular people living in entirely regular conditions. Both had problems and benefits, and that was difficult to communicate in any great number prior to this kinda point in history. >

Well put! What sucks is the goalposts moved and now we gotta deconstruct other clashes stemming from demonized or deified cultural caricatures of other actual real-ass regular people. That’s probably just a human thing broadly and something we’ll never fully get away from but it also doesn’t seem to stop being a headache. >

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. >

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. >

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. >

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… >

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. >

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. >

City people think farming is easy, same as farmers think that desk jobs are not tiring. 
It's easy to only see the positives in someone else's life, when you know basically nothing about it. >

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. >

Maybe the prospect of hard work with tangible results is what draws people to it? >

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. >

Bing Crosby learns this lesson in the old Christmas movie, Holiday Inn. >

Ngl I’m debating on taking my dog for a walk now or later. Farm life is not for me >

10th Generation Dairyman and Sonne Farms 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 >

Well if everyone thought it was easy wouldn’t we all be doing it? >

And yet no one can do it correctly. Let's till the field twice a year until all the fertile soil blows away. Okay, let's stop doing that and these weeds from no till.....Roundup, lots of it. We are in the middle of a fucking desert. No problem we can get water from way the fuck over there. Salinization is believed to have wiped out ancient civilizations but we are going to let it happen it again. While we are destroying all fertile soil we going to grow corn for bio fuels. Oh shit, we failed to realize that it uses more fossil fuels that clean fuel is produced. 
We suck pretty bad at farming. >

Dude farming seems insane.  Even if you take all of the hours of physical labor out of it, all of the logistics and constant planning and calculating, the relentless scheduling and timing, the danger from pesticides and herbicides and heavy machinery and large animals...Even if you take all of that away, I'm not fucking around with any career where you could do everything right, be completely on top of your game and spending months putting in your best work only for Mother Nature to come slap you down and obliterate your income with a single drought or flood or freeze or fire or infestation or disease.  All your work could be for nothing at any given time and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, because the factor of chance is the natural world itself.  It seems like constant gambling and uncertainty.  I'm not going anywhere near that.  Holy shit farmers have balls. >

There was this super cool reality show where a rich guy (I think he used to be a racer) decides to buy and tend a small farm. Every single decision he made made things  worse for the farm. I laughed so much and I learned a lot too. >

Clarkson's Farm on Amazon Prime >

That one! >

Oh farming is incredibly difficult. I know because of games like stardew valley too lol. and also I have a lot of plants in my room that are very difficult to take care of you have to monitor their water, sunlight, if they need nutrients, and I spend a lot of money on them too. I can't imagine doing that across like 20 acres (kind of an exaggeration??)
My Uncle also owns a farm in Nigeria, I don't go there very often because the chickens are mean and attack anyone they see, but when I do it takes about 6 hours to take care of everything and that's with like 4 people helping.
So I absolutely agree!! >

Naah, theyve been saying that since harvest moon. >

I feel the same about people who say they just want to quit work & buy a vineyard. >

I know nearly nothing about farming but I definitely agree. >

Welcome to like half the posts in r/farming. >

1000% true. Farmers statistically have SOME of the worst mental health compared to other professions. They need more credit, more understanding and more of a break. I think that demographic is also comprised by those who tend to brush their own needs and health under the rug until they have “time to get around to it” which never happens because it’s a restless job. >

I never thought that. Worst yet, the middle men only pay farmers enough to make it to next year. Death, or burdening your children is your retirement. >

The trope of "move to the countryside and live a simple farmer life" is as old as time my friend. Rich ancient Greek aristocrats would retreat to their countryside farms away from the cities and live lavishly while their slaves did all the work. Of course slavery isn't nearly on the level it was back then.
Funny how some things never change in humans >

I tried farming simulator for an hour and never played again.
Then there is the raised garden I have that it took me three years to grow one carrot. Probably a thousand dollar carrot ignoring labor. >

Wind farmer, Boom! Easy. >

I asked a co-worker who homesteads how many hours a week he spends outside work to take care of the animals and land.  He said 25-40 depending on the week.  Essential another job. >

Hobby farm and productive farm are two very different things >

I don't disagree that it's hard work- but I think you may misunderstand what they mean.. Most of those people (myself included) are usually referring to a much smaller scale "farm." More like a decent sized garden and maybe a couple animals, and not so much a big farm with big fields of crops that require large farm equipment with fields of cows to care for. Like I don't have any interest in profit based farming, just enough for personal use. It's a lot easier to maintain financially and labor wise. >

I agree, although I think people who have been farming don’t understand the stress of working in on office job. Or at least dismiss it because the stress is on out minds. >

Who does? of course farming is hard >

Disagree on the sentiment. The work is fulfilling unlike an office job. When you're having fun the work is easier. Yes digging a ditch in pouring rain to fix a pipe is fun for some people >

If you are well off enough to buy an acre then why not also invest in a green house or grow room and use hydroponics. Overall will be a lot easier and cheaper and takes a lot less space. Now I haven’t grown a full ass garden from this but the degree of difficulty I’m pretty sure drops at that point. >

Exactly, time slows down but yet you still dont have free time lol >

I mean, the suicide rate amongst farmers is disproportionately high. 
No farms, no food. >

I honestly think this new wave is different. 
Most people are thinking of homesteading. There are a lot of channels on YouTube. I don’t think people actually want to become farmers. They just probably want more than a pea patch you rent. Maybe like a giant garden cities just don’t have the room to provide for many properties >

I don’t want a giant farm, just subsistence farming. Growing some small veggies, chicken coop, and some land enough to hunt on.
I’d want to do this work instead of work a 9-5 for a depressive desk job, because there’s freedom in working for yourself, exercise, and fresh air. >

The short lived TV series "Bless this mess" makes a lot of fun at the concept of city people who move to the country with the romantic notion of being farmers and living an idealized lifestyle.
at one point one of their neighbors just lays into them about how much work it is, and he has a masters degree in agriculture, and you don't just decide one day "I'm a farmer". >

Uh...pretty sure everyone realizes this. Not an unpopular opinion at all.
And it really depends.  Cutting and Throwing hay bales on a wagon is laborious.
But, mainting a commercial orchard, isnt "less hard" but its waaaaay different, than raising beef.
I think to say its "brutal" is hyperbole. Its brutal financially.  But the work itself isnt hard mentally, just physically.  You add in the factor of trying to compete with corporate farms, then it becomes brutal.
Believe it or not, alot of people wish for that lifestyle even with all it offers.
​
but then again, it all depends what you do. a dairy operation on 200 acres? yeah your building a buisness.
an acre of land with 4 rows of apple trees?  not nearly as hard
hobby ranches are the same way. they are just tourist hotels.
What is "hard" is usually not the manual labour >

People also dont know how many people get injured or die due to farm animals. >

Clarksons farm on Amazon Prime shows how difficult farming is >

afaik you basically have to farm one and only one crop, invest a ton of money into the farm, operate multiple complex machines in order to care for and harvest the crops, and hope they didn't all die to the sudden drop in temperature in october due to a snowstorm or something like that >

Didn't know people thought it was easy, but yeah. Farm chores be brutal in the winter imo >

The term farm strong doesn't come from an hour of slamming iron in the gym daily. >

I don't think it's so much "they don't know how difficult it is" as it is a grass-is-always-greener situation. more of an "it'd be nice to do this other thing" daydream than anything else.
but yeah, I think for the most part those daydreamers are picturing having a nice apple orchard, or something. not cattle ranching. >

Farming, really? A man of your talents? >

I live in farm and ranch country. I see this stress everyday. Just the price of hay is $$$.
And with the drought here in the west, everybody is now worried about their wells going dry.
You folks should get used to $10 hamburgers... >

I do loathe Jeremy Clarkson
But his show on Amazon - Clarkson’s farm really opened my eye to how tough farming can be to a lot of farmers out there. >

I was watching Clarkson Farm on Amazon and that looked pretty stressful. I think at the end he barely broke even. >

I grew up on large beef ranches in Wyoming. While I highly agree with this opinion, I will counter that livestock and farming labor lacks a crucial element of stress that most urban / advanced jobs have: people. 
Livestock and crops need constant care regardless of a person’s state or intentions. However, there isn’t constant evaluation or judgment made by other people in the workplace. Working with other people to serve even more people is largely absent in farm work. Modern jobs are nearly entirely people oriented. 
It is refreshing to be able to labor for livestock or crops because, outside of their needs being met, they don’t berate or place unreasonable expectations. There is a terrific amount of independence in farm labor and it is rightly cherished. >

r/dota2 >

I think working every day is a false statement but rest assured us city folk are 25 years away from automating the entire process from seed to harvest. >

Nah I'll take my cushy office job in the city over back breaking 15 hour days all day, thanks. 
Also shout out to the people who do do that to keep us fed! >

How many people do u talk to that work in a city and says they would rather live off the land. I work in a big city and I’ve never heard anyone say that and I guarantee none of those people say they want to be a farmer. >

The average farm owner’s life expectancy is 79 years old, in the US. The average farm worker’s life expectancy, in the US? 49 years old. 
Farming is hard work. >

I live on a cattle farm. Farming for profit as a business is HARD AS FUCK. Physically, mentally, financially, it's a fuckin hardcore life style, especially if you aren't one of those super farms that supply stores/restaurants with their meat exclusively. 
What you're talking about is more like 2 acres with a garden and some chickens in a coop. That's doable as hell, and honestly relaxing and fun. Especially when it's for you, and there's nothing important riding on you getting Y done before X time. There's an old dairy barn in my yard, and half of it was turned into a chicken coop. Right behind that is a hoop house for tomatoes, and a hefty garden. 
My main point is, commercial farming is hard work, all the time, and there are a thousand things that can ruin your year. 
Having a couple of acres with a big garden and a small chicken coop is fun, relaxing, and sort of addictive once you get the hang of it. >

I think generally speaking people have almost no idea how farms actually operate. This is most obvious when people/governments who have never touched a shovel in their life attempt to regulate or "improve" farming practices to achieve a political/ideological goal. 
​
Grave human and monetary consequences are typical. >

Not everything is corn or wheat, that's just super quick to grow.  There are many things that take YEARS TO MATURE before we consume them and take a lot of work over those years to care for them.  I definitely don't underestimate farmers, they are some of the toughest workers in the world and ultimately without them...we're 100% fucked. >

Anyone seen Clarksons Farm? >

City people HATE one thing: OTHER PEOPLE.
In their mind, NOTHING is harder than dealing with other people.
Ask flight attendants. >

"Clarkson’s Farm" really put it in perspective. And they probably cut out a lot of stuff. Can't wait for season 2. >

I have some family that bought a farm after working white collar jobs for years. The work was laborious but they said it felt more fulfilling than hard work at a normal job. I think it really just comes down to being the type of person that can handle a farm no matter how much work is required u will get it done. >

Back in 1987 at age 30, I quit my job at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco to move to Wisconsin to become a vegetable farmer.
Yes, it is tough.  There's a lot of skills you need.
Biggest thing I learned was not to go into farming in the face of the drought of '88.  I got a town job, we bought a small farm, and raised our kids there.  Very satisfying life. >

This always comes from people who have never lived rurally.
I never farmed, but I grew up in rural Scotland and the farmers there were hardcore man. My husband is a city boy lol, and he definitely doesn't have the same appreciation for it as I do. >

farming is 24/7. esp with live stock. if an cow give birth at 1am, your going be out there at 1am to check on mom and the baby >

What state are you in? How’s that beautiful tax deduction >

It depends entirely on the type of farm. I have a number of friends in the central United States that grow predominantly corn and soybeans. They work about 5-6 months out of the year and it’s virtually all done sitting in a temperature controlled cab. It’s a much easier life than it’s made out to be. >

Seems more like supplemental or sustenance farming is the way to go and, just like everything else, 
Commercial farming is a nightmare >

The grass is always greener on the other side. I don't have to deal with all the social bullshit on a farm. Sometimes it's nice to be truly relying on yourself while working on a huge project, sometimes it gets pretty hard being alone and you wish it didn't all depend on you. >

I farm and it’s physical labor: All. The. Time. 
Shit breaks day, night, in the worst possible weather and ignoring things means dead plants, animals, or lost of potential income. The shit ain’t easy… >

It is easy. Just watch the David Mitchell sketch on it. >

Is this an opinion or a statement? >

I worked on a small self sufficient farm for a while. We weren’t trying to make money, just farm to survive. It was fun. Yeah there were no days off. The work was constant and low intensity. We went to bed when the sun went down and woke up when the sun rose. Took breaks whenever we wanted. It was chill. 
Maybe my experience is different from a big monoculture cash crop farm with combines and shit but I thought it was a very pleasant change of pace and would go back in a heartbeat. >

My landlord has 250 acres and grows beans or wheat or whatever any year. I don’t think he’s ever turned a profit but he’s just a rich guy who likes playing with tractors. >

It’s crazy how it used to be a major privilege to be able to just buy all your food, and now the opposite is true.  You need money, you need land, you need lots and lots of time.  It’s hard work, don’t get me wrong - but it’s just interesting how things have changed and it’s now a huge privilege to be able to do those things >

No city slicker with a stressful job wants a whole ass farm. >

I’ve never heard anyone ever think to say this, so you might be right >

Mike Bloomberg is one of these people. I miss those jokes. >

Yes they do. And it's annoying AF. Farming is hard physically but it also takes lots of smarts- take five minutes and try to hang with your local dairy farmer about a discussion of international commodities markets. I tap out real real quick and I'm not dumb (veterinarian). >

Urban exceptionalism, maybe >

I appreciate farmers and the great organic produce that they make. Thank you very much for your kind efforts to make this world a better place. >

Jeremy Clarkson did. Clarkson’s Farm is a great example of how difficult and risky actually is. >

It took me 10 years to get to the point where I broke even. 10. >

I used to labor on a farm as a child, one summer I got blisters on my back. Didn't sleep for a few days. Then this witch doctor lady healed me. Farming is fun. >

I work in the wine industry and never realized how much risk the growers take. They are the whim of nature. >

Literally only raise a small number of animals and it's a lot, multiple hours per day, no vacations, always have to be up early to get everyone taken care of
I wouldn't trade it for the world though, it's such a rewarding experience. Maybe that's why some people want to farm? >

I grow weed this year for the first time it was legal. Overall the growing was easy, it was only 6 plants, bit time consuming checking on them regularly. Didn’t bother with PH of fancy fertilizer. Lost one to bud rot, and almost lost the whole harvest but I went into instant harvest mode. 
Harvest was a massive effort, I was completely unprepared. 
The flower came out incredible, it’s a forgiving plant if you check it daily. Learned a lot getting ready for next year. >

I think people underestimate the cost of farming equipment. Especially if you buy new john deere trackors with gps and self driving stuff >

I think most of them mean they want a hobby farm and not really running an actual farm. More meaning a couple chickens a goat and maybe a horse and a market garden. Real farms are way too much work for most people. >

Agreed. I grew up farm adjacent- my branch had all grown up farming and stopped and my cousins owned still owned working farms I spent time on as a kid. All that to say that I have some idea of what actual farming actually is and I find people with zero experience trying to take it on as if it will be more relaxing than the "terrible stress" they are under in their office job so absurd I literally laugh at them. Farmint is HARD, it is DIFFICULT and it takes a bunch of different skills that most folks do not have and are not easily learned. I had a great uncle who could taste dirt and tell you EXACTLY what it needed to grow the exact thing he wanted. Guy never went to high school. I don't think there are organic chemists out there that could do what he learned to do as a kid. 
I have no such illusions about farm labor and thus I have no desire to do it. I am just incredibly grateful to farmers for all the work they put in to feed us. >

There's a reason the suicide rate for farmers is high. Things you have no control of can make or break you. Lots of hard yet often boring work that seems to never end. Physical comfort isn't much of a thing and lots of ways to get hurt too.
My grandfather and two uncles were farmers and I worked on the farm as a teen. I love living out in the country but prefer the gentleman farmer setup where other people work the land and I make a hell of lot more sitting at a desk. >

I don't disagree with you, but when people say "they'd love to move to the country, live off the land, grow crops and have animals." they don't literally mean they want to be a farmer with huge fields, they mean at the hobby-level because they've already made their money at their stressful city based job and are looking to escape that.
My wife and I are doing this and it's not difficult at all. Small chicken coop, horse, pig, and a small garden to tend to. >

City folks who said that ARE very well-off already. >

This is literally the plot of Holiday Inn. >

So glad someone said this. There was this survey my brother did for one of his classes where people were asked to give a prestige/respect deserved for each career and I was the only one who rated farmers higher than 20 >

It's not that bad, it's way more fulfilling and fun than a 9 to 5. Source is I grew up farming >

Farming is way more science than people realize and tending crop or livestock the right way takes a monumental amount of effort >

Farming is easy when it’s not a job. 
That’s the difference, >

Who thinks farming is easy? >

I used to think farming was easy. Until a couple years ago I went to live with some family on their farm for the summer holidays, just to make a bit of money. It was exhausting and I don't think I could do it full time. Now I'm so grateful for my 7 hour school days and comfortable retail job. I don't regret the experience though. Being outside on open fields at 5 in the morning has a certain air of peace to it. >

I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion at all; you notice very, very few who fantasize about this actually do, and those who do end up running a hobby farm and telecommute. I suspect they don’t because they actually do know it’s just a “grass is greener” fantasy, or something they just say to express their frustration.
What people really want is solitude and quiet. Unfortunately those things don’t really pay the bills. >

This is less an unpopular opinion and more TIL. >

I tap out at 4 plants to take care of >

I dont think there are a lot of people who think that way. That's a big reason why so many dream of moving away from the city but no one does >

"What do you mean it's illegal to replant my seeds?" >

You are 100% right. I was thinking about "living off the land" and went to university and did a masters in agronomy. Realized within the first semesters that it's incredibly hard and actually more a lifestyle and not a job. Now I just program farming robots. More money and I don't have to worry about anything. >

Yes. My ex-husband had a master’s in agricultural and biosystems engineering. He worked at a very large cotton and high value crops industrial farm.
He worked about 70 hrs a week. Very hard physical labor, lots of chemistry, and algebra needed, as well. >

I guess thats just a form of thought symmetry - they are tired of city life so they praise farm life, without really thinking about how it works. >

My good farming life troupe came from "old MacDonald had a farm ia ia ooo" Song >

I think you are conflating 2 different things. Most people saying that they want to live off of the land aren't talking about the type of farming that you are.
Living off the land can mean an acre or less. It doesn't need to be intensely farmed. It doesn't need tractors and machines. If you are just growing crops  then you wouldn't need to do work every single day. You don't need to do a lot of laborious tasks.
And yes, they would need money or a second income unless going fully off-grid.
Btw, this is from someone who grows a decent amount of food and is gradually increasing that amount each year. I'm not at self sufficiency levels yet because I'm experimenting, but I could be. >

Yeah city people are so full of shit. >

I have a degree in animal science. Farming is so much more than people realize and I have incredible respect for anyone who grows our food :) >

More propaganda from Big Farma >

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. >

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.