š»š¼šššššāSomeone escaped the Matrix
YeatherDonāt be fooled heās only going to hack tractors.
Back in my day John Deere let you FIX the tractors
Now days we play doom on them
Eager Eagleif your tractor canāt run farming simulator, is it even a tractor?
Fr wtf else are you supposed to do while you till the land?
He remembers the before-times!
kingthrillgoreUkrainians led the first front at āliberatingā the John Deeres, so they can be turned right around to haul tanks.
deafboyIf you come from IT, you never really quit. A little parser bug here, a small race condition there, or a fucking baking oven refusing to bake until you tell it what time it is. No hope, no escape.
vext01Iāve had days where Iāve felt like doing that.
hope its not farming karma or bitcoin.
InternetCitizen2
AlexisFRSo, how soon will they be back when they realize farming is an order of magnitude more stressful than IT work?
Itās such a different type of stress (and job), people can find fulfilment in either of those while feeling overwhelmed by the other.
The Ramen DutchmanAlso, āhave taken up farmingā is a saying for āleaving ITā in general
I donāt know about that, but itās not a āfree lunchā and itās not the same as just looking at pretty scenery.
From a North American perspective, besides the absurd entry cost, it seems fairly similar to a being a long-haul truck driver or plumber. Simple, repetitive work that doesnāt follow any predictable schedule. Physical arduousness depends on what youāre growing and if youāre going to hire scared brown people to do it for you.
You also get to live in an area thatās close to nothing, surrounded by neighbors that think youāre an elitist city prick and will never respect you.
Simple, repetitive work that doesn't follow any predictable schedule
I have multiple spreadsheets, have to monitor and adjust to a lot of different conditions, have to actively monitor pests and plant growth and react to those (and predict for the next year and be proactive), and a bunch of other stuff. Farming tends to very much follow a predictable schedule insofaras you know in any given season what you will be doing and what you need to be getting ready for.
Okay, maybe not simple. Repetitive, though. I see you guys driving back and forth across a field all day.
With predictability I meant more like you have no idea when it will be wet or dry (for example), and everything depends on that. Sometimes you have to work hard pretty much as long as the sun is up, or at least thatās how it was in my familyās farming days. They would even eat on their tractors while they kept going. Other times itās too muddy to do anything.
Thatās when they turn the farm into a themed hotel that is only open during select holidays.
Depends on how much subsidization theyāre getting
He didnāt say he needed to make money farming.
I think that really depends on both the IT role as well as the type and scale of farm. If someone has a really stressful workplace in IT but makes enough money to buy a farm and semi-retire, it could just be that having the farm supplements their food and doesn't need to turn a profit. It's very different to, say, a subsistence farmer or one who has to make a lot to pay for mortgage, retirement, etc.
Honestly when I imagine someone in IT getting into farming, I imagine this. Itās really an acreage with a garden and some animals, but they call it a farm, and arenāt really interested in the actual farms.
That, or they do a hipster-bespoke-organic goat farm, which lasts a few years before they run it into the ground because theyāre expecting it to be easy or work like IT. To anyone reading this, I would urge you to explore a significant but less radical change first - thereās plenty of jobs not like coding.
ikiddI left IT about a decade ago to farm 3000 acres and 300 cows.
It is very much not retirement living.
Good for you. Youāre a counterexample then, I acknowledge that.
I mean, a lot of people do jump in with little or no research and try to spend their way out of problems. That is definitely not good, particularly when animals and animal welfare is involved.
It's really an acreage with a garden and some animals, but they call it a farm, and aren't really interested in the actual farms.
I mean... are we gatekeeping farms now? I'm trying to feed my family and hopefully have enough to sell (starting next year, anyway; we moved here too late this year and I'm still learning my land). In my case, no animals for now (though chickens are in the cards for next year and maybe we'll do something else the following year).
I do plan to commercially farm, though I also plan to keep my day job for the foreseeable future. Market gardeners with a good market can make quite a lot off of the ~5000sqm of farmland like I have, but there's no market that's going to be good for that in rural Japan. The best case scenario for being commercially successful in that way would be to network with chefs in the bigger cities, but I have neither the talent nor reputation for that (nor would I want to commit to that until at least another year or two when I can confirm stability). I do have friends who run a restaurant who are willing to pay for some of what I am growing if it works out, and another lead in the nearest big city (~1 hour away), but that's it.
I'm outside nearly every single day preparing, cultivating, sowing, harvesting, etc. and treat it like a job. I just harvested ~15kg of potatoes this morning (literally one of the first things I did when moving here was get those in the ground) and a few kilos of green onions. Am I not at least a part-time farmer? The local government says I am, in any case (buying registered farmland in Japan is a process, lemme tell ya).
I meanā¦ are we gatekeeping farms now?
Kind of. Iām not saying thatās bad, but itās not quite the same thing. People Iāve met like that are really just rich retirees who want the cachet of being āfarmersā. If you successfully do subsistence thatās not you.
The farmers where I live have got to be the most gatekeepy group Iāve ever met, BTW. Iām from a non-farming branch of an established farming family, and I get the cold shoulder - in general, not just on agricultural things.
though chickens are in the cards for next year
Do it. I had a backyard flock, theyāre pretty easy to manage on small scales, theyāll eat many kinds of scraps and pests as a supplement, and they make more eggs than you personally can use very quickly. Do your homework first, of course, but it sounds like you get that. Honestly the most difficult part is keeping away predators, if theyāre in the area.
The best case scenario for being commercially successful in that way would be to network with chefs in the bigger cities
And when people make the bespoke-organic thing work, aggressive and skilled networking/sales is how they do it. Itās just a really difficult, expensive way to make food, and people arenāt going to appreciate that for the exact reason they think itās NBD as a career plan B. If you want to sell that stuff and make a profit youāve got to be selling something else more intangible.
In Japan it might be different, though. I canāt say.
The local government says I am, in any case (buying registered farmland in Japan is a process, lemme tell ya).
I bet. Iām guessing you must be ethnically Japanese for it to even be possible. If not, I can only imagine the local scuttlebutt going on about you.
I know a guy that did exactly this. I am living vicariously through him.
ŁŲ§ ŁŁŲŖŁŁ ŁŁŲ±Ł Ų“Ł
Ų§ŁŁ I day dream about it. Sometimes I curse the discovery of oil. Instead of herding goats I am debugging C++ template errors.
Break those rusty chains
I hope he finds farm life fulfilling.
As a software developer who started a farm this year, I'm getting a kick...
/ Still keeping my day job, though.
Farminā CRYPTO on YO MAMAāS dusty old COMPAQ! š¤š«³
Farming is just a different matrix mode
I used to be a network engineer and I found farming bloody complicated. You might be very surprised at the breadth of knowledge it takes to successfully farm today.
sircacShould I do that everytime I āGo Fishingā?
Iām going fishing