Sometimes I think of becoming a farmer instead of going to a soul sucking office

I’d be working with nature and being physically active

Anyone thought about it?

i wouldn't wait too long, i was looking as modest plots in Texas near water last year, in the meantime corporations bought all the 5-40 acre plots and are now selling them in .5 acre divisions for 30k, they are preparing for the great rural migration that is bound to come. scary stuff really.

let me guess you played stardew valley

I grow cotton, soybeans, hay, chickens, and such.
There is good and bad.
First the bad ...
I'd never have done this if I had had even the slightest idea of what the fukk I was getting into. It made organic chemistry or college level calculus look like a fluttery fun little orgasm in a sun dappled meadow. Ball busting, constant, miserable work. Extremely lonely. No help from any living soul. The work never ends and the fear is endless. If you think your office job is hard, you'll be screaming for it after a while.

The good ... once your soul dies and you renounce sex, having fun, physical comfort, and any sort of standard of living, you'll never actually want to go back to the old life. Big sky. chitting in the woods with twittery birds. absolute possession and power. No one telling you what to do, think or feel. When confronted with actually having the "opportunity" to leave, I turned it down. I can't believe i like this place, but I finally do. I spend all day with my dog except going to the gym.

Given that it took me 20 years to actually settle in, I'd say don't do it. But if you want to really put your nuts in a ringer, go for it. stay hydrated. respect the weather. You can literally die if you push it too hard. Respect the tractor. stay out of the mud. gool ruck

I would think about the pros and cons first. Trust me I plan on having my own homestead and maybe a farmstand in the future.

The problem with farming is that it is unpredictable and not really profitable. It's a slave to the cost of goods. A bale of hay can go from like $5 to $15 dollars out of no where. If you have cows then that adds up quick. Then you have to deal with weather, bugs, and how to protect your crops.

To me the juice isn't worth the squeeze for big or small scale farming as a business. Corporations/industrial farms have a lockdown on these things so that everything can be sold cheap.

I think there are some unique ways to do it though. You can do a farmstand and focus on quality, microgreens, and chickens. Chickens might be the most profitable as a business imo.

loblolly pines can be good too if you live in the south. Just thinned my trees. the farm looks like a storm hit, but the yield was higher than expected. OP, Consider what it would feel like to be hyper aware of the prices at the grocery store, every trip to town costs gas money, no eating out, no cell phone service or decent internet ... tryin to make a bag of rice stretch. If that's too hard, rethink farm life. You can sob your eyes out, but the work is implacable. Money is everything and genuine, balls to the wall poverty is a constant. Don't mean to over emphasize it, but it's very hard. Once you get adjusted, it's hard to imagine city life where you can't even go outside and piss, or shoot guns, but I'd literally never have done this if I had known that I was going to have such a time.

The biggest hurdle was realizing that i would never have other humans. No marriage, no kids, no friends. The reality of living in the middle of no where is that you don't have anyone around you. Seems obvious, unless you were like me, living in the city and taking the massive city support networks for granted.
Once I spent three hours with a pitchfork in my foot. The ambulance got lost. In retrospect, I'd have just pulled it out myself.

40 acres is too small.

Spot sold to your new master.

Grew up in farm country and most of my cousins farm. Cannot fukking imagine some random person on the misc going and becoming a farmer. The odds are just stacked against you (srs). The people who farm typically grow up on a farm and had several generations of farmers before them to show them the ropes. They're already comfortable being on a farm and doing farm chit like fixing up the tractor and feeding the cows (i.e. wading through mud and cow chit on the weekend). Not for the faint of heart (srs)

the effort required to get into the game (hugely capital intensive business) and the effort required to stay afloat is no joke brah. This is a lifestyle and the people cut out for it typically would not choose anything else. Know who you are competing with

I opened a homesteading thread, may have to look for it to give a bump.

Anyway, the cost of the "inputs" and the fact that any failure hits deeper and harder gives me pause. You are even more dependent on price swings and there isn't really a safety net. If you decide to go with chickens and pigs (sort of my plan) and feed shoots up that is directly affecting your source of food. What happens if your potato crop fails? For me when asparagus gets to $5 a pound I get broccoli at $1.40. When chicken breast is $4 a pound instead of $2 I get pork butt. Not as much freedom when you're out in the middle of nowhere.

all the land is alreay bought up

you think house prices are high wait until youre paying 2mil for some undeveloped land LMAO!

There's tons of land for sale. Have to do some research on it tho if you're going rural-water (well?) electric, septic, hell even making sure you can access it, might be issues. Slope, soil, and shape of your land. Restrictions, risks (flooding, fire, disaster?), zoning.

Opie, my homestead thread where I'm considering it:
https://forum.obnoxiousbrutes.com/showt...post1670084253

How many do you have? I'd love to have more than 40, but heck I've seen some make do with 5.

Never done it myself but have a buddy who is a farmer.

he spends most days either sweating to death or freezing. Every time he goes to do something he has to weld a broken part or piece a part together to make a fix to use the item that day. Then orders a part and has to wait and they always cost a fortune so any money he made goes just to replace that part.

Cows always knock down sections of fence so he has to fix that all the time when he had planned on doing other stuff.

Either rains too much or too little when its time to harvest crops so that always delays the process.

he has done it all his life so its just what he does. Someone just starting out though is most likely in for a very rude awakening when they realize its not like it is on instagram.