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Comment by Yetanfou | Hacker News Reader

They take up farming, of course. Having explored the most 'modern' parts of society they're ready for a new challenge. Also, having dealt with virtuality for so long it is time for a dose of reality.

Me, I bought a farm in Sweden. Harvest is in, manure has been spread, looking to grow my first 'beer crop' (barley and hops) within a few years. The forest needs some attention but that is what winter is for.

What comes around, goes around. Programmers (and developers and architects and others of similar ilk) turn to the land while farmers are surrounding themselves with technology. GPS-controlled tractors, milk robots, ID-based cow feeders, etc. Horticulture is being robotised. Forestry will go that route soon enough, with clear-cut harvest being replaced by individual tree harvesting.

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Funny. I had my start in freelancing after a software developer left to start farming. I inherited his old application (which was VB front-end & Access DB) and converted it to an internal web-app.

But he definitely seemed pretty happy. :)

I remember sitting at my desk writing code at a client's one day. It was pissing down with rain - and I could see someone mowing the lawns outside. And at that moment (I wasn't particularly enjoying the work) I wished we could swap places. He looked happy.

Good luck with your farming!

For me this is becoming eerily true. Software dev for 15 years. I planted a grape vine behind my house 6 years ago. It now produces enough grapes for 60+ bottles of wine per year. I have room on the south side of my house for 4 more new grape vines...planted them and soon I'll have much more wine production...maybe 300 bottles per year?

I'm right now looking for some nice sunny land to buy and massively ramp things up.

Funny enough, I also went farming route: bought vineyards four years ago. I am curently thinking about getting into aeroponics herbs/lettuce production with all the automation.

While not ready for retirement I'm getting up there and I am buying a house soon with between 1/4-1/2 acre piece of land attached. Its a reward and opportunity for me to experiment with a large "garden" for myself and my family and maybe enough for friends or to can/jar.

I get this impulse but I'm still plugged in enough to want to automate things. I'm looking at farmbot on kickstarter and thinking how I could build my own, program or automate various systems and sensors. I'm extremely excited about having one foot in both worlds.

I'm not retired, by no means - I'm 51. I'll keep on hacking for as long as I feel the urge and find some need. I do concentrate on trying to make our (way of) life less dependent on a steady income stream - in other words, I use time and some money to make us less dependent on future money. A farm with enough land to support a family is a good start, especially one which has both arable land as well as productive forest. Hence my choice, although the fact that I studied forestry at an agricultural university might have something to do with it as well.

Weird... I've had a strange urge to take up farming and hack the hell out of it. What's with that?

"manure has been spread"

Are you doing organic farming? Just asking out of interest.

Nothing certified, not following any doctrines and not connected to anything official but in practice yes. Just common sense, really.

Yes it is.

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