Hacker News Reader

Comment by theoreticalmal | Hacker News Reader

The romanticized farmer aspect always gives me pause as well. Farming is a very difficult job that requires many hours of work every single day, every day per year. Even if you had enough money left over from some other job to get to go travel, you could never find the time to do so after becoming a farmer

View on HN

As a child, I spent about 4-5 years on both a family farm and then followed by about 6-months at a large commercial egg production farm (my father took a job as the farm manager, came with free housing) - it cemented within me the desire never to toil in the fields or take care of animals outside of pets.

Yet of course - my kids and grandkids who were raised in suburban environments ALL romanticize farming...

It’s not even fun in stardew valley to be honest.

Interestingly, one of my ex-girlfriends from my 20s had a dad that did this. He was an engineer and quit to become a farmer, building his own generators and living off the grid powering his operation with waste vegetable oil he obtained for free from the same restaurants he sold artisan vegetables to. He lived in a different state and I only met him once, but it actually did seem like a pretty great life and he was clearly happy with it.

The problem to me when I see this kind of life suggested as something people should try to do is that it isn't universalizable. There are only so many restaurants in any given city that need artisan vegetables. There is only so much land near such cities that can grow it. Even if all people who try are equally able, very few would succeed in doing this.

My grandfather was a farmer. "Out in the fields" or in the workshed practically all day everyday. But he also loved to hunt, had a rental gig on the farm for poor people that wanted to live in shacks "down by the river" (they built the sheds themselves), and would constantly be pointing out to me all the stuff in the house he had built himself (he could have easily gotten them just as cheap and without any additional labor by mail order -- this was post WWII).

Another words, farmers back in that time would pretend they were busy all day. But actually spent a lot of the time "out in fields" bullshitting hunting, hanging with their friends at the river, or having fun building random shit in the workshop out of leisure rather than necessity. I didn't have the heart to tell the women in my family he probably didn't come home sooner because he didn't want to hear nagging or whining children, because it was blatantly obvious to me what the situation was.

As you say, farming is difficult, so if you're going into it with the expectation that it is idyllic, you have another thing coming. There is no "time off" on the farm. Some may enjoy that, but most people dreaming about it wouldn't.

It's much better to examine one's motivations for romanticizing the farm. Is it escapism from reality and the suffering endemic to it (in which case, you are only multiplying it by avoiding it)? Is it pride (too good to work)? Is it an impulse toward "immanentizing the eschaton"? Does your current job suck? Is the environment bad? Is it because you're living your life in a meaningless way?

Worth exploring.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com