Slashdot Mirror
More Young People Are Becoming Farmers (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: "For only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers under 35 years old is increasing, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest Census of Agriculture," the WashPost's Caitlin Downey reports in a front-pager with the lovely headline, "A growing movement." 69% of the surveyed young farmers had college degrees -- significantly higher than the general population.
Well, you look at open space offices, the daily grind, lack of job security, the housing market and voilÃ, farming keeps looking better and better. With the whole bio/organic trend, you don't even need to treat animals like crap and all the newfangled technology makes the hard labor much more bearable than a few decades ago.
It ain't for me but I do get it.
Facing Rising Unemployment, Young People Return to Subsistence Living
It's ironic isn't is? During the Industrial Revolution, industrial tycoons had difficulty convincing people in rural communities to come work in factories. They had to compel them with competitive wages. Now the corporate universe keeps trying to use psychological tricks to get us to digest more and more bullshit reasons to work more for less wages and now it's sparked a trend of fleeing the post-industrial world back to rural communities. The big difference between rural work and corporate work is that you, the individual, reap the rewards of rural work while in the corporate world, it's the Board of Directors that reaps most of the benefits. It's no surprise why people would be compelled to move back to rural communities.
We'll make great pets
I work in the tech industry. I live on a farm.
...Also, running a small farm, our only "equipment" is a pickup, a four horse stock trailer, and a bobcat loader with two attachments. The cost of entry is not too bad.
We do not have a sprawling farms with hundreds of acres. Our farm is less than five acres. We have two homes, a barn, a shop and cross pastured land. We use the land to raise our own meat. We raise dairy and meat goats and cows, chickens, turkeys, hogs, sheep and lamb. We like to say that our animals were conceived here, born here, raised here, died here, and were processed here.
We know exactly what is in our meat. Mothers milk, hay, grass, alfalfa, corn, oats, peas, wheat, rye, barley and a few treats like salted peanuts and apples. They also get, do to the naturally low levels in our soil, a magnesium supplement. That is it.
We have friends who grow the hay and grains we get, some who raise veggies (we only raise a few items). The barter system goes a long way.
Why do we do it? I find myself looking at the paragraph above, "We know exactly what is in our meat." Do you? After we process an animal, they are kept in one of our six freezers. Have some for us and some we barter/sell from. When they are not used, they are unplugged.
Try it, you may like it.
Procrastination; I'll think of a sig tomorrow.