Granted, farm life is a great lifestlye choice. Driving trucks and tractors to grow oats and wheat and barley and corn to make a living is not tough work?
Hay Farmers getting out of farming
- Thread starter Hay Dude
- Start date
College grad has a nasty connotation. He is even spat upon in the city by folks who work at a job for a living.
OzarkChris
Gold Member
Of the ones I am familiar with (~9 or 10), the parents have a tradeschool or junior college degree, kids have bs or ms grandkids still in grammer school. Grandparents are "only" high-school grads. Some have other workers (usually only 1 or 2) but they are usually hardship cases that only do casual labor but have room & board as part of their wages
Snobdds
Elite Member
I think our scale of what a farm or ranch is, is different.
I'm use to 20,000+ acres and 10 or more hands.
I guess on a 500 acre farm, your needs are different.
OzarkChris
Gold Member
You say farmers & country hicks like those are bad words. Most folk around here don't know or care about my background and I could really care less if someone has a degree or not! Hard work is hard work it makes you feel good at the end of the day knowing you have accomplished something tangible.
No I'm not writing my next best seller - haven't got or even tried to get my first one.
I spent more than enough time in the military to retire and now I'm enjoying the good life out here. I've been in big cities (NYC - my MD Alma mater is in N. Manhattan, DC, San Francisco, along with many others here & overseas), don't particularly care for the rat race.
What's your story, why do you come to TractorByNet if you aren't at least somewhat interested in country life?
Snobdds
Elite Member
huh?
Snobdds
Elite Member
JESSE1
Veteran Member
The man I'm buying hay from bales probably 20,000 rolls of hay a year from his pastures and for hire. They have an enormous investment in equipment but it has to be run to make money and if it's a dry year it's a loss. My equipment is getting old and I'm not going to invest over $60,000 in another John Deere baler when I can buy hay. I could never justify the expense of buying more equipment for my own use.
OzarkChris
Gold Member
Most are 3-5,000 acres. One family has over 10K but the husband & wife run 4k or so by themselves, their boy has the bigger 1/2 and 3 chicken houses (pullet houses). His kids help out but he has one worker that helps primarily with chicken houses which have 12,800-13K chickens per house.
Blue Mule
Gold Member
My neighbor rolls hay off 70 acres of her own land every year. She's got 3 John Deere tractors, two of which are relatively new 5-series machines, a brand new John Deere roll baler, and several other pieces of equipment. She does it all for fun. She might sell a bale here and there to locals up the road, but the rest she just stores away and occasionally moves one out for her own cows and goats and animals that she also has just for fun. Her day job is a pharmacist I think. So there's that......
Sad thing is, as urban sprawl continues the shear ABILITY to farm land is going to continue shrinking because God only made X amount of land and it's slowly being eaten up by concrete jungles. I'm glad that I won't be around to see the future but I hate it for my son and his offspring.
Sad thing is, as urban sprawl continues the shear ABILITY to farm land is going to continue shrinking because God only made X amount of land and it's slowly being eaten up by concrete jungles. I'm glad that I won't be around to see the future but I hate it for my son and his offspring.