Just read the thread and sad to hear this BS. We still think you are Harvard material, though. So now, I guess only the safe net remains in the widny city?
I second this, and I’ll take it even a step further. Much to Iteracom’s chagrin, I still think that you’d be well served to go to a “lesser” university, like Ohio State or Notre Dame. (Didn’t I hear you say you were from the midwest?) Even the Oracle went to Nebraska, albeit for undergrad.
These may not be “Wharton” or “The London School of Economics”, but they’re certainly good schools that carry a lot of weight. Just because it’s not “Top 2” doesn’t mean you have to do the Rustified Hack-a-Sack. I think this “all-or-nothing” thinking about MBA’s has done a lot of harm around the AF community.
Only Sith deal in absolutes.
Honestly IEV, if you’re serious, there are countless farmers with kids like me - like the farm, but have very little interest in ever running it. So when dad retires, there’s nobody to take it over. Old farmers like that would kill to have a young buck come in and learn the ropes. Obviously not to give you the farm, but you’d learn and possibly get some sort of buyout deal in the end (buy the equipment on business loan, rent the land from the kids or whatever).
I think of running a nice farm as a fun retirement gig as long as you don’t literally rely on it for your next meal or starve in poverty.
I think running a farm is pretty much the opposite of “retirement”. Ridiculous amounts of work.
If you ever shake a legit farmer’s hand it’s like a rock between the muscle and the calouses. They don’t get that way operating a fun retirement gig. Just a heads up.
Ah let me rephrase. I meant owning a farm and occasionally walking around helping on when you feel like it. Not the physical labor of it all.
^Doesn’t exist. I come from a family of farmers, and grew up in a farming community. Everybody–especially the owner–works like a dog–day in and day out.
This would probably not be true for the “huge” farmers. Then the owner is more like the owner of a corporation than a farmer.
If I’m not mistaken, Ted Turner used to be own the most farmland in the world. And he’s probably the biggest beneficiary of farm subsidies intended for the “family farm”. In fact, I heard a few years ago that about 80% of all farm subsidies went to people who made over $1m. I don’t think this is what the Democrats had in mind when they decided to help the poor farmers of the world.
I’ve been growing a mint plant and a thai chili pepper on my balcony and for a short period of time came across a variety of ingenious and highly virulent pests that required a lot of research and creativity to combat successfully.
A squirrel family took over one of my plant pots as a hiding spot for their winter nut stash and were finally repelled after weeks of trial and error by putting small rocks on top. Then some annoying spider-like mite launched an attack on the mint plant and it looks like effectively won cause I’m not eating that mint any more. A word of warning based on personal experience - frming, especially the organic kind, appears extremely difficult and ungratifying overall.
When I was considering this I was thinking more about buying land, equipment, and hire workers while I was involved in the business part of the operation. I never really considered being involved in the manual labor part. Even my wife makes fun of my hands from time to time—too slim. Chances are that I would lose a couple of fingers during my first week rather than make any useful contribution. Unlike a couple of ongoing U.S. real estate stakes that I can manage on the side along with my job, it seems that farming is incredibly time consuming. So I’m out.
damn that sucks. how about owning a farm, and just raising some animals for the fun of it. forget growing stuff.
How about a brothel instead? Nobody has thought of this? I’m disappointed.
^ This
My dad was a partial owner of a farm while I was growing up. He never did any manual labor on the farm.
If I remember correctly, he would rent the land to local farmers, who would then use it for crops (mostly sweet corn).
My family owns a fruit/rubber plantation in the home country. They hire someone to manage it and rarely set foot there. Of course, that place does not seem very profitable… it’s more of a land investment, so maybe that is not the optimal level of involvement from a planting perspective.
This is what I’m talking about. A farm where you have people that manage and do the manual work. I would just live there and lend a helping hand when I feel up to it.
First they reject us, then destroy our brackets… f’in Harvard
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In all seriousness though good luck in whichever direction you decide to take. I can’t say what I’d do in your shoes but I sure think its awesome that you gave it a shot.
My dad runs the place on his his own, hiring the neighbor to help during harvest only. He’s got it down to a science though - coffee & “bills” every morning until lunch, come back and do the work during the afternoon. Except during seeding/spraying/harvest seasons of course.
In my experience, animals are a hell of a lot more work than seed farms. Dad was never a big animal guy so we were the latter, but lots of neighbors and uncles were dairy farmers, raised goats, hogs, whatever. A farmer can take off for a weekend as long as it rains or he gets somebody to change his water (can do it from a cellphone nowadays). If you’re taking care of any kind of livestock you’ve got to be there to feed, milk, and nurse them every single day.
This thread is making me nervous with all the plantation talk.