Seraphim Gumirov

Purchased a small farm during the lockdown era (w/o a rural background). My 2¢ on the good/ the bad/ the surprises (long list): The Good: - Owning a farm is a forcing function that will increase your baseline activity (and thus health, fitness) by magnitudes of order. - We don't go out to eat, at all, so the quality of the food is superior b/c it is local, non-industrial, non-processed by default. - You will begin develop your senses and begin to read signs, see things you did not notice before. Cloud patterns will mean "rain" or "wind." You'll know the difference between fox and coyote sign. Etc. - You'll also appreciate migrating birds you may not have noticed before; when fox kits litter in the Spring, why bucks are in one part of the acreage at a certain time of the year, etc. You'll be much more in tune with nature (for good and bad!) - Seasons become operational calendars, not scenery. Spring is repair-and-planting season; summer is a race against heat, weeds, and trying to keep the pastures / fencelines relative trim; fall is fencing, winterization; winter is a break when you "catch up" on all the things you didn't get to that can be done in the house or garage between snow clearing, of course. - You'll develop real, practical skills by necessity. You can't take every piece of equipment that breaks to someone else, so you'll begin to learn how to patch your own tires, repair small engines. You're going to get equipment stuck - so you'll learn how to tow and use a winch. You'll eventually develop some Macgyver-ish ways of doing tasks smarter, not harder (like using a t-post puller to extract the broken remnant of a fence post.) - You'll also become biased toward self-sufficiency, which makes you and your home more resilient in the event of power outages, weather events, etc. - Over time this compounds into confidence. You will solve problems you've never seen before with such regularity that don't intimidate or surprise you anymore. - Your daily view is something many people would pay good money to vacation at. Your air and water is cleaner than anything within 100 miles of a major city. And if you want to blast off fireworks or use your back 5 for a rifle range or stock your own pond, for the most part, there's no one stopping you. The Bad: - You have no idea what you're doing and on the internet that's mostly embarrassing but harmless and in the real world, driving a tractor or wielding a chainsaw, it can be deadly. Go slow, practice a lot, assume you're an idiot and drive accordingly - and get outside training if you can. - IT IS MORE EXPENSIVE, not less, than living in an average suburban home. Esp in years 0-5. -- Infrastructure eats the budget before the fun projects begin. Fencing, electrical work, outbuildings, maintaining or creating road access is not IG worthy but where you're going to spend most of your first dollars. - Nothing is ever “done.” Everything has a maintenance obligation: fences need to be painted, barns need to be cleaned, garden beds need to be weeded, machinery needs fuel, fluids, batteries, tires etc x ꝏ - This is a 24/7 lifestyle - much moreso than a startup. At the end of a day at your startup you can binge Netflix and order doordash. On a homestead you are turning animals in or out around sunrise and sunset every day of the year rain or shine and that comes before you feed yourself and certainly before TV. And you're going to make your own dinner. - Everything is default inconvenient and manual. - IG focuses on bucolic greenery, but you're going to be in muddy, dusty environments at least as often as you see beautiful landscapes. - There are no days off. Seriously. Freezing rain in the dark? 20" of snow? Weekends, travel, illness, or holidays? Animals still need water, feed, and shelter. Grass (or whatever you're growing) still needs to be trimmed/ weeded/ managed. Surprises: - Owning chickens is in no way cheaper than just buying $12 eggs. They are a lot of fun though. - You will spend an absurd amount of time mitigating pests and rodents, esp if you have feed. h/t @BowTiedBroke he's exactly right about this. - Your local SPCA's spay and neuter program is probably cheaper and better (more practice!) than your vets by a wide margin. - You're going to see a lot more death, and life!, than you ever would have imagined. Its fragility will go from being abstract to very real in a short time. - Neighbors will either be a tremendous asset or a source of great frustration. Even with acres between you. Good neighbors are a force multiplier. Someone with a post-driver, bigger HP tractor, or 20 years of equipment repair knowledge will save you months of trial and error - Buying the animal is the inexpensive part. Feed, bedding, shelter, fencing, veterinary care, replacements, processing, losses, and your time are the actual economics. - You'll basically develop two wardrobes: "farm" clothes (which are beat to hell) and everything else. Over time the everything else wardrobe becomes smaller and smaller. --------------------------------------------------- ***TL;DR*** This life is for you if… - You can tolerate repetitive, unglamorous work: hauling water, fixing fence, moving feed, cleaning mud. - You find satisfaction in doing and maintaining things, not just acquiring them. - You can afford for the farm to be a lifestyle investment rather than a profitable enterprise, esp at first. - You value autonomy enough to accept responsibility at 5 a.m., during holidays, and in bad weather. - You are willing to suck at a lot of things for a long time to practice them long enough to gain competence. It is NOT for you if - You need weekends, vacations, evenings, and holidays free. - You dislike maintenance, mess, mud, insects, odors, rodents, and occasionally finding dead things. - You want animals mainly for the aesthetic but not the daily care, feces, predators, and end-of-life realities. - You can't afford it. This is much more expensive than you think it is; bare minimum maintenance costs alone will probably be >2X,XXX for anything over 10 acres with outbuildings and fencing. - You'd rather outsource every repair, because rural labor and specialized service is scarce, slow, expensive or all 3. Do I regret our farm purchase? No. I like the daily activity forcing function for practical fitness, to be a part of the world around me not merely a visitor to it, and I prefer uncomfortable, inconvenient self-sufficiency to convenient dependence. But I'll be the first to say this is not for everyone, and even for someone reasonably aware of what they were getting into - the learning and adaptation curve was (is!) steep. nitter.gq/i/trending/20896973666…