HN Explorer

Ask HN: Does anybody balance farming activity with software development?

21 points by joe8756438 ↗ HN
Over the last ~five years my wife and I transitioned from city to rural life. Since leaving the city our priorities changed; we've become more focused on caring for our bodies and the environment and participating in activities that support those things (growing food, foraging, hunting, caring for the forest).

I have a software development practice: I build Tap [0] and do generalist web development consulting. Over time I see the farm and the software activity supporting each other. I'm curious, if there's anyone on HN that's further down this road than I am. How's it going? What does your practice look like? Do you continue to enjoy farming and development? Has one or the other taken over?

Thanks!

[0] https://www.tatatap.com

24 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 60.2 ms ] thread
octokatt
Haven't done it myself because my health isn't good enough to be a farmer, but I want to subscribe to your newsletter and live vicariously.
joe8756438
Noted. At the moment it's mostly mowing grass. I was on the mower the other day thinking I wonder if there's anyone out there who'd like to come along for this ride... It is a weirdly fun problem trying to real-time determine the most efficient path to cover what needs mowing.
User23
An appropriate sized tractor can pull a finishing mower that will get the job done considerably quicker than even a good zero-turn riding mower. The nice thing too is tractors and implements hold their value far better than riding mowers, so the total cost of ownership is actually lower at the price of a larger up front capital investment.

And once you have the right tractor, you get to go down the rabbit hole of all kinds of implements, including fun things like backhoes.

joe8756438
True. I'm curious how the labor:profit ratio of a tractor compares to grazing animals. The profit of a tractor is essentially zero unless I invest in the equipment for making hay, which would also increase the labor and skill requirements. Animals on the other hand can be raised at the scale necessary for the available land and also be harvested for food.
User23
I don’t know a thing about draft animals if that’s what you mean. I know some Amish communities still use them for tilling and plowing though, so it can certainly be made to work. They have the advantage of huge families though, so there is no labor shortage like there is for more secular farmers.
joe8756438
Should have been more clear, I mean grazing animals for controlling grass.
User23
Draft horses and oxen eat grass too. Since we were talking tractors I figured you meant animals to do both.

Sadly, I really don't know how many grazers you need to keep an acre of field from getting overgrown. Grass doesn't really grow during the winter though, so you'll need to have some way to feed them then. Also overfeeding is a concern. A buddy of mine has had a horse get obese from eating too much grass.

s1artibartfast
Not personally, but my father did the same thing in the 90s. He went to consulting 4 days a week and running a 100 acre commercial farm the other 3.

I would say there are some synergies in that engineers have access to capital that not all farmers do.

Burnout is a risk and it takes a special kind of person who is a glutton for punishment. If your farm is more recreational, this could be less of a challenge.

As he aged, farming became more of his identity and his farm employees became more of a family and some of the most important aspects of his life. I think this is was a positive development and am glad he has this surrogate family.

In the long run, I dont think it was a wise financial move, as he sunk close to a million into the farm in the 90's, and the long term value of the farm will be destroyed by California regulations. A lot of heartbreak on that front. From the outside I think it is causing more anguish than loosing his parents.

If asked, I think he would still do it all over again.

That said, my 02c would be to keep in mind how much of your life are you placing in a basket and what the threats to that basket are.

joe8756438
At this point in the development of the farm it's all investment and no return. I rely on income from software development to get the farm off the ground. Long-term it's hard to predict.

But, I think it makes sense to account for the stuff you get out of the farm that's not money. A lot of the stuff I do, is stuff I like doing. If I didn't have a farm, but had time, what would I do with that time?

A friend of mine that lived in rural upstate NY would have "farm days" where people from the city would come up and do farm things, unpaid. Everyone would learn different work depending on what needed doing that time of year. But, a lot of it was pretty basic farm maintenance like splitting wood. The people that came really enjoyed it, myself included.

That said, I'm looking to develop a deeper relationship with the work than a recreational activity apart from the software development. As in, the farm is all problems to be solved, software is all about solving problems -- how do the two areas develop together?

s1artibartfast
I had a similar experience to your farm days. Many of my fathers engineer friends would take a week of "vacation" to come work a 60 hour week in the hot sun on the farm. They enjoyed the hustle, seeing a tangible product from their work, operating heavy machinery, and the comradery.

I think doing something different like this offers an opportunity to build community in many ways, and it is important to consider this as relationships have a lot of value independent of the "things" on the farm.

Regarding codevelopment, I don't think I have too much to offer that isn't obvious. If you like solving problems, I agree that farms certainly provide a ton of problems. Having an analytical mindset is applicable to both. Maybe you will find problems on your farm that need a programming solution, maybe not. Im not sure that you can force it.

User23
> Maybe you will find problems on your farm that need a programming solution, maybe not. Im not sure that you can force it.

Rigging up some kind of drip tape based automatic garden watering system that uses moisture sensors in addition to timers might be interesting and could involve a little programming.

joe8756438
Totally. I could see something like this being useful for seed starting.

I've focused my software development more on things that require bookkeeping. There's a ridiculous amount of things to keep track of: budgeting, expense tracking, reminders, event tracking, general notes, all kind of quantifying of quality, yield etc.

codingdave
We're more on the side of homesteading than farming. We own a 40 acre property where we raise chickens and collect the natural foods here - berries, grapes, hickory nuts, apples, mushrooms, various edible greens. We'll hunt a deer in the fall and could easily expand that to turkeys and waterfowl. We've started some patches of plants that should grow into sustainable supplies over a few years - lingonberries and elderberries. We're encouraging the growth of our maple trees and likely can have a small maple syrup operation running in 5-10 years. We have a stretch of the property that borders a corn/soybean field so likely will start to grow some small-scale grains there to feed livestock and then we will be producing our own dairy. We're coppicing a few evergreens for Christmas trees, and as our 150 year old hickory trees die off, we use the wood for our winter heating and some lumber.

So we aren't exactly far down a farming road... but we do take full advantage of where nature has put this property to begin with. Add a 1 Gig fiber optic line and that provides the connectivity to do tech.

Tech still is definitely what we live off, with all the homesteading being more of a hobby.

joe8756438
Very cool. Are you planning on developing any of the hobby into a commercial enterprise, or do you already?

We have a similar mix of homesteading-type stuff that is all primarily to support the family and have fun.

We're also working on a commercial operation that is producing material for artists. We're starting with willow, which was just put in the ground.

codingdave
Our kids are teenagers now, so if they choose to stay and help out, we'll expand the efforts, yes. But if they don't, this place will be too much for just my wife and I so we'll simplify and go somewhere smaller. Our best shot at commercial success would be maple syrup, as our forest is already starting to transition from oak/hickory to a maple forest. I won't see much of the long-term benefit of that in my lifetime, but kids and grandkids could, so it is up to them to decide if they want it.
samstave
Click Farmers surely do!

(Sorry)

---

[Aside, I love the idea of your app - its wonderful, however my ADHD may preclude me as a successful user)]

However - I have a STRONG desire in this area...

Let me give you a few examples though of "the struggle"

A few of my friends who were very successful in SV (chief of staff at cisco, head of HPE sales, PaloAlto Networks, etc) have bought ranch-farm-like places in foothills of California.

Several have started Goating. (Having herds of goats that they rent-out (farm) to various entities and have the goats weed, etc...)

Build an app for the USES SCHEDULING TRACKING blah blah blah.

Make it a community of farm services rather than "nextdoor"

Build "nextFarm" "nextHomestead" etc.

When you build a relationship with the farmers (on an IRL level) - these folks SHARE a LOT of services, help, knowledge, love, equipment, animals, vets, etc...

Your note app - could have a much more refined workflow specific to such.

They use hunting apps a lot to track paddocks and quote regions to goat.

They are all still highly tech and active - just settling for the more rural..

I'd be happy to chat more... but there are some people you may want to meet.

joe8756438
Ha! Sound great, I'd love to talk! My email is in my bio.
sprocket
I started a goat dairy about 12 years ago, while software consulting on the side while we built up the farm. We built a cheese processing plant 8 years ago to start adding value to the milk we were producing. Over the years we started processing cow's milk and milking and making sheeps milk cheeses too. We currently have about 125 dairy goats and a much smaller flock of sheep.

As the farm grew it became more and more time consuming, and managing the software consultancy became more difficult as I wasn't near the computer for most of the day. I enjoy the seasonality of farming, though it is very physically demanding, and I can feel the difference that 12 years has made.

In early 2020, I lost my last software client in the early pandemic, and put most of my energies into building the farm up. I currently don't do any external consulting, but have been working on my own tech and development projects. It's fun for me to be able to apply my development skills to on-farm problems. I've been doing minor automation projects using Arduinos and Raspberry Pis over the last four years.

joe8756438
That's really cool!

It sounds like you were slowly making the shift to farming over the years and the pandemic sped that along. Do you see yourself shifting back the other direction?

Also, what areas are you developing automation for?

simne
My friend made drone business startup.

This is not exactly what you ask, but he begin on air photo and geodesy and spent huge amount of money and effort on it, with really big troubles (for example once his driver left machine to go to wc, and thieves stole equipment, which costs near quarter of Million dollars).

Once he found niche of agriculture drones, and in a few months sell large truck of those drones, and now as I know, most of his business is for them.

He still sell industrial drones and provide services connected to them, like computer farm, which reconstruct 3d model of terrain from drone video. But he talk about this less and less.

simne
Also he learned beekeeping and made small apiary, just few extra modern hives, not as business, but mostly recreational and possible to found new niches.

And sometimes he joking that now he have self-replicating drones and really big number of workers :) (you may don't know, medium size hive contain more than 30 thousands bees :)

tejisant01
Working full-time in web development, and a part time farmer after work and weekends. My farmer activity is mainly growing food for the family. Taking care of fruit trees and olives trees. I do my own olive oil. Have a few chickens and pig to have a meat supply. The work never ends that is for sure, but the possibility to drink awesome orange juice for two months at zero cost is just incredible. The down side of it is I cannot eat fruit sold in supermarket, the taste is to different. Farming and development are two things I enjoy a lot, farming at the end of the day is like a decompression from the days work, away from screens, refill vitamin D. Chopping some wood after work with an axe: tremendous to relief stress an keep me fit. Of course my idea is to able to join both activities somehow, maybe trying to have a part time in web Dev, or making a project where both areas are involved. Possibly when I will be tired of working for companies, meetings with managers and bad scrum masters
giantg2
I wouldn't exactly call this farming. I have a very small honey business. I have a garden with all sorts of fruits, veggies, berries, and mushroom. I do software full time. There's not a lot of time required for my "farming" activities.

I hate my dev job. I don't want to be a full time farmer either. It would be nice to have a small farm in retirement, maybe focused on honey and mushrooms.

ciconia
Not exactly farming, but just tending our small piece of land, our vegetable and fruit garden, our chickens, and building whatever infrastructure we need...

Personally, I find it hard to balance my money-earning work and my garden work. I'd much prefer to work outside all day.