Can you abandon your city life for farm life?

Easily, I’ll grow weed and raise designer puppies to sell to high end clients.
I’ll also grow hops and have a small microbrew setup. Perhaps even a distillery. I’ll put up a few rental cabins on the property and have a little bed and breakfast too.

If it ever becomes legal here in my state I may very well do just that

I could live in a rural environment, but I would not be a farmer. I would rather be Sam Drucker in town than Oliver Douglas out on his green acres.

It would depend how far away from some sort of “city” center. I like a rural environment, but I don’t want to travel 45 minutes to a decent grocery store.

Can I use the land any way I want? I’d keep part a farm, and build a race track for my husband, and as a business. I’d get a farm hand to help with the farming stuff.

I like the idea of my family being able to live there two. Multiple cottages on the land.

^ the distance and location of the farm would be exactly like your imagination. However, due to local regulation, you may not have your own race track, the land is strictly for farming purposes.

Easy. Yes. Goats. I will open it as a farm-stay and host weddings in beautiful gardens. I live in a country that has the most subsidised farms in the world. I will make cheese and goat milk soap, to start with. Sell any extra goat milk to the TINE corporation to help prop up my cashflow. I will spin the goat’s fleece with other fibers and dye it and sell the yarn. I will collect old defunct furniture from surrounding abandoned homesteads (because they are dozens and dozens around these parts) and I will do them up and sell them to funky-loving city dwellers who like light fittings made from old iron tractor pieces. Yeah…. I’ve been thinking about this for a while.

I mean…. LOOK at this!!! Sure, the house needs work, but compared to where I am living now, this has sooooo much room!!! https://www.eiendomsmegler1.no/bolig/kjoepe-bolig/boliger/bolig/?propertyid=94703130

Or THIS: https://www.eiendomsmegler1.no/bolig/kjoepe-bolig/boliger/bolig/?propertyid=92053666

I’d have to buy some paint right away, because NO ONE should have to deal with that amount of knotty pine in their lives. What is WITH these fucking Norwegians?

To give up a good paying job with benefits (like health insurance), to try to eke a subsistence from the land, I wouldn’t do it. I love rural areas. I live in an area that’s fairly rural but I drive 45 minutes to a city to work. I would love to live in an area that’s more rural, but to have to give up the job wouldn’t be practical for me.

I would not do it. I’ve always liked the idea of a “retreat” in the country, but it isn’t where I would want to live. I wouldn’t miss the traffic and the crowds, but I would miss the access to cultural venues that you simply will not get out in the countryside. Though I guess there is a part of me that’s fantasized about owning a winery in the Napa Valley…

@jca I live in a country that has health insurance automatically…. it’s called ‘Universal Healthcare’ so that doesn’t even need to be one of my considerations. Just imagine that.

I’m disappointed in these folks who are cheaters in the system. You want to get more out that you put in. Yeah… that’s pretty normal for scammers that will never understand intrinsic value.

I already have and I love it.

@cazzie: I’d need the salary, too. My salary is too big to give up easily.

You mean like this? Youtube link

@elbanditoroso If that’s how you imagine it, then yes. But normally, you should have more complex farm life.

Not a chance in hell. I detest the country and have no interest whatsoever in trying my hand at agriculture. And I would rather pay rent for the rest of my life than be given property that I was stuck with, neither free to offload nor to make use of in whatever manner I saw fit.

I have a pension. It’s small, but adequate for living in a second-world country. I am the caretaker of pecan and fruit orchards, and a few sheep on thirty acres bordering a national park on two sides, private land on another and a cliff over the Atlantic on another. I don’t pay rent, utilities, or for animal feed or veterinarian fees. I have two border collies, and a mare that are my own. I care for chickens and goats besides the sheep. The pecans and fruit provide an income for the absentee owner and the livestock are a kind of research experiment in commerce. I have a boat down below docked in the village that pays for itself and provides a little added income.

I sell fresh eggs to the lady at the fruit stand in town. When the catch is good, I’ll sometimes trade her fresh fish and shellfish for whatever red meat she has available.

I keep special little stingless melipona bees for their high-grade honey as a small cottage industry. My market is local boutiques and hotel bakeries. The hives are surrounded by vanilla vines the bark of which provides valuable natural vanilla. The little meliponas are the only bee that squeeze deep inside the vanilla flower to propagate the vines. Otherwise, the operation must be done by hand, which is labor intensive and expensive. Symbiosis. Love it.

I often fish for protein and to defray food costs. I have a great year-round vegetable garden and all the mangoes and tangerines I can eat.

The small city of Castries is an hour over the mountain from me. Ft. de France is a half day sail away. Miami is nine hours north by island hopper, eight to Havana and ten to Mexico City. My favorite getaway is a friend’s yoga retreat on the Yucatan near Merida, where you can take a walk into the jungle and still run smack-dab into abandoned, unguarded Mayan pyramids. I have the time to travel these distances. The city is my retreat, and I live the rural life with the best people in the world, my dogs and mare. The people of the village are good, earthy and honest.

If I were boatless and forced to live on my pension in the States, the best I could probably do would be to live in a room with a microwave oven in an old hotel with the bathroom down the hall and drug dealers and their crack whores between me and the toilet. No thanks. I’m way too old to fuck with those people every day.

And my home country, where I paid taxes of all sorts for 43 years, can go fuck themselves with their substandard healthcare based on my personal finances, and not my needs. Mostly, no healthcare at all. Here, as a foreign legal resident, I pay the equivalent of $300 per year for excellent healthcare at par with the first world, with no deductibles and no pre-existing conditions.

Here, I have everything the world has to offer, including meaningful work. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Oh yes. Except I’m not really in a “city,” so I’m half way there.

Not not really. I have a well paid full time job and friends in Dublin city and I don’t intend to give that up. I could possibly move slightly out of Dublin if I couldn’t find more affordable housing. But not the country side. Our public transport in Ireland is terrible, it would be a nightmare commenting to work.

THIS
With extra ponds added to tracts 6,7,9, well stocked for fishing, and areas cleared for tent camping nearby, and unpaved parking.
My livestock would be fishing, with crops, equipment storage on the other tracts. Tract 10 is where the house is located.
I would allow for growth of a wooded area on tract 8 for turkey hunting, mostly for myself and close friends.

No I have a deep mistrust of cows, mostly due to their square arses but also because they look right miserable bastards.

The farm I posted above hasn’t one cow. It isn’t required to have cows on a farm. Lots don’t. I would set mine up as a fishing spot, renting the crop portions out until I could afford to hire a crew to work it for me.

I’ve already lived rural for the last 25 years after growing up in and living in other large cities.
I maintained my own 5 acre property with a few pets for years and now live on a 10 acre horse property in the guest cottage by the pool as a live in pet/house sitter for the owner that travels quite often. There are several varieties of apple and orange trees here, a huge veggie garden and about 20 hens that lay tons of fresh eggs. My lifestyle is similar to @Espiritus_Corvus only I don’t have a jungle yoga retreat to retreat too.

I do have a big pond and weeping willow tree to sit under. :-)
I am also only a few minutes from all amenities, so the best of both worlds.

I respect those that want this sort of life or already live it. It just isn’t my cup of tea. As much as a simple life is appreciated, running a farm is not that. And it isn’t cheap.

If someone put a gun to my head and said that there is no choice, then I’d look into products that are cheap, easy to manage, low risk, high in demand, and sustainable. Growing quonia might be an option, if the conditions were right.

@Pied_Pfeffer Yes. That is exactly what to do. Find that niche. With the internet and internet retail marketing outlets, and all the different types of shipping available, the world markets are now available to us and there is no reason to suffer that age old rural curse—cashlessness.

I have different projects going all the time. Some of them are a little crazy, but a few succeed. The melipona/vanilla business is a result of a successful project. I am the only person on this island who grows vanilla. The project was a result of talking to a farmer in the Yucatan a few years ago. Mine is very high grade and I can undercut the imported product because mine is domestic and there is no VAT or duties on my product. It is a small, model operation, but could be developed into an import industry that could bring needed foreign currency to this island other than nuts, fruit and tourism.

Two years ago I read about the severe world shortage of Frankincense. It is used in religious rites all over the world and, in some cultures, as medicine. There is great demand for it and prices are soaring. The best is grown in the Middle East, the very best in Somalia.

As war and poverty continues to plague these areas, whole orchards have been destroyed in an effort by the enemy to destroy local economies.. It takes about twelve years for the tree to reach harvestable maturity. As prices soar, farmers are harvesting too early and too often and killing their trees. The best of the species may soon be in danger of extinction. It requires and extremely arid climate, and grows best in rocky, nutrient poor soil. The eastern side of the Sierras on the edge of the Nevada desert would be perfect, if anybody is interested. That side of the Sierras is also an economic disaster area screaming for some kid of industry.

Anyway, I sent for a Somalian sapling, although I live in a very wet humid climate. I keep it in a planter in the den, which is in the temperature-controlled part of the house. It’s about 50 inches tall and doing well. It makes the place smell like a cathedral. I may not be able to develop an orchard here, but I can still spread them around the world in people’s homes for safe keeping and preservation, for fun and profit.

This is the deal: I may not live long enough to see this to fruition, but these gnarly aromatic trees make great bonsai’s. I’ve been able to take small branches and replant them in ornate hand-made, shallow ceramic planters suitable for shipment. I’m not sure what price the market will bear, but they will be expensive. A pamphlet describing the care and training of bonsai’s will be included. This particular tree needs to be misted only a few times a month. Watering it will kill it. It is a natural bonsai, so care and training is minimal.

While you sit on the porch at sunset surveying your land, watching the pink turn to orange, then deep blue, these are the things the good landsman thinks about. How can your land provide the world with something they need and will pay for.

Bloody hell. I meant to write that the vanilla industry could be developed into an export industry for this island republic.

I want a Bonsai frankincense tree, oooh, want, want….trade ya some CA. apples. lol

LOL. I would love to send you one, Coloma. But these sprigs won’t be strong enough for shipment for a couple of more years. They develop very slowly. But I can hunt you down a sapling of your own, if you like. I really think you could make some money at this with all those wealthy, fad-hungy Californians over there. I’m thinking of all those great little artsy boutiques in SF and along the coast in places like Bolinas, etc.

And it would be a great excuse to get a potter’s wheel and take up ceramic design.

@Espiritus_Corvus Screw the teeming masses, I have always wanted to get into Bonsai, I need a new creative pursuit to get excited about.

I could do it in a New York minute, and take my country time doing it. Although at my age I would probably lease out any acreage to someone who wants to farm it responsibly, meaning organic, no GMO’s, etc. I would have a small number of livestock as pets, probably dig a swimmin’ hole in some stream somewhere, and have a large garden and greenhouse. Oh, yes, and chickens! Yes, Crow, there would be chickens!

No. Nice to visit, but I don’t want to live in the country. I like visiting the cinema, the theatre and I like cities. I’d probably drive my husband mad in about a month and then I’d be divorced and very miserable. Plus I have brown thumbs. I can kill plants at 10 paces.

You can come to my farm (see link above) after @Unofficial_Member gives it to me, and pitch a tent, and fish. I will even bring some fresh picked sweet corn for you to roast on your barby with the fish you catch.