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Jonathan
02-14-2004 10:41:33
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I, like you thought farming was cool, I loved visiting my uncles farm when I was younger and I really believed I wanted to be a farmer when I grew up. Now I have grown up and I got a farm job and found out that it's not at all as easy as it looks. Like others have said you got to know what your doing, management skills are critical. There are so many things to go wrong, like crop failures, cattle diseases, equipment breakage, cattle prices, milk prices, land prices, taxes, unexpected things like there was a farmer near here that the berm on his manure pit let go and it all dumped into the brook and there was hefty fines he had to pay.
It isn't cool being basically tied down to the place all the time either. Farming may look cool, but it gets old after awhile, doing the same things day after day, milking cows for 6+ hrs a day, milking cows instead of enjoying the rest of a beautiful sunny afternoon or anything else. I work on a 120 cow farm and we start milking at 4:00AM and usually don’t get done until 9:00-10:00AM with cleaning the barn, mixing feed, etc… and then we start milking at 4:00pm and get done around 7:00-7:30pm, then get up and do it all over again. I still really want to be a farmer, but there currently isn’t much future in it, I figgure I make more money and have less problems working for somebody than if I owned a farm. I love my farmers tan in the summer, I love watching the sun poke out over the trees in the morning, but it’s a hard living and you mostly do it for the love of it, definitely not the money. I figgure your doing good if you have enough money left over at the end of the month to pay your bills and thats no joke.
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