I didn't catch this story.
It doesn't surprise me though.
Huh? I'm used to reading about farmers making out like bandits due to government regulations, is someone trying to end the farmer's free ride?
I've even seen a John Deere tractor that's programed from the factory to tell you when you've plowed just enough to get a government kick-back, but not enough to screw the deal.
Awesome. This is why I want to be a farmer. Excuse me.. can you give me huge tax cuts for buying toys... and then pay me not to work?
Thanks. I appreciate that.
I heard a quote once, can't recall the exact stats, something like; "If you took the US Department of Agriculture's budget, and just divided it up, you could give the smallest 50,000 farms a million dollars each."
Looks like no one here knows a damn thing about farming. The farmer is being screwed by the government, not helped.
Wrong Gregg. Small farmers are being screwed by the government, agribusinesses are just acting like they're being screwed.
hehehehehe
I'm with Bill. I'm not looking to make a living farming Gregg. I'll looking to buy a bunch of toys tax free.
I'm also looking to sell some "organic" food to some suckers for way to much money.
Well say agribiusness when you mean it and say farmer when you mean it.
Just get some land Nate and plant a watermelons or whatever, and you can get your toys. But they are expensive toys. Almost no farmer can afford new eqipment anymore. They have to get a job to support their farming.
Old joke: guy's touring the dept. of agriculture and finds a bureaucrat despondent, weeping on his desk. "Hey, what's wrong man?" the tourist asks. Choking back tears, the bureaucrat replies "my farmer died!
Gregg,
The toys are a lot more affordable when an anesthesiologist is paying for them.
I know several farmers, it's just barely full-time work unless you're running a large operation.
The farm we get our beef from is essentially a part-time operation, Ruth-Ann runs it, her brother is a vet, and they manage a few hundred head of cattle. There's dozens of similar operations around.
Where we get our milk products would probably be considered a medium to large operation, they run several farms, a store, and sell things at local markets. Even though they have probably 20 people working there, most of them are related.
Bill,
Ruth Ann's sounds like one of the options I've been seriously considering. By calves... feed 'em up... sell 'em after a year for beef cattle.
I could break even or so... and the tax cuts in a place like TN rule.
Can you say, "Farm Use Fuel"?
I knew ya could.
"Farm Use Fuel"
Oh, yeah! A friend of mine has two tanks near his garage, one for gas and one for diesel. Nice!
One thing, Ruth Ann does not sell whatever they call organic beef, she gives hers medicine when they're sick, so that rules out the organic option. Not a big deal, but you need to brush up on the rules for this sort of thing.
We get the beef butchered at the
">Mount Airy Meat Locker, butchers are something you'll need to look into. There's more to that than I thought when I started looking into it. Unless you're willing to dump a few hundred grand into equipment, you'd better outsource the butchering.
Huh, don't know how I screwed up the link.
Mount Airy Meat Locker
Gotta practice typing.
Gasoline is no longer exempt from road tax, only diesel, and you get a red colored diesel for farm use fuel, and they have viewers to see if your running farm diesel.
Gregg,
They don't look for that stuff. There's a reason all the farm use deisel pumps are concealed.
We saw them all over Texas. Tucked away nicely so folks on the road couldn't tell which diesel you were buyin'
I'm with Bill. It's the little farms that are dealt with unjustly. I didn't catch this story, either, but perhaps the New Yorkers you mentioned could all start their own commune and live "in touch with nature."
They can't. They have to live in a Hive like NYC. That's the only place where you will find enough refuse and waste for them to live on.
I can tell you that there is something pure about the farming way of life. When I was 14 or 15, my uncle took me hunting to a little farming community Palmer, Kansas. I wanted to stay there so bad. If I had any guts I would have asked the owner of the lodge if I could come back and work for him over the summer. I wish that I had.
Someone should inform these degenerates that there is a place for free food. It's called prison.
My husband's family owns a ranch in Eastern MT. Although not a farm, he would love to have it. Instead his drunkard of a father has pre-inheritance mortgaged the whole thing. We'll never see our cattle roaming that land.
When I say pure, I mean from a City dweller point of view. Those in the know might say different.
Don't sweat it Sean. Not a lot of city dwellers here, and them what are would rather be elsewhere.
We know whatcha mean.
If you're going to bitch about the farmers, don't do it with your mouth full!
Indiana and Ohio are full of abandoned farms that Kike Bank/BanKhazar now own because of how Der Schtaat has addicted the agribusinesses to the subsidy narcotic, and used it to kill off the family-farmers, steal everything they own and destroy their business.
I'd be REAL interested in seeing the article you're referencing, Nate: It's typical of the leftist-socialist looter mentality of east-coast blue-bloods.
I worked for a farmer one summer in high school during wheat harvest. It was long, hot, dirty work that netted me less than half minimum wage. You can have it.
Anybody that thinks farming is idyllic should spend a day tossing hay bails onto a flatbed trailer.
Farming is only "easy" (compared to, maybe, working on a chain gang driving railroad spikes) if you can afford all the automated equipment, that small farms only need two days per year, by the way.
There are rumors of collectives that time-share some equipment, can't see that working terribly well.
Bill, nobody bucks hay bales anymore. Nowadays you never have to leave the air-conditioned cab of your tractor. Well, maybe to open a gate, but that's the only time. A lot different from when I was helping my grandfather put up hay, its nasty work to do by hand. Just having to lift and stack the bales would be bad enough, but you get that itchy alfafa dust all over you, and because your sweating it sticks. Very disagreeable, the only good thing about it was how good a shower felt when you were done.
I called them Freegan Idiots.
Round balers are the way to go baby.
I don't think anyone here has labeled farming "idealic". I know what I'm going to be getting into. I've cut tobacco people. Work doesn't get nastier than that.
That said, I've yet to make up my mind totally. May start a Registered Herd. Snob farmin' sounds good sometimes.
I grew up in rural Arkansaw (and spell it like that) where I'd do the usual odd jobs on farms for spending money.
Once we were taking, as they say, the 'scenic route' to Florida from Maryland (just draw a straight line on a map). We were driving through a cotton field and Mrs Bill had never seen real live cotton before.
Imagine her surprise when she realized it has pickers on it, it sure ain't soft and fluffy like people think of cotton. I'm glad we stopped, the more I think of it the more I'm sure everyone should spend at least a summer working some kind of serious grunt work. Builds an appreciation for what others do and what we have. Calling something "Cotton pickin" just ain't right unless you've actually tried picking cotton.
I think everyone might be missing the point here. I'm not sure who said this, but I think I can safely say that this individual is a communist. And not along the lines of "long haired liberal tree huggin' grass eatin' hippie pinko commie", but rather a REAL communist. Someone who thinks everyone should do their job for nothing, and everything should be free. My personal solution for communists living in this country would be to put them on a plane to North Korea. As the plane flies over Pyongyang, someone could throw parachutes at them and kick their asses out. And no, it doesn't surprise me in the least that this idiocy came out of New York. Think about it. You shouldn't have to pay for food, but it's OK to have a baseball team with a $188 million payroll, and they still can't get to the world series. Not only that, but they lose to their biggest rival in a disgraceful history making comeback in the process.
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