IRL Farming Experience

[Helazak]

I have expanded my playing to surfing the mulitplayer servers making new friends, and it has struck me how many people don't know about the forum here, and how many people have zero real farming experience. Which I think is great (the zero farming thing). And I was just curious what the experience breakdown was in the player base. Does Giants ever do surveys? I have never seen a surveymonkey anouncement. They have got to have some Idea who is buying their games. Right?

I was thinking of asking if you have ever used the forum just to be funny.

What is your Real Life farming experience?
0. Zero
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. I work in the farming industry ; own a working farm/ranch; I have a degree in one of the Ag Science fields

Not sure what to put for 1, 2, 3, and 4 and am open for suggestions.
"Working grandpa's farm every summer" is probably a 3 or 4
"I bought a house with property and bought a tractor and am trying to learn" might be a 2+ which describes me.
Where do you put a crazy dedicated back yard gardener. Above or below the summer at gramp's. More growing but less equipment experience

If we change the definition along the way and you have already answered feel free to go back and edit.

[UncleRico]

I put mine at a five. I grew up farming, we started with a dairy then repurposed our barn for hogs for a few years later. The bottom fell out of that market in the 90’s so we gutted the barn and used it basically as a glorified wind break and fed out steers for ten or so years until the price of corn went up pretty high. We sent them down the road and switched completely to crop farming. Currently I’m buying as much property as I can trying to expand some and am completely taking over. I also work in construction and we do a lot of work for the ag industry so I get both sides. I clean lots of ditches, build pads for buildings, dig ditches, and install pipes just to name a few. We also use tractors to do some of our work which is always fun because I get to play with expensive toys I normally wouldn’t get to as a smaller farmer. I spent all weekend taking down grain bins that someone wanted to get rid of to expand my storage so I don’t have to sell so much off the field. So basically I touch or have touched a little bit of everything to do with ag. Great idea for a thread by the way.

[DirectCedar]

I sit at 5 as well, following a somewhat similar life trajectory to UncleRico. I worked on both my grandparents' and my parents' farms from about age 4 starting off hauling an ice cream bucket of chop to feed steers, until many years ago buying the family operation from my parents. Like many farmers, I worked off full-time for many years in addition to running the farm, in the field of agricultural and mechanical engineering, and in ag research and project management. Finally a few years ago at age 41 I was able to cut back to roughly 0.4 in my off-farm work, and draw the majority of my livelihood from the farm.

[Guil]

I'm a 0 lol. Fwiw, I think you have 2 and 3 backwards above in your examples

[EchoHCA]

I'd say a solid 1 for me. I live in an apartment. I've got a nice backyard but definitely not enough room and/or the permission to plant anything into the soil. I use planter boxes and buy my soil from the local Agway. I've grown tomatoes, bush beans, strawberries, and peppers. But this is in a very small scale. I would like to have a very small farm one day, maybe 1 tractor and a dream. I live out my dreams with FS though, its great to farm virtually while I wait for the spring-time here where I live.

[Gugernoot215]

I'm going to put myself at 3 as I've grown up on 16 hectares raising cattle for own consumption but I haven't worked in agriculture so most of my knowledge is second hand from forums and youtube nor have my parents done anything to make the place more productive such as mowing paddocks after the cows have had their pick.

[Hendrik7716]

I'd say I'm at "1+" and may one day work my way to to "2" at best.

I've had varied amounts of success with tomatoes, chili peppers, and various herbs in planters/pots in the past.
That's been put on hold for now as I've bought a fully detached house with a large garden, both needing fairly major renovations.
Once that's finished I will build a greenhouse and have multiple raised beds to continue my backyard-farming adventures.
My neighbour a few houses down the street regularly has compact/garden tractors for sale, and I've got to admit they look very appealing..

[Helazak]

My neighbour a few houses down the street regularly has compact/garden tractors for sale, and I've got to admit they look very appealing..

Yard tractors allway look appealing to anybody that spends time in the yard. However, the first time you buy property with at least one acre you will start drooling over tractors. I am tempted to paint over the Kubota name on mine and replace it with Tonka.

[Hendrik7716]

My property isn't even close to an acre, and I'd mostly want to own a garden tractor for the sake of owning one and keeping it running.
Though it would be handy to add a small trailer as the area where I can freely dump my "green waste" (plant material) is quite a walk away.

Something like your Kubota M4900 would be way too big for me.
I'd be looking at something that's about the size of a ride-on mower, minus the mower deck.

[Helazak]

I have a zero turn mower with a hitch on the back that I can attach a seed spreader or small wagon which may be kind of the size you are looking for. My theory was that if the loader can't lift more than 4 guys there isnt much point in owning it. So 32hp was my minimum criteria for justifying the expense of a tractor.

[TopComet]

Probably around 4-5. I was raised on a dairy farm, but I own a small chicken hobby farm now.

[Hendrik7716]

I could barely justify getting a garden tractor at all to be fair, but it would be a fun project to keep one in good condition and to keep it running.
It's one of those "When I've got some money that I can waste on it" kind of things, I suppose.