Remote farming car?

@RICK,WHO WROTE "40 ACRES AND A FOOL"I? would like to check it out(you are right about the 5%the percentage is even higher around here-Kevin

@kmccune

Forty acres and a fool, How to live in the country and still keep your sanity

By Roger Welsch

Its a must read for anyone considering moving to the country.

Some drawbacks of living in the country in the state of Indiana that many never think about,

  1. Clean air? At times, While it may be illegal, many people here still burn their garbage including plastic, they are either too lazy or ignorant to take their plastic to the 5 or 6 recycling dropoff points we have in the county so they burn it. That stinks. You can also pay 15 a month to get garbage pickup, but people would rather spend that money on smokes.

  2. Quiet? Sometimes, when people are not racing around on atv’s, driving their unmuffled billy bad boy pickups, and when the neighbors are not shooting and hooting and hollering all day.

  3. Internet access is limited.

  4. Well water, Its not cheaper than county water around here, sure its “free” but you have to pay to pump it, filter it, soften it and its still nasty.

  5. Septic, This is cheaper than municipal sewer, but its requires maintenance and has limitations.

  6. Litter? Surely you jest. There is an abundance of litter, beer cans on the road, trash in the ditches, people dump couches and tvs off a bridge near here and by railroad crossings. Ignorance at its finest.

  7. Slow pace of life? Well for some folks, the people in their 60’s and 70’s might move slower, but thats common anywhere to a point, but i have seen plenty of people in the age group in a huge hurry as well.
    Many People around here seem impatient, drive to fast, are inconsiderate and rude, just like in the city.

Theres more but Im to depressed now to keep posting.

It has its great points, but Im just trying to bring to light some of the negatives.

Thanks Rick,you sure you dont live in the same neck of the woods as me?-Kevin

A lot of farmer’s buy older “beater” cars and run them until they either don’t run anymore, a major part fails (like the transmission), or you can see the road under feet because the rust is so bad. These old cars end up parked in an unused field and a new old beater takes its place. Meaning if you can replace wipers, a battery, the radiator, alternator, and fluids that’s about all you need to know. You aren’t going to be pulling motors, transmissions, or rear ends. Either the car or truck is finished at that point, or you have a mechanic with good lifts and hoists do it. Sure you could do it but you won’t have the time, tending crops and harvesting takes priority.

You also can’t do it all with one vehicle, a back up is needed when you are dealing with older “beater” vehicles. You will need an old pick up truck and an old “compact” economy car. The car is for commuting (with the PU as a backup when the car won’t start) and getting groceries, etc. The PU is for chores on the farm, hauling feed, wood, fencing, construction materials, and towing a trailer.

I think most farmer’s in Maine would get about 2-5 years from an old beater compact car. FWD with winter tires should get you anywhere you need to go, you won’t need AWD or 4WD on this vehicle. It is more expensive to maintain and more parts to break. Many in Maine do fine with FWD and all weather tires if they have decent tread. For the PU, 4WD is needed if you are going to take it into fields.

@kmccune Living “off the land” or whatever you call it requires special skills if you are to have any kind of living standard. My brother had a 100 acre farm; when he retired, his kids did not want to farm, and he did not want to move into town, as many farmers do.

So, he rents out the land and keeps enough for himself to have an orchard and a vegetable garden. His wife (and this is crucial) is superbly equipped for this lifestyle. She is a great gardener, cook, preserves fruits and vegetables, and is a great recycler.

My brother is also a mechanic, as well as a farmer. HOWEVER, he can’t be bothered doing anything other than basic repair work on his Toyota Matrix with 200,000 miles on it. He also has a small pickup truck and a garden tractor. He has a good workshop for mechanical and carpentry work.

Their house was modernized before he retired, so with no debt they lead the ideal “Green Acres” life style. They also manage to get to Florida for a winter vacation each year.

A note to our poster; please note all the conditions that apply if you are to be successful doing the country gentleman bit. Most guys don’t discuss this with their wives as to what country living implies. The advice to find a good local mechanic and not buy stuff that can’t be fixed locally, is good advice indeed. Depending where you live, you also need a good snow blower; the county will not clear your driveway. If you contemplate doing all your automotive repair work, you will be doing nothing else and just re-inventing the wheel, or trying to.

By the way, there is nothing “moral” about doing all this; you generate more greenhouse gasses per person than someone living in and apartment in the Bronx. My brother and his wife live in a 2200 square foot farmhouse which is well insulated and has a high efficiency propane furnace. They supplement their heat with a wood-fired (local supply from farm) heat recovery fire place.

For anyone contemplating this lifestyle, talk to your wife first and visit some of the places mentioned by @WheresRick. If you belong to the 5%, common sense will not apply; these folks live in a world of their own.

The reason for posting this long response is that both my brother and I were raised on a farm, have mechanical aptitude, and we both know what’s involved. And we could actually do it successfully.

P.S @Ixho39 If I showed your post to my brother, he would comment that you are dreaming in Technicolor. Even our pioneer forefathers were not “completely independent” from blacksmiths, cartwrights and other frontier specialists.

As usual Docnick interjects a lot of common sense into these discussions,all these smiths were necessary and welcome in a community(it actually made a barter economy possible,remember even old Robinson Cruecso didnt nearly produce all the stuff he needed(fictional of course) no man is an island-dont be afraid to ask for help,but remember,dont be a nuisance-Kevin

@kmccune
Another good book, The good old days- They were terrible! By otto l. bettmann
From 1974 so a bit hard to find.

@docknick +1
Well said. Another level headed, objective take on things

@lxh039

If you do decide to move in the country, please, Please, PLEASE Make sure the property you were buying wasn’t used to cook methamphetamine or used for other clandestine drug operations.

In Maine its probably nowhere near as common as, MO, IN, And TN but talk to the neighbors, make sure your not buying a huge problem. Now if your buying a house from an old couple thats lived there 50 years, I really wouldn’t worry. But a bank repo or other unknown, who knows…

'Round here I could go for a 5 mile drive and show you 10-15 places that have had active meth labs in the past 10 years. And thats just the ones that people know about.

bangordailynews.com/2013/05/19/health/production-of-meth-now-easier-and-more-portable-growing-in-maine/

Just how big is a farm in your part of the country? Growing up I spent summers on my family’s farm in Eastern Montana. 1600 acres, smallish in size, 14 miles off the nearest paved road. Like someone posted above, any kind of acreage will result in your needing to buy, maintain, and repair several farm implements. Not just tractors, but chisel plows, rolling discs, seed drills, harvesters, loaders, rakes, balers and the like. Unless you want to hire out all this work, which I think would defeat your original purpose. Don’t forget your well pump, septic system, household appliances and a generator.

@acemaster Farms in the east are quite a lot smaller, but the soil is more fertile and the growing season longer. My brother raised pigs on his 100 acre farm (“mixed farming”) and grew corn and other crops to supplement the pig formula. You don’t grow wheat around the Great Lakes; the soil is too valuable.

Most hobby farmers have trouble managing 40 acres. If I lived in the country I would limit myself to no more than 10 acres.

‘Fertile’ is not a word often used in connection with New England farms. Walking through any lovely mature New England woods you’ll regularly come across the remains of stone walls. The soil was thin and gave up more rocks than taters, leading to its abandonment by the late 19th century. A couple of hundred years of careful farming had used up what little fertility it had.

It’s very interesting visiting Thoreau’s place on Walden Pond. Now there are lovely woods as far as the eye can see. When he was there he had a small patch of woods surrounded by farms in an area settled two centuries earlier. There was a busy railroad line across the pond and it was a short walk into Concord to see Emerson or his other friends. No doubt he was serious about the environment, but it was more like pitching a tent in your backyard than really roughing it.

The year without a summer,hastened the demise of a lot of New England farming.Here in the mid atlantic,you may have good soil or you may not,my soil is horrible(Ladig type,only the floodplains and wind deposits have good soil in my area) now over in the Shendoah valley(ancient inland seabed and east of the Blueridge the soils are generally good) and this year is an exception,it cannot stop raining it seems(usually its parched this time of year) but the gardens are doing poorly because of the late cold spring.If you are really serious about vegetables in Maine I would suggest an earthbermed green house,survival in the outback isnt always easy.You ever watch that survivor TV show?,these folks have a real struggle on tropical islands .So towns exist for a reason.Kevin

Another good use for a greenhouse is clean water. As everyone now knows from another thread, water evaporates off the leaves of the crop inside (transpirates), and can be collected, condensed, and consumed without any further treatment. As long as you keep it clean, that is. This is especially useful if a yard won’t perc or the septic drainage area will contaminate the well water. A college friend used to build these systems. Maybe he still does.

I am an expat living in Mexico. The nearest adult North American is outside a 700 square mile area. For me, life is more than good here.

But, adaptability is a major issue when moving to a place that is different than where you live. Foreign or US. Rural or urban.

And, you won’t know until you try.

It turns out I am extremely adaptable. Here I am in a Third World village where the neighbors use burros for farm work, and some live in houses made of tree trunks with corrugated steel or palm leaf roofs, happy as a bug in a rug.

I retired from a very high tech factory. I started on microprocessors in 1974. One would not predict I would fit into a Third World village.

Over the years, it has been learned that many US citizens retire to Mexico. As soon as 2 weeks, they realize they can’t live here. If they put their entire estate into a Mexican mansion, things don’t go well after only two weeks.

Those who do stick it out, a majority after about two years of happy living, wake up one day and realize, “I gotta’ go home.”

I am home.

Wherever you go it, will be the same. The dream and the reality may not be the same. But, moving to a Wal-mart served rural area should be much less dramatic than those who move to another nation.

You need a compromise between not making sufficient commitment to your new life, and not burning your bridges if you bail.

In my case, my first visit to Mexico was in 1983. I also visited this village and hated it with a passion.

Every two or three years, we repeated the visit to my wife’s family. In 1993, we bought a house in Mexico City with my sister-in-law, and I started visiting every December, all month.

When we retired in 1997, we looked around for a place to live. We never did make up our mind, but started fixing up the “goat shed” my brother-in-law let us stay in when we visited. And, we came back more and more. As I adapted and made friends, we (I) became full-time here.

Not everyone has 20 years to work up to living his dream. But, the concept of gradual change is still valid. And, not all changes move from high-tech US to Third World life. So, it may be relative.

But, in the end, your adaptability will be key to the success of the change.

My FIL was a farmer. He always took his cars and truck to town for service. He’d work on his own farm equipment to some extent or took it to the implement dealer for more severe repairs. That’s what small towns are for-to service the folks in the area. Then he could concentrate on what he did best-getting the crops in and out. These days farms are 2000 plus acres with large equipment. The idea of having a few chickens, cows, 40 acres, and kerosene lamps is something else again but usually called a hobby farm where people work in town and live on the farm. Then when the back goes bad at 50 from chopping wood and bailing hay, they sell everything and move into town. The guys I know that are farmers though can weld, build, fix, about everything and are pretty good at balance and spread sheets. Maybe a summer job on a farm or a summer with an Amish community would help to come up with a workable model.

Don’t buy tools in anticipation of needing them. Instead, buy tools for a repair as needed. That way you can choose to not buy tools that may not be needed often enough to justify their cost. You may not want to or be able to do all vehicle or home repair tasks. Most tools can be rented and some even borrowed.