Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think the human connection and the nature connection makes a difference. I'm pre-morning coffee so not going to go any detail this early. But I believe those two factors contribute to job satisfaction.
People weren't meant to live in steel enclosures and work under unnatural light, breathing conditioned air and surrounded by brick, concrete and electronics.
And the very nature of farming meant an interdependence which fostered learning human cooperation and working toward a common goal. Natural settings and a connection with nature can be soothing to humans.
Our very progress is our undoing. A paradox.
Farmers were independent, but in ways we are not accustomed to. They had the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail, and there were no rules of protection.
Physically, farmers were on their own. It's why all of them have guns. If someone is going to rob you of your grain, children, animals whatever, there's no police to help you. It's you vs whoever. It's why some ag states still have rules allowing the shooting of someone caught stealing horses or cattle. (Rustling) There's no other way of stopping these people.
As for economic freedom, farming has forever been a game of scale. A piece of equipment is the landed cost to get to you, and if you have 40 acres vs 400 acres it doesn't matter. Oh, and you need to figure out how to fix that equipment when it breaks, because again, you're on your own.
Did your herd get sick? Guess what, you need to be able to spot the diseases. You need to give shots to your animals and keep records. You're castrating your own pigs and mucking your own barns, barns you likely had to build. You're on your own.
Did your crops fail? Did your building catch on fire cuz of the heat in a grain bin? Did your prize cow step in a hole and break it's leg? Are their wolves attacking your property?
It's independent all right...it's all on the farmer. And to even enter the game, you need to buy the land. If decent Iowa cropland is selling for $10K an acre, and that's going to give you 250 bushels of corn at $4 a bushel. (Easy math) Then that's $1,000 you're going to earn gross before machinery costs, seed costs, fuel costs, insurance costs, storage costs etc. Now factor it where farmers fail. If you can't afford to constantly grow, you will get squeezed out by the other farmers that can grow. And they will in turn get squeezed out by the corporations with access to even more land.
In Belgium and such places they issued licenses to stabilize prices at a high level. Here....if your not farming a couple of square miles, you've got to be worried about being able to continue commercially.
As to the argument of doing something in the spare time....Not really. As the dairy farmers have said, it is true that you can never leave your business. Milk in the morning, mile at night. Don't get sick. Don't be cold. Don't be hot. Just keep milking or else your animals will get sick. Make sure they have water. Make sure they have food. Make sure they're cared for.
When my uncle finally retired from dairy, he'd truly worked his way up from nothing. His retirement was farming 3 farms and raising beef cattle and starting a trucking company to help local farmers with access to other markets. (Personally we think he wanted an excuse to get away from his wife) By accident I happened to audit the company that bought his herd. It was a 7 figure check. It was a 7 figure check that any of his children could have had, but none of them wanted the operation. It's like being a slave to animals, nature and the markets...things that have to get done...and slowly grinding a ton of money in the middle of nowhere, but with a million points of failure that you just barely avert...and it's all on the farmer.
Modern office work is not slavery, it just sucks. Bosses prey on people because everyone knows a company can survive without a job and it becomes a power play on finding the weakest link to do a job for less. It's disgusting, but people learn jobs now, they don't care about their industry. If you learn your industry, you can start your own competitor. If you learn your job, you have nothing of value to offer anyone else.
Sound like a hippie commune of the 1960's, aka, socialism on a small scale.
In some ways I suppose it was. These people were only a generation or two removed from the old country which is known for a liberal bent. My point, which I think you understand, is that it was more like family than government. And because of that it was ours not something imposed on us.
Comparing by modern standards is a difficult task. It was insular and provincial, yes. Also safe and nurturing.
When you're a small town everyone is under scrutiny. You didn't see rape by ministers or teen-aged pregnancies. Or drug use. It wasn't there in that time and place. Must be difficult for some to imagine. I know of two doctor's wives who were "reclusive." They may have been our only drug addicts.
I'm sure some places in southern Minnesota had those things occur. There are victims and predators always and there is risky behavior. But it was rare enough to be a blatant exception to the way most people lived.
Some of it may have had to do with being recent immigrants. People were very conscientious about wanting to be perceived as useful new additions to the country and they were quiet and low-key.
How this relates to work satisfaction is that it was small enough for everyone to have a niche and purpose. Even the town drunk could set a bad example, they say.
It was my experience growing up there and seeing how very many went on to live lives of relative stability and decency that convinces me that at that place and time the people who settled there had some wisdom about what makes life more tolerable.
I was thinking about how 1000 years ago most people were farmers, which seems like a fairly simple stress free life where you only work about twice a year, planting and harvest (if you are not a dairy farmer). I live in the country around many farms, have a large food garden myself, have farmer friends, and my grandmother and father grew up on a farm and told me lots of stories about it. From what I gather many farmers in the past had animals to help feed themselves but it was not a 8 hour job to feed and care for them. The farmers I know do perform "busy work" to keep themselves occupied but work at their own pace and I would not say it is extremely hard work. They do work very hard twice a year like I said. People today work every day, all day, in what seems like a modern form of slavery.
I was thinking about how 1000 years ago most people were farmers, which seems like a fairly simple stress free life where you only work about twice a year, planting and harvest (if you are not a dairy farmer). I live in the country around many farms, have a large food garden myself, have farmer friends, and my grandmother and father grew up on a farm and told me lots of stories about it. From what I gather many farmers in the past had animals to help feed themselves but it was not a 8 hour job to feed and care for them. The farmers I know do perform "busy work" to keep themselves occupied but work at their own pace and I would not say it is extremely hard work. They do work very hard twice a year like I said. People today work every day, all day, in what seems like a modern form of slavery.
I have thought about working on a farm because no one wants me and I bet it would be easy to get hired as a farmhand. Plus you don't have to go out and get goat's milk. You can just take some from the farm owner I would think and it saves you money.
But I'm sure it is difficult. It's an extreme amount of physical labor so you have to be super fit to do it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pub-911
Workplace dress codes have been much liberalized in recent decades. Uniforms that are required for a job and not generally suitable for off-the-job use typically are tax-deductible.
They are talking about interview clothes and it doesn't matter if they're liberalized. It is still unnatural to wear them because you are wearing something that isn't you.
They are talking about interview clothes and it doesn't matter if they're liberalized. It is still unnatural to wear them because you are wearing something that isn't you.
Interviewing naked? Otherwise, you're always "wearing something that isn't you."
The husband (now 60) got pulled out of school for the duration of the school year at Spring Break from the ages of 8 until he was 18. He said his dad would shave his head & send him to Kansas (we live in Colorado) to work the family farm, not to return until September.
Can you imagine todays teen agers doing this (let alone an 8 year old)?
Not a bad idea. Something should be done to put some sense into the over-sensitive youths of today. Way too much complaining going on for the overly-comfortable lives they enjoy in this modern era.
Why not just ordinary business clothes for an interview? An interview is not an audience with the Pope.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickchick
...and it doesn't matter if they're liberalized. It is still unnatural to wear them because you are wearing something that isn't you.
To most office workers, it matters a great deal that dress codes were liberalized. But in my now much younger days, ME would have been my hockey uniform. These days, ME would be more toward shorts and a t-shirt. So when it comes to work attire, maybe it's just the case that we all have to sacrifice sometimes in life.
Not a bad idea. Something should be done to put some sense into the over-sensitive youths of today. Way too much complaining going on for the overly-comfortable lives they enjoy in this modern era.
Kids today have a much tougher time than those in the hopscotch-and-marbles era ever did. And in any case at all, the bast we can do is to try to HELP them, not dump on them.
Hmmm...my father grew up on a farm....eleven kids. The oldest brother died in a farm accident...he was disking a field (Google it if you don't know what that is) with a 4-horse team & was dragged to death. He was 9 or 10 years old, & this wasn't an unusual occurence on a farm. My father, the 2nd son, was "farmed out", which literally meant his family hired him out to another farm to perform manual labor there & bring the money home to the family farm. My mother was also a farm kid, one of 5. All the siblings on both sides of the family left the farming life when they grew up. I recently returned to the site of my father's family farm. It, & all the family farms around it, no longer exist & are absorbed by huge agri-business. The little farm towns are semi-abandoned & beat down. When my father was alive, he refused to talk about life on the farm, neither did my mother. So.....it didn't sound so great to me.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
