Damn, but I I love farmers

[Glow_worm]

Some people would see me as poor. I wouldn't go back to being a well paid consultant for all the money there is.

Sounds a wonderful way to be, I sort of come from a similar place but my life is the reverse- towards the end of an engineering degree I decided I wanted to become as self sufficient as possible and make a simple living from traditional crafts. Somehow I've just about managed that way of life, but I'm now at the point where I'd like to start a viable and profitable business in small-scale old fashioned mixed farming as a demonstration piece that it can be done. If I can sort my health issues out, and once the current house restoration is done....

 

[haptalaon]

Was he hard done by? It depends how you look at it. He never paid for food or any mains services. The solid fuel range could be fed with logs. His rent was £6 a year and went uncollected for decades. He had the option for a more modern life and didn't want it..Poverty is a relative term. Many people in rural areas had low wages. But if you had no bills for rent, services or food that's not such a big deal.

To me, this sounds quite unusual as a picture of historic rural life. Most labourers paid rent, and did not have access to a large amount of land to grow all their own food, and did not have free access to wood. In some parts of the country medieval laws banning ordinary people from taking branches from the local forest have only just been repealed. Access to common land was also restricted from the medieval period onwards, causing people to work for landlords rather than themselves, with all the insecurity that brings.

They exchanged their time for a wage, like any employee, but with no minimum wage or guaranteed hours or even a guaranteed job. The history of the countryside is one of people moving into towns, especially post the industrial revolution, because the work dried up, poverty was so grinding and unsustainable people thought they'd have a better chance elsewhere. People born into that life would have no chance to buy the land they worked, and thereby live rent free raising their own crops.

It's not about access to mod cons, I wouldn't describe living without electricity or darning your own socks or living on a homestead as poverty. Living paycheck to paycheck with no security of tenure or job security is poverty, ie the systemic stuff you can't opt out of.

 

[British Red]

People born into that life would have no chance to buy the land they worked, and thereby live rent free raising their own crops.
.

I don't know what part of the countryside you grew up in or the rural skills that you practice but it sounds to me like you've been reading books with some hard left axe to grind .

I know lots of people who's Dad or Grandad bought land in the 60s 70s or 80s. Of course the industrial revolution changed farming. It condemned many to the shorter, nastier lives in cities (still true to this dayl). It wasn't a violent change though. This land was worked with heavy horses until 1950.

Now one thing I will agree is that current policies will kill the small eco-friendly farm. The time to experience the family farm is now. Almost all will be gone in a generation.

 

[Glow_worm]

Now one thing I will agree is that current policies will kill the small eco-friendly farm. The time to experience the family farm is now. Almost all will be gone in a generation.

I hope the opposite might be true, the end of farmland as tax avoidance might allow more newcomers to get a foot on the farming ladder. The land ownership situation in this country needs a huge shakeup, something drastic needs to happen...

 

[Chris]

I think there’s merit to both ways of life, and perhaps one which can be achieved with balance.

For example the fact that ‘city’ jobs can now be done remotely, means that it’s not outside the realms of possibility that one could live with some of the benefits of both. Work a few days a week remotely for the big bucks and spend the rest of your time removing the leash that higher incomes create through self sufficiency.

Personally I’d love to be able to end the corporate job, but that would also require my wife to be willing/want to live a different lifestyle, which really isn’t her bag. So in all likelihood if I manage to reach a better place, it’ll be something like I’ve described rather than either of the extremes.

 

[British Red]

I hope the opposite might be true, the end of farmland as tax avoidance might allow more newcomers to get a foot on the farming ladder. The land ownership situation in this country needs a huge shakeup, something drastic needs to happen...

Not a chance. The field opposite my gate is big enough to mean that it would qualify for the land tax. One field. But it would never generate enough income to pay that tax every generation. The only way farms could work would be ever larger factory farms worked on an industrial economy of scale.