I also grew up on a farm - a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin to be precise, which my father and younger brother still operate.
Farming can be awesome. The hard physical work and exercise are satisfying, and you'll often encounter problems that need to be solved quickly and ingeniously (e.g. some implement breaks and you need to come up with a quick fix while the sun's still up). You can really build a camaraderie with your family members / coworkers after slogging through some really physically challenging jobs or solving mentally challenging problems together.
The downsides are that the work never ends and you can never take a vacation. The cows always need to be milked (on a very annoying schedule I might add) and fieldwork needs to be done quickly when the weather is right (e.g. "make hay while the sun shines"). And it's really hard to find good hired workers to help out, because nowadays no one wants to do strenuous physical labor for relatively low pay. So on my dad/brother's farm, if one of them gets sick or hurt (another not uncommon danger), it's a big strain for them because they only have a couple high school-aged randos working part-time to help fill in the gaps.
For me the big thing that made me want to get away from the farm was the lack of free time to get lost in your own thoughts. All the menial labor, maybe excluding driving tractor, doesn't give your mind a lot of time to wander. Which, after we got our family computer when I was 10, I often found it wanting to do...
> The downsides are that the work never ends and you can never take a vacation
Agriculture workers in Britain are entitled to paid holiday, sick pay, etc. Does anyone know how this works in practise in the UK, or any other Western/Northern European country? (Is their leave fixed at the employer's convenience, are temps employed in the worker's place, or what?)
The underlying assumption for an agriculture worker in the UK, who is entitled to these protections, is that he is an employee ... not an owner.
Contrast this to your parent comment which was very likely a family owned farm at wich they were self-employed. They didn't have worker protections as there was nobody from whom to be protected.
Also, it should be noted that your parent comment was speaking of a dairy farm which are notorious for being "prison sentences" - you really can't ever take a vacation if you own your own dairy farm. It's the worst case scenario that he is skething out.
In Finland, municipalities keep a certain number of "substitutes" in their payroll, who are more or less able to cope with most of the tasks of a typical farm. And then the farmers (who are considered a special class of entrepreneurs) can have a maximum of 26 days of holiday per year. These people also jump in when a farmer needs a sick leave. The Finnish term is "maatalouslomittaja".
". And it's really hard to find good hired workers to help out, because nowadays no one wants to do strenuous physical labor for relatively low pay"
I wonder why :)
Farming can be awesome. The hard physical work and exercise are satisfying, and you'll often encounter problems that need to be solved quickly and ingeniously (e.g. some implement breaks and you need to come up with a quick fix while the sun's still up). You can really build a camaraderie with your family members / coworkers after slogging through some really physically challenging jobs or solving mentally challenging problems together.
The downsides are that the work never ends and you can never take a vacation. The cows always need to be milked (on a very annoying schedule I might add) and fieldwork needs to be done quickly when the weather is right (e.g. "make hay while the sun shines"). And it's really hard to find good hired workers to help out, because nowadays no one wants to do strenuous physical labor for relatively low pay. So on my dad/brother's farm, if one of them gets sick or hurt (another not uncommon danger), it's a big strain for them because they only have a couple high school-aged randos working part-time to help fill in the gaps.
For me the big thing that made me want to get away from the farm was the lack of free time to get lost in your own thoughts. All the menial labor, maybe excluding driving tractor, doesn't give your mind a lot of time to wander. Which, after we got our family computer when I was 10, I often found it wanting to do...