IAmA Farmer AMA

Are you outstanding in your field?

No, he's not a scarecrow.

lmao

Is driving a tractor slowly on the road as fun as I always assumed it would be?

yes it is.

although on one occasion i did fall off the back of a tractor while it was traveling down the road at about 40kmh or 25mph, i broke my arm and was off for the rest of the season

So, how exactly how did you fall off of the tractor?

well, i'm not sure if you have ever seen the back of a blue berry harvester but you'll get the idea if you Google "blueberry harvester" i was standing on the platform on the back and reorganizing boxes on the back when my friend driving hit a bump knocking me off

funny looking "tractor"

oh that's for high bush blue berry this is the one im taking about http://imgur.com/eV38J but you cat see the back in this picture

Do you smoke pot?

lol yes i'm Canadian :P

Basically every farmer I've ever known smokes it. I'm from a fairly rural town and went to school with like 15-20 kids that lived/worked on farms. Pretty much all of them started smoking eventually.

well i couldn't say i smoke because im a farmer but there are defiantly people who do, i don't do drugs at work i feel that i wouldn't be able to give my best afford

"Have you ever tried farmin' NOT high? Boring as shit!"

"Dude, this strawberries taste like red"

kinda off topic but one time while working in a strawberry field i met another employee that was deathly allergic to eating strawberry's her job? pick strawberry's

why did all my tomatoes die this year?

well, there are a lot of factors involved. tomatoes don't like the cold so that's the first thing that comes to mind. I know in the green house we worked at they never let it get below 20c or 68f but they can stand a little colder then that. could that be the issue?

No it was a good summer.. different types of tomatoes maybe.. but my primary concern is some sort of problem in the glass.. they went mouldy very quickly..

how big is it? and how/was it ventilated?

EDIT: OP has provided proof!

thanks, I kinda new to Reddit do i just put my name or what?

Then welcome aboard! A photo of you on your farm, and one of you holding a piece of paper with your username on it will work.

so I have a tax return from from working in the straw berry fields a check from stokdijk greenhouses and a letter fro the work place health and safety from when i broke my arm at the blue berry farm i can take a picture of my self on the family farm.... oh and and there's a picture of me super hung over at work past out on the back of the harvester.. would that suffice?

hows this sorry for bad quality http://imgur.com/GsC2z

Usually legal documents (tax returns or whatever, for you maybe union documents if those apply, I have no idea) are good. Or, you know, a picture of you on the farm holding a piece of paper saying "Hi reddit!"

You can black out your name and other details if you're going the legal route.

ok lol wow so i have to find proof of everything ill hae a look around

http://imgur.com/GsC2z

what do you use for pesticides/herbicides/fertilizer?

on my own garden I don't use any, except for the occasional potato bug powder. for blueberry's we used roundup on the field to kill off everything then the blueberry's grow back in the next year. and i am not sure what the pesticide used in the green house was called, but i do know that they did not do it on a regular basis it was only when the insects got out of hand

how do you learn to be a farmer?

I have had a lot of mentoring. everyone i worked for knows what they are doing and pass there knowledge to me. But when my dad started he learned on his own. I know he read a lot books but of course that was before the internet now I'm sure you could find every thing you need to start you own farm right here on the computer.

Do you have any plans for the future? College, owning your own farm, etc?

most likely college. to get into farming is ridiculously expensive you will never make back what it costs

For a guy like me who dreams of being a farmer, what would you suggest I do as my first step?

try to get experience. it takes a lot of smarts to run a farm

How many hours a day do you work? What time do you get up?

well for blue berry's i worked about 13 hours a day. from as soon as the plants are dry tell dark. you cant work un-tell the dew has dried so that means I don't have to get up that early but its a very long day

But that's not the entire year, right? Are there seasons, months or weeks you simply don't work at all?

How do you compare your work with a city office cubicle work?

right well Im a student so i only need seasonal work. its hard work but id rather work with my hand then be in a cubical. they've done studys that show any kind of physical activity can help burn off stress where as working in a cubical could be stressful with no way to burn it off. im just happy i get to get a tan at work, even if it is a farmers tan lol

no it's not the entire year... there are "Seasons" for different fruits/veggies, and you have to work quick once things are ripe. I used to pick berries as a teenager for extra money, and man I loved when it rained the night before cause that meant I couldn't pick strawberries till at least noon. YAY FOR SLEEPING IN!

hahah exactly, thats something i didnt like about the green house :( no sleeping in ever :P

What's your preferred way to slaughter strawberries?

smoothy :)

Have you ever grown marijuana?

yes, but i didn't have much time to attended to them and my soil was to acidic so they died

[deleted]

farmville seems an obscene wast of time to me. The whole thing is a gimmick to make you buy Facebook gold in my opinion as for the other questions I'm only 18 I haven't graduated high school yet. i plan on taking either electrical engineering or maybe software programming although i hear a lot of jobs in software programming are getting out-sourced.

Where do you get your seeds, and how much do they cost?

as a person growing my own garden or as a green house ordering on a large scale?

Both. Do quantities of the seed order determine where you buy them from?

yes, if i want to buy seeds for my own garden i would just go to the closest co-op and they have everything i would need. where as the green house ordered truckloads of already sprouted plants and cloned them. one tomatoes plant will last an entire season and grow to be 30 feet long

Can you clarify some about the cloning? Are you saying you grow the tomato plants, harvest seeds once mature, then plant those seeds?

Also, seriously? One tomato plant lasting a whole season, and thirty feet tall? I planted my tomato plants in March (central Texas) and by the end of July they looked like total shit. Of course, they worked hard giving me baskets and baskets of delicious tomatoes, so I can't blame them.

Edit: Just realized you are in Canada, therefore do have a significantly shorter growing season.

yes but that is in a indoor heated green house and they don't gow that high with out some promoting

Oxford, Nova Scotia?

Blueberries was my tip off...

well all of our berry's are sold to a manufacture in oxford but the farm is in a small town close to Kennetcook

Ah, I see. Thanks from a Haligonian who has probably eaten some of your berries before!

hahaha awesome, we sell some at the farmers market

Im actually about to head down there. MMMMM berry goodness.

unfortunately none will be there this week :/ they stopped cleaning them for the season but next year if you see any in a blue and whit box marked courthouse hill family farms that us

[deleted]

hahahah well its only 2;13 now so it will be a few hours

If you could be anything besides a farmer, what would you be?

well, I'm only 18 I haven't graduated high school yet. i plan on taking either electrical engineering or maybe software programming although i hear a lot of jobs in software programming are getting out-sourced.

I hate to be that guy, but I saw so many people fail out of the engineering course at my university because they were doing it purely for job prospects. Do what you love to do and work hard at it. Successful software engineers didn't get into their field because there were an abundance of high paying jobs. They did it because they were passionate about it.

ahah you shouldnt hate to be the guy who give helpful up font advice

Have you played Farming Simulator?

I have not but i may try it if i have the time is it good?

How does farming differ across regions of Canada?

well on the east coast, its a lot cooler we get more rain and a lot more snow then the west coast. so the west coast like bc can grow crops that like a warmer climate its kinda like the California of Canada. central Canada is very very dry and flat and they grow mostly wheat.

Do you have huge "factory farms" in central Canada like we have in the central US? I'm from Vermont where we pride ourselves on small-scale, high-quality agriculture - are there similar areas in Canada?

In Nova Scotia and the east coast it is all small scale because of the number of people it would not make sense to ship the produce so far and i honestly don't know a lot about central Canada but i doubt it. i dont know if you have seen the documentary food inc but i assume that is the kind of thing you mean by factory farms and i haven't heard of any of those in Canada

This is not entirely true. There are huge industrial farms in central and western Canada. There are huge dairy farms in Quebec. Massive factory farms in alberta for beef. We have the same issues in Canada, its just not as apparent in Eastern Canada. Edit: spelling

yeah? thanks for clearing that up! i haven't traveled all that much and when i did i wasn't really in farm lands

How many family farms (no employees) are still around in Canada (and wherever else you know about), percentage wise?

parentage wise I'm not sure would say very very low at least in nova scotia i only know of a handful

What do you do when it rains and you can't do anything outside?

well in a green house it doesn't matter because its in doors and for blue berry's you get the day or at least in tell it stops raining off. for livestock you have to go rain or shine animals have to eat

do milk selling farmers get screwed over by the supermarkets as much as they do here, in the UK?

yes. right now there is a mobster owned money laundering company called supoto that own Baxter and Baxter gets all the selves space and is cheaper then other brands