Is this how you get a Stardew Valley? I'm pretty sure this is how you get a Stardew Valley.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Literally know 2 of these software engineers.
I have been existing in a superposition of both of these states for a few years and really like it.
During the day I'm a senior engineer on embedded c/c++ stuff. During free time at home I dig in the dirt and build shit and do my "farm chores" like tending to my koi pond. Feels good man.
I think most people would agree that fresh air, exercise, hobbies, and personal goals are good for your body and mind. It's still wild when I notice it actually working.
Farming is only fun if you already have enough money that you don't actually have to farm if you didn't want to.
Otherwise it's hard work for low pay that is very hard to buy yourself into if you weren't born with some land.
When they say the goal of many a software engineer is to become a farmer, it's quietly implied that you have to first make bank as a software engineer and then farm as a hobby while at least semi-retired rather than depending on it for survival.
I know people who are doing this and are happy. Half time spent farming, half time CEOing a software startup (not a silicon valley hustle culture 996 one though), and you get to take meetings in your own personal forest.
I'm actually on my first year of sort of doing this. I wouldn't say I made bank, but I make enough that I could buy a house with an acre and an adjacent partially wooded lot with another acre that I'll hopefully be able to split between crops and some livestock in the next few years. For now I'm starting small with 1/8th of an acre and just growing the same stuff we always grew in the garden but on a bigger scale plus a few rows of corn and a patch of sunflowers.
My company doesn't care when I do my work so I can spend half the day in the field no problem and clock a couple hours at night, as long as I get something done no one bothers me.
It's been extra cool because the house is an original farmhouse from the early 1900s with an original barn, water lines and even power running out there too so being able to fix everything up myself and bring the land back to it's original glory has really brought something much needed back into my soul.
I will say thought it is fucking expensive even after buying the land.
Do you have any foresty bits on your acre? That's honestly peak luxury in some ways. Person I mentioned in the previous comment has a forested knoll with a great view, but enough tree cover that you can avoid the sun.
Fixing things up on your own truly is magical. I do it with cars more than my home (because the former is often cheaper and quicker and I buy cheap-ass formerly-luxury beaters usually), but this summer I have some plans for my house as well.
[I]t's hard work for low pay that is very hard to buy yourself into if you weren't born with some land.
It's certainly hard work and low pay (compared to software engineering) in many cases, but it is rewarding.
As for the land, that really depends on the scale and the country.
At the end of the day, farmland is going to earn a similar basic return to whatever other capital asset, and while farming labour isn't unskilled the amount of people raised in it means it earns like it is.
Nobody who says this is picturing manhandling half-dead chickens, and it's usually someone white who isn't going to move to the mountains of Ethiopia to farm subsistence crops and cocoa. That pretty much leaves something land-intensive.
I did talk to someone here who made it work with ranching, but ranching is definitely not a good earner right now, and a lot of people are leaving the industry. Modern crop farming seems a lot like a desk job on wheels. Mainly, I think people just want space and fresh air, and have no idea what rural life is actually like.
Yup. My extended family is farmers. They got out of livestock decades ago because there was no profit at the scale they were willing to do it in and animals smell terrible at (abusive) scale. Corn and soybeans, they had a contract with a major company for sweetcorn last I heard.
I love the idea of an air conditioned tractor cab that's mostly run by GPS and lets me sit around and listen to podcasts while babysitting the tractor, but I don't want to live in Bumfuck Iowa so I didn't go into farming.
It's always a balance of what you can afford, what you want to do, and what your market can bare. You may love raising chickens, but eggs will almost never pay off. I love hot peppers. But I can't get by growing just that. It is skilled and complicated for sure.
I don't know where you live but round here if you want to raise chickens you gotta first buy some chicken quota (I am serious).
So you are in the hole before a bird lays its first egg.
I'm in Japan. It's not worth it on my scale to even try. I do plan to get chickens for our eggs (and bonus bug eating and compost helping), but otherwise I'm just in the veg business. I have full English support and website which helps me find my market
So do you have a kind of mixed farm + social media presence thing going then?
Kinda. I don't use most social media, which I suppose is not super helpful
This Lemming rural-s.
Me on Facebook in 2009
juniors are 45 these days
They are? When did that happen? For the last 15 years it's been 23 year old 'senior devs'
Some people have studied for 10 years when reaching 23.
Think it's actually a paygrade thing at some companies. Get a talented engineer (that yes, probably had open source projects already as a teen) and they kinda want more pay than an average engineer. Now they're a senior engineer.
Of course whether said engineer is actually worth said salary isn't immediately obvious and oftentimes you end up with young seniors that are better at selling themselves than they are at engineering.
I also know at least one company I worked for developed clear outlines of what your skills (both soft and... Hard?) and ownership of codebase should be for each level. At the time I had just over 3 YoE (2.5 from previous company and was essentially one biannual review away from becoming a senior, but threw it away for a more exciting job and since then I've not been at a company that differentes levels at all. So I don't know if I'll ever be a senior now lol
Neofetch dev?
nods
Neofetch Dev. God bless 'm
Senior software engineer and farmer here. I approve.
based
-Mining for resources +Actual mining in the ground
Best of luck with it fam. Good to know there's a healthy exit somewhere out there.