enbyecho

I tend to hope they were meaning getting accidentally fertilized chicks, which happens. I bet they could get a free cat or two while they’re there.

I assume you mean fertilized eggs or... just chicks? I suppose some might give them away. I don't know why you would though. For anyone I know, myself included, chicks mean income. You are replacing expired layers. Or you feed them to the cats.

So you give up pretending Biden has any other accomplishments?

Not at all. I gave up pretending you had anything of substance to say.

I don’t think 20k birds count for hobby farming.

It's the scale of realized profit over time. And I said USDA but meant IRS. If you were filing a schedule F I'd have expected you'd have been very aware of this, corrected me and understood that it's important to get that right lest the IRS label you a hobby farm, aka "not-for-profit-farm" (not the same as 501c*) which has huge implications for taxes. That you immediately got offended is telling - being a hobby farm doesn't mean you aren't a good farmer or large-scale one but it does mean you don't do it as your sole source of income or even necessarily for a profit, which is foundational to my claim.

My claim - and it's only one simple claim - is not unfounded and can be easily verified: anybody here can call up local farms. I'd bet not 1 in 10 commercial farm (ie not a hobby farm) anywhere in the US would want to sell you chickens, and that's being generous. That you are literally a small scale chicken farm that you run for extra income, if you are paying attention, aligns with my point. Edit: I should point out here that your sample size is 1. Mine is maybe 15 local to me where we've specifically complained about this to each other and another dozen or so around the country who's sentiment about this I'm familiar with.

Alas, I wasn't aware that I needed "credentials" to make this simple and again easily verified statement, but I have 20 years experience as a commercial farmer selling organic specialty crops retail and wholesale with farming being my sole source of income during most of that period. Production > 50-100k lbs annually. And yes, profitable... enough that I retired this year to save that last little scrap of my health I have left.

In truth this is a pretty stupid 'discussion'. The only reason I even responded is because I'm a bit sick of the overly romanticized pastoral paradise view of farming that views farmers as country bumpkins and not a business. People have no conception that farming is fucking hard and we're not there for your amusement. I got this type of call periodically - "hey will you sell me just one little pet goat/cow/chicken/rabbit?" or worse "can I come pet your goats/cows/chickens/rabbits?". Even talking to these people costs me time I don't have. It's not an income stream it's a pain in the ass.

We are fucked as a country but I’ll be fine.

Exactly.

No really I'm happy for you. Might want to read up on actual policies and accomplishments, but whatevs.

Good luck under Trump.

Well good for you, you are either solely or primarily a chicken operation although I suspect by USDA definition you are in fact a hobby farmer - no offense here, just pointing out the economics of it matter. The original comment here asserted people could just go to any random farm, show up, and buy chick(en)s. I don't know a single commercial operation that would do that. And the funny notions people get about ag in general are, well, mildly annoying.

Horse shit.

To the point where it's clear it's a waste of time to list all the things the Biden admin has accomplished or all the good policies they stand for. You would just claim they are not important or didn't happen to the same degree.

But truly I'm happy for you that you are in a position to be able to think only the macro level and ignore all the real positive change because it just doesn't affect you. Congrats.

make the tombstone the sofa.... problem solved

Best of luck to you. We are on an old homestead and although none of the original buildings remain we did get several 100 year old apple trees. Not great producers (usually every other year is good) but tasty.

MAGA agenda is gonna happen under Biden too.

I don't know what level of ignorance you need to have to believe this but clearly you have achieved it!

The same as if Biden wins. I don’t think the office of president is going to meaningfully change my life. It did not the last 8 years either.

Congrats on your life of comfortable privilege. I'm happy for you that you need not worry about the MAGA agenda.

Not surprised there are vastly more small farms than large farms, but what does it look like in terms of acres?

Acres don't actually matter, especially for people who (a) have little idea what an acre is; (b) have little idea what an acre can produce. It's not uncommon for a small farm that sells direct to consumers to net > $25k per acre while a commodity farmer might be lucky to hit $1k. And that's the problem with the USDA numbers around "production value" in that report - I need to find a source for this but when last I dug into it, it turned out they treat everything as commodities at wholesale value and don't use the actual retail sale value because they don't have that data. IOW if I sell potatoes for $2/lb cash they will tend to see it as maybe $0.75 / lb. Meaning production value for direct-to-consumer is vastly under-reported.

All this said, 45% of all agricultural land in the US is "small family farms".