The day in the life of a farmer?

Question

I was just wondering what the day in the life of a farmer is. From when they get up to sundown. What time would they get up and is running a farm hard with two to three people? Is hard to run a small farm by yourself?

Answer 1

It is more a lifestyle than a job. If you like to get up early, are a motivated self starter, and like the freedom to do a creative, productive, and varied job, then you'll love it. You may never get rich but you'll have good mental and physical health. Go work for a farmer for a while.

Answer 2

My daddy is a farmer, and he gets up around 4:00 or 5:00. He then lets out the horses and feeds the dogs and cats. Then he comes inside and fills out farm forms, fix his checkbook, and eat breakfast and read the paper. When it gets light, he goes to feed the cows. Then he works on tractors, or plants crops (depending on the weather and what time of the year it is), sprays the fields, stuff like that. We have a small family farm about 500 acres. Daddy runs it by himself  with the help of me and my sister sometimes. Good luck!!! =)

Answer 3

Its a good life if 4 sure,  if u dont have livestock u dont have 2 get up so early if u dont want but u still gotta get the work done so u make up 4 it at night. most of the year 4 me prob 60 to 80 hrs a week, but when were busy in the fall & spring bout 140hrs a week (fall bout 7-8 weeks if weather cooperates & spring 2 - 3 weeks). Theres challenges in every job managing is kind of tough but it can be done. you need to find ways 2 make enough income for 2-3 operators but it can be done. We have about 1800 acres of cropland & about 500 acres of custom combining working is me & my parents we do pretty much our own work hardley hire anything done

Answer 4

I'm a small farmer on a permaculture farm.  I raise meat rabbits, and meat goats, to sell to customers.  We also raise alfalfa to feed the animals, and rapeseed to make biofuel to run our trucks and tractors.

So how about a day in my life in February.  I live in Idaho, high mountain desert, at 4700+ feet elivation.  In February the land here is hard as concrete, and temperatures can dip to NEGATIVE 60 degrees (F) with the wind chill.  So I shouldn't have much to do, with the land being frozen, right?

Start of day:

Midnight...get up, don 5 layers of clothing to avoid frostbite that can happen in just 10 minutes of this weather.  Grab flashlight, and go check goat herd, and see if any does (female goats) are kidding.  (Goats kid twice a year, once in nice warm weather, once in completely misserable weather)

No kids, no does in obvious labor.  Go inside, take off clothes, sleep two hours.

2AM...Get up, and don the five layers of clothes, check does again.  No kids, no does in labor.

4AM...Get up again, and dress, check does, find two nearly frozen kids, and another doe in labor.  Grab frozen kids, run to house, fill sink with HOT water, immerse kids, except for noses.  Give mouth to snout to one kid.  Both revive, wrap in warm towels, and put in front of fire in a laundry basket.  Put coat, hat, boots, ect back on, and run out to check doe in labor.  Towel off first kid, spray navel with iodine.  Wait for second kid to be born.  Dry kid and spray navel.  Doe starts to expell afterbirth, so no more kids from her.  Find rotten mother of first kids, wrestle her to small holding pen, milk some colostrum, and go inside, and give first two kids a bottle with their mothers colostrum.  It's now 5:30AM.

Forget going back to bed for 30 minutes.  Hubby already up, and dressed, about to leave for work.  He will be gone for 12 hours.

Eat a fast breakfast, and go out at 6AM to check does again, and start feeding stock.  Find four more does in labor.  Wind begins to pick up.  Take all kids into house as they are born, because windchill has dropped the temperature to a dangerous negative 50 (F).  Break ice on watertroughs for both goat herds, and horses.  The tank heaters cannot keep up with the windchill, and keep the ice off the troughs.

Feed hay to 100 goats, and 5 horses.  Haul the first round of waterbottles out to the rabbit barn.  Bring more kids in.  By 9AM done with feeding chores, and have 8 neborn kids warming in towels and laundry baskets in front of the fire.    Already completely exsausted, but give the first two some more colostrum.  Fall asleep on couch, holding baby goat.

Wake up at 10:15AM, when warmed up kids begin to bellow for mothers.  Take the kids out in pairs to their mothers, and make sure they are nursing.

Make sure the stupid doe is taking care of her kids (first born of the day).  She is not doing a good job.  Mark her down to be sent to slaughter once her kids are weaned, no time for stupid mothers.  Break ice on water troughs.

Go inside, nap until 11:30, get up, grab a fast lunch, dress, and out the door by noon.  Check does, none in labor.  Bring only half of newborns back in to warm up, the rest are doing fine, their mothers have them fat with milk, and inside the shelters in the deep bedding.

12:45, put meat, carrots, onions and potatoes (all grown on our farm) into crockpot, with some spices to make a stew for dinner.  Pull the electric stone mill off the shelf (it's heavy) and grind wheat.  Set the bread to baking for dinner.  Realize I'm still starving, because of all the extra callories the cold are sapping from me.  Make large roast beef and cheese sandwhich on homemade bread, and eat it while reading a book.

Start laundry, and try to make a dent in Mt. Washmore.  With towels from baby goats, and all the extra clothes we wear in the winter it piles up FAST.

Hang wool socks and hats to dry on rack infront of pellet stove.  Add two more 40 pound sacks of wood pellets.   Haul two more sacks 40 pound sacks of wood pellets in from the sunporch (that means three flights of stairs).

Fill five buckets with alfalfa pellets, beet pulp, and some COB (corn, oats & barley)  bring into kitchen and fill with hot water to begin to soak for mash for evening feeding of horses.  The horses have no shelter, so it means feeding extra callories so they stay warm in the winter.

Unload and load dishes, concider doing some housework, instead sit down on couch to rest and read book.  Fall asleep almost immediatly.  Awakened by baby goat climbing out of laundry basket and bellowing for it's mother at 2:20pm.  

Get dressed, and gather babies, and take to their mothers.  Help a doe in labor give birth to huge kid, with gentle pulling.  She gives birth to two more kids.  I dry each one, spraying their umbilical cords, allowing them to nurse, and then wrapping them in a clean towel and stuffing them inside my coat to keep warm.  Take newborns inside to completely warm and dry by fire.

Go back outside with second haul of rabbit water bottles of the day.  Haul frozen ones inside.  

Go back in with goats to check temperature of new kids to make sure they are not chilled.  This is done by removing glove and sticking finger in kids mouth.  Warm kids should have nice toasty mouths.  Chilled kids will fell like your sticking your finger into refrigerated meat.  Find two chilled kids, grumble because they are not syblings.  Have to haul chilled kids, and their syblings into the house.  You cannot leave just one kid with the doe, or she might decide she only has one, and will not take the second one when you bring it back.

Go back outside, and shovel snow off front stairs as it's really built up.  Wind is making it snow sideways.  Impossible to keep snow off of face when outside today.

Switch more laundry, put more animal towels in, and fold clean ones.

4pm, put headlamp flashlight over hat as it's now pretty dark with the storm,  this leaves both hands free.  Find two more newborns, who are fat with milk (good mother) but their ears are "crunchy" because they already have frostbite.  Carry them inside, carry a couple of warmed up kids outside, and give to correct mother.  Feed 100+ goats, and break ice on water trough.  Drag large work sled over to front door.  Haul 5 buckets of horse mash out of kitchen.  Buckets weigh about 20 pounds each, with water added.  Drag sled and mash buckets down to winter horse corral.  Dump snow and ice out of each horses feed pan, and dump warm mashes in.  Put 120 pound bale of hay into horses feed rack.  Break ice on horses water trough (that has TWO tank heaters!).  Misjudge, and endup plunging right gloved hand into watertrough and ice, up to wrist.  Pull out immediatly, and pull wet leather glove lined with thinsilate off.  Hand is already dead white in this wind chill.  Struggle and get hand pulled inside of coat, unzip bibbed overalls, unbutton stomach of shirt with other hand, and pull longjohns and t-shirt up.  Place dead white, ice cold hand against stomach, and cover back up.  

Collect up buckets and pull sled back with one hand, and open and close all gates with one hand.  Go inside and pull off some of outer winter clothes, and go into bathroom, and begin to run warm water over frozen claw.  Cry due to pain of returning blood circulation.  Hand turns a brilliant cherry red, and throbs with burning pain.

Heat up gelpack in microwave, and wrap hand in towel, with hot gelpack.  Dress back into outer winter gear, and go back outside to feed our five working farm dogs.

Watch in complete disbelief as customers pull up.  It's someones birthday...they MUST have a goat.  Go inside and fetch the container witht he butchering knives, plastic bags, paper towels, and soap. Pull clean dry gloves over my still painful hand. Go back outside, and listen to what the customers want.  Go into the goat pen, and pick out a fine four month old buckling, who's so large I have a hard to carring him through the snow.  

Set up the lights, so the customers can butcher in the dark.  Listen to them complain non-stop about the bitter cold (they are desert people from another country).  Concider throttling them, but decide it would be bad for business, and it's not a good idea to make business decisions in a sleep deprived state (this is  a joke people).  

Haul hot water out by the gallons, for my customers, so they can clean knives, hands and goat organs as they butcher.

Husband comes home at 6pm.  Customers have just left, and I'm still cleaning up the last of the butchering items, to make sure they do not disapear into the snow.  

Show hubby where the snow is drifting high, and the goats will be able to walk out by morning.  Hubby starts tractor, and makes trenches, and piles snow up, in two parallel lines.  This works as a snow fence, and the snow drifts elsewhere now.

Take the third round of water bottles out to the rabbit barn, and feed and water our two outside cats.  Hubby plows driveway too, or by morning it will be impassible.  I bring in more baby goats that have been born during all of this.

By 7:45pm we shed our outer gear and sit down to dinner.  We talk for a while about the upcoming planting season, read for a while, and I then take all the babies outside, hubby helps.

There have been 16 baby goats born thus far today.  I don't yet know it, but that is all that will be born today.  At 9:45, we take laundry baskets outside, and round up all 16 babies, and bring them inside to be by the fire.  At 10 pm we turn on the TV for the first time that day.  We roll our eyes when they talk about Brittney Spears, and wonder why a young mother who has serrious drug problems is "news."  We watch the weather reports.  After about 15 minutes the TV is off....we only wanted the weather reports.

We fall into bed at about 10:20PM, completely exsausted.

Answer 5

As mentioned, it depends on what kind of farm and where it is located.

I grew up on an irrigated "small grain" farm in the Texas Panhandle in the '60's.

Forget the "sunrise to sunset" business.  We worked from 8am until the job was done.  During plowing season that was usually 9-10 at night, six days a week.

Irrigation wells are a 24/7 job.  Each well has to be checked twice a day.  That means check oil levels for engine and pump as well as checking the water flow and making sure it's where it needs to be.

That meant walking between 100 yards and 3/4 mile in mud to check how it was doing and moving a dozen or so 20 and 30 foot-long pieces of aluminum pipe every 24-36 hours to water a new part of the field.

One Saturday night I caught one of my buddies out parked in the country with his girlfriend -- they'd been to the movie and I still had another well to check.

Harvest means longer days -- we would start the combines about 9 or so in the morning (depending on the humidity) and wouldn't quit until all the trucks were full after the elevators closed at midnight.

During any downtime in the winter we had plenty to do building or repairing equipment.

Now, with the automated sprinklers for irrigation, one man could handle 1000 acres or so in that area.

But he'd still have a hard time making a good living.

Answer 6

It all depends on what type of farm you are on.  If animals are involved, then it is a 7 day a week job.  Dairy animals have to be milked twice a day.  Eggs have to be collected, All animals have to be fed and watered every day.

The size of the operation determines how much time will be required for the various jobs.  One dairy animal requires much less time than one hundred.  Ten chickens require less time than ten thousand.

If no animals are involved, and only plant products are being farmed, than the time varies with the season.

Preparation for planting can take days of sunup to sundown work for a large operation.  Planting and cultivation time is dependent on the amount of land planted, and the amount of care the crop requires.  Some plants are essentially plant and forget until harvest, other crops require considerable attention. Harvest time can take many days of dawn to dark work on large farms.

Farming usually means you are dedicated to the land and animals, you will spend a large part of each day in work that requires you to be directly involved.  To be successful at anything demands a considerable investment of time and effort.  If you like the outdoors and a challenge, life on a farm can be extremely rewarding.

Since much of the work on a farm is performed outside, it is not unusual for farmers to rise before sunup, and be ready to work when it is light enough to work.

How difficult it is to farm depends on the size and scope of the farm.  One person can manage a small truck farm, it might take two or three to manage a small subsistence farm successfully.

Answer 7

I'm not a farmer, but I know several.  The day starts at dawn, if not before then.  It depends on what kind of farm it is (crops, commodity animals, etc.) as to what activities are done daily.  It depends on the size of the farm as to how many people are needed to run it.  Small farms can be run with 5 people, larger ones can need a hundred or more.