CloverKnollFarms
Super Member
Issue is that wages have not kept pace with inflation... especially in farming. So, prices adjusted for inflation, just prove the chasm has widened
^^^ What an excellent few thoughts to add to this thread. ^^^There are a multitude of factors, most already mentioned. Covid stims helped saturate and temporarily swell a market that is/was shrinking.
Rural life is going extinct.
I ride my horse and people look at me with trepidation like I’m sitting astride a velociraptor. Today a co-worker stared at me wide-eyed when I mentioned welding something, “You can weld?”. Most all my rural neighbors have a landscaping service, even the ones with teenage children that should be mowing the grass and raking leaves.
I sometimes think I’m the last person on Earth who hand washes his own vehicles.
The irony is these people pay others to do all these services for them, and then pay again for a gym membership. I just fling my own hay bales and rake my own leaves, and stay in good shape moving around my property, with no need for a gym membership.
A tractor is a great force multiplier, and handy if you do stuff yourself… but if a fella hires out all the work he needs done then he probably doesn’t really need a tractor.