I had decades of tech experience including Linux administration. I now have a homestead with geese.
I’m now a programmer with about 20 years of experience. You’re very impressive. Do you have advice for me?
Never turn your back on them. If one gets in the house just drive away and start a new life.
Goose advice?
Spoken like a wise man
So cool. Are they interactive? Do they recognize you and let you pet them?
Depending on the time of year they will dodge or attack me. So they are very interactive. My wife can pet them.
We got them because hawks were taking out chickens. After we got geese that stopped. In addition to being excellent guard animals they also mow the grass and in the spring they give us giant eggs.
After the initial cost to buy, raise for a month until they can be outside and their housing they can live entirely on grass making them practically free to maintain. Best farm investment ever.
That’s so cool. Thanks for the information!
I am from the internet. I’m here to help.
How often do they get sick or injured?
In 6 years we have had one sick goose. She was always too small for her breed. Not sure why she was sick.
This year was the first injury of a goose. They did something that cut up a foot. We treated it with some safe wash and they recovered just fine.
Injuries to me have been numerous. The boys like to attack me when I’m putting them to bed so I occasionally end up with welts and bruises. The girls occasionally give me a nice little buffeting with their wings when I’m trying to remove them from a nest so I can take away their eggs.
That’s not too bad. I love the idea of animals on a homestead but I couldn’t handle it if they required medical attention
At some point every farm animal will have a last best day. The sooner you recognize when that is and resolve it the better everyone’s mental health will be. It is is an unavoidable fact of farm life.
But if geese have proper night time protection and plenty of grass you can expect them to live 15 to 30 years problem free.
She was always too small for her breed. Not sure why she was sick.
Sounds like a runt, which is fairly common with cats and dogs. That’s where “the runt of the litter” came from. It also applies to farm animals with singles litters (cows) and larger litters (pigs). I have not seen it get applied to a bird before, but it make sense.
A runt is just something with a low birth rate. It turns out that there’s a very strong correlation between birth weight and health.
She lived just over a year and was healthy until she wasn’t.
Damn that is cool. I’m glad I learned these things about geese today!
I built and sold an MSP, now I farm grain and cattle. If anything, I work even more, but I don’t have to deal with customers. And I can eat the product.
but I don’t have to deal with customers. And I can eat the product.
You could have eaten the customer too, but you would have needed to wait until he paid the bill.
Dude can afford to be a goose farmer.
A friend’s boss retired to become a children’s book writer.
Money–or lack thereof-- is what really hinders most of us to do what we want. I grew up admiring polymaths and I want to do whatever I want because I want to learn about the world. But it is in the past couple of years which I realised, that the polymaths I admired? They are rich while I’m not. Polymaths in the past were more common back then because they inherited lots of money from their parents as safety net, and don’t have to worry about specialising and finding a “secure job” but is soul sucking.
Yeah at least this is just a list of what he’s been up to professionally the last couple decades, it’s not a resume, he’s not out looking for another job. Because he doesn’t need to.
One foot in each world here!
I still have my tech job (embedded systems) and in the next few days I am literally going to be building a chicken coop and finishing a filter upgrade on my pond.
I’ve referred to this meme several times in the past few months to describe myself, lol.
I just got jumbo quail a few weeks ago, my town won’t let you have chickens on less than 5 acres, so now I take my laptop out to the coop and sit with my hens for a few hours a day while I “work”. I started with 5, then bought another 5 and now another 10 are on the way.
Should get out first eggs any day.
21 years of principle engineer in microslop surely is enough to buy a goose farm
I don’t think he even needs the farm to produce anything at that point.
Geese shit a lot but even a large farm would produce way less shit than Microsoft.
I was reading the Careless People book about Meta.
One thing that stood out to me was the presentation of the tech early birds or the folk who dodged the dotcom bubble bursting - she specifically used the term “economically insensitive”. People who made their money from big tech’s initial offerings and their own shares going through the roof, being set up for life, and basically working for the love of the game.
It’s wild. If I’d gotten to the point where I’d paid off the mortgage and had enough in the buffer to catch any unexpected bills or travel costs or whatever, then yeah maybe I’d go geese farming or otter rehoming or llama cuddling or something.
Great book. I wish it was being made into a movie, instead of whatever the fuck the 2nd Social Network movie will be about. Jessie Eisenberg was ready to play Mark again with Emma Stone as Sheryl Sandberg, but it never took off.
I didn’t even know there was a followup movie in the works. I can understand why a sequel could be good given all that’s happened since, but I can’t understand doing so without most of the important people behind the first one. Sorkin’s a good writer, but I don’t think he was 100% responsible for what made the first one a good movie.
“Now watch as we enshittify our platform while buying out all the competition, manipulate national electoral outcomes with algorithmic profiling, and cover up our own internal studies on harmfulness in order to continue exploiting minors for profit!”
exploiting minors for profit
As has been tradition for as long as there’s been an America, and longer
Yeah, but what’s odd is that now there’s basically a court document that reveals that’s exactly what Meta was doing, they knew it’s what they were doing, and they decided to continue doing it anyway because it was their intention to do so all along.
And yet they got slapped on the wrist and given a nominal fine…
I mean, we do have president Epstein now so…
What a promotion
Geese: more understanding than your PM
There seems to be a lot of people who worked in tech and then went off to fucking do anything not in tech and I’m like "do you know something we don’
As someone who’s worked in Silicon Valley for 13 years… A lot of senior developers that work at big tech companies can earn over $500k total compensation (salary, bonus, and stock) per year. A higher level, like L7 at Google or E7 at Meta, can earn over a million per year. You can end up with $5-10 million net worth after 10-15 years.
Some people end up saving enough and having enough investments to retire early and mostly live off the returns. This strategy is often referred to as FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early).
Of course, people still want something to keep them busy, so they tend to end up doing something they always wanted to do but never had the time or money to do it. They don’t need the money, so can spend time just enjoying it rather than focusing so much on working. I know someone who retired in their 40s and started doing woodworking full time.
Those numbers are accurate . I really don’t understand how more people I work with haven’t retired. I made sure to avoid too much lifestyle creep but I can imagine it’s addicting for some. I’m 40 and making the switch out of tech soon. I couldn’t imagine doing this another 10-20 years.
generally they have something we don’t: money
Yes, tech is exploitative. Of everyone. The only way to win is not to play.
Current tech isn’t sustainable. Data centers increase the air temp for miles around, pollute massive amounts of water, and use more power then some countries. We don’t have the infrastructure to support data centers and people in a lot of places, and you fucking know which will get preferable treatment.
Thats just a single one of the literal hundreds of depressing things in tech.
Tired of assisting in our own exploitation.
I’m a principal engineer, I get it
They’re living the dream really.
Just the one goose?
Yeah, it’s goose farming, despite them clearly having numerous geese. This is because english is an absolutely terrible language.
Are you entirely sure he is not a goose that farms.
Yeah just like how it isn’t a chickens farmer
He’s just getting started, don’t goose shame him.
I have geese. I am a goose farmer / caretaker / victim. Can confirm.
Mental outlaw?
Chehalis. Checks out.
