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”.

Let me state some basic facts from the perspective of a small farmer. I see here so many odd notions about why TSC’s stance seemingly doesn’t matter much. Too many buy into the stereo type of rural = straight, white, male and that somehow small farms that might tend to shop more at TSC don’t count for much.

• 89% of all farms in the US are small family farms.
• 63.5% of young farmers in the US identify as female, nonbinary or a gender other than cis male. 24.2% identify as a sexuality other than heterosexual. Source: https://www.youngfarmers.org/resource/nationalsurveyreport2022/. Story covering that if you don’t want to signup: https://edgeeffects.net/queer-farmers/
• One in five Gen Zers identify as LGBT
• TSC’s customer demographics - you might be surprised to hear - do actually cover a lot of small-scale farms. This report says they average $43k in farm income and are about 441 acres - I acknowledge they are just taking USDA numbers here and extrapolating but this accords with my own experience as a small farmer. A few of us up here prefer to hit the more specialized ag stores in the Central Valley but the TSC is closer and so for a lot of immediate needs we buy there. I’ve even purchased tractor implements at TSC.
• The stereotype of the rural butch lesbian (hi!) is not without substance. Over 3 million LGBTQIA+ people live in rural areas of the US.

TSC doesn’t sell tractors.

There are, also, a lot of queer farmers (raises hands emphatically). More than you might think, apparently. I have other options but I have spent a lot of money there because it was convenient - in the same area as a farmer’s market we used to sell at.

It’s funny though how you discount small-scale farms. 89% of farms in the US are considered small-scale.

I’m lucky that I’m near enough to the central valley in california to have real ag supply stores. They even typically have actual supplies for tractors.

I’ve edited my original post to explain why I say this. It boils down to this: it doesn’t make financial sense to raise chickens for sale to random people. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that farms simply can’t afford to do things that don’t make money.

But go ahead and try it. Call the 5 farms nearest you to ask if you can buy chickens or full grown hens (roosters don’t count!) and report back. If you are lucky there is some hobby farm that doesn’t care about making money… but that’s gonna be the exception.

You could try a local farmer

LOL. Doesn’t especially work that way city boy.

Edit: Apparently I need to explain. I’m a farmer. Not one farm - not one single farm - I know will sell you either chicks or full grown chickens as some part of their regular operations. Mainly because it’s a pain in the ass and not profitable unless you are highly specialized and only producing chicks, in which case you are probably contracting with someone like TSC, using the cheapest feed imaginable and likely not making much money.

Now I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions to this. There are probably hobby-ish farms around that will sell you a few chicks for random reasons. And you might get lucky and some farm has an excess for some reason, but generally any farm that’s producing eggs or meat birds needs to keep those chicks. I mean, I’m not kidding, it’s a real struggle to make any money at all even with eggs at $7-8 a dozen.

But you are not, typically, just going to go down to your “local farm” (remember those?) and buy chicks. Go ahead, if you don’t believe me call around.

Interesting. Must be an east coast thing. Or maybe I just don’t get out much.

My weather station says today’s high here was 39.5C. The previous record (my data) was 36.6C and we have never ever had more than 3-4 days of 32C+ but we’re looking at 2 weeks straight of > 35C. Or more.

The really fun part is we’ve had multiple fires start in our or the adjacent county every day this week.

I just want to be cold.

The street, which is obviously unsafe, noisy, completely not conducive to good sleep, and open to the elements

It seems to me that this is not something with which you’ve had personal experience. Yours is a reasonable speculation but it’s at odds with the reality for most people who have been homeless. I grant my own experience is limited to two shelters, but both were horrendous and I’ve never once heard a good word about any of them.

Here, I found a random article explaining why: https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s-homeless-shelter-beds-sit-empty-each-night-rats-roaches-bedbugs-mold

“…entirely too many people here refuse shelter for a variety of reasons…”

Have you ever spent time in a shelter? Like tried to sleep there? Undoubtedly no. Because if you had you’d know that the only way they are tolerable and the only way you can block out that they are obviously unsafe, noisy, and completely not conducive to good sleep is to dull your pain with drugs or alcohol.

You are better off on the street.

Or Uhmerican

Wart Under

Perhaps if you’ve only ever eaten corn dogs…

iknowright! I also hear him fuck up big time in a debate once. ClEaRLy TrUmP iS tHe bEtTEr cHOicE!

Patience grasshopper, patience

Eisenhower had a decorated military history, excellent for commander in chief. As did Grant.

That wasn’t the question.