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Numerous people have asked “why on earth would you leave your stable office job that pays well”? Well… some things are hard to explain. My best explanation is either mid-life crisis or temporary insanity. Seriously though, it is really quite hard to explain and sometimes I’m not sure that we even really understand, but we somehow felt moved to do so. Here are some of the things that went through our minds:
Health – I have never felt all that great in the climate of CO. More importantly, we found that our kids do better in either higher humidity or lower altitude.
Variety – While I have really enjoyed my work as a computer engineer, it is starting to be less exciting to me. It has been a great job. It pays well, the work is done in the climate controlled surroundings, and can be a lot of fun. However, I’ve found myself less engaged the last few years. So, a new challenge sounds exciting.
Timing – Numerous things came together to make it feel like the time was right. Things just sort of fell together and with changes at my employer, it just seemed good.
Simplicity – We have felt the desire to simplify our lives over the last couple years. We all know that collecting things is not satisfying at all and we’d love to find a way to spend more time together as a family, even if it is working together.
Farming – We have both felt the “agriculture itch” for the last few years. Neither of us are particularly interested in what is considered normal agriculture, but have desired more working with the soil and animals in some way.
Permaculture – We are both very interested in permaculture and designing a practical, sustainable, profitable system with no external energy inputs. This is our new challenge.
So, while it probably doesn’t appear to make sense, we feel like it makes sense for us. Sure, it probably doesn’t make sense financially, but there is more to life than money? If it doesn’t work out, we can always fall back to what we were doing. Life is short; try stuff before you are dead!
Computer engineer turned full time farmer, grazier, builder, permaculturist and volunteer fire fighter. We left corporate America to live a simple, self-sufficient life in the Ozarks. Read more
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