> I also should have said that there are certain uncommon lifestyles that are always going to find technological innovations less impractical to do without than others. Let's face it: your lifestyle at home isn't the norm. It's a lifestyle I respect and wish were more preserved today, but the reality is that family farms and similar kinds of environments are less and less common. More and more people on this continent, even those in rural neighborhoods, find themselves with modern needs, even if those needs aren't of the day-to-day sort (as it is with me, being a software engineer and webmaster). My assertion was meant to be taken as a generality.

I take your point that my family has been unusual. Sometimes the best part about not having a TV would be the reaction of my peers (along the lines of "You don't watch/have a TV that's insane/impossible") but I don't think it has much to do with growing up in a rural area.

Perhaps TVs have not been normal or available here for quite as long as they might have been elsewhere, but as long as I can remember they've been assumed. It was also something that both my parents grew up with but decided they couldn't afford when they got married (they were both halfway through university and up to their eyeballs (they thought) in student loans at the time).

Here ends discussion of television. Begin discussion of farming.

The whole idyllic family farm image is...Perhaps the word "unfortunate" would fit. The unfortunate part being that it assures urban people that rural life is excellent at which point they can ignore any problems it might have.

It looks nice of course: hard work, good food, clean air, fresh water, a connection with nature, a place where children can be raised properly, blah, blah, blah. Nothing's this perfect. This picture not only doesn't exactly exist now, it never exactly existed. This is not to say that life on a farm might not be good. I'm sure there are people who it suits exactly (I may or may not be one of them).

I am saying that this picture leaves a lot out. The fact, for example, that your traditional family farm is, and always has been, a subsistance kind of operation. You don't tend to make any amount of money while you're doing it. Every penny must be reinvested. If you're lucky, and land values go up you may be able to retire comfortably when you sell the land but while you're a farmer you scrimp and save to do normal maintenance and pay the morgage.

And then, true family farms are passed down for generations. Selling for that decent retirement might be frowned upon. Along with this is the problem of what to do if none of your children want the farm. This too becomes a tragedy. (As an example, Sam: think what the reaction would be if you decided not to name your first born son Sam.)

Moving on, you yourself have named such a family farm as a lifestyle and obviously it has to be. After all, no simple job would ask someone to be at work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year with their pay dependent on very chancy things like the weather, the gender of a calf, or the beef market.

I'm afraid I've rambled on quite a bit here. I'm also afraid I may have painted an overly negative picture (even though I haven't yet mentioned safety or environmental concerns). I'm not even sure what my point is anymore. Perhaps that the "family farm lifestyle" is a dream and not much more.

Rivikah