I agree with you. It has its good days and bad days and pros and cons like any job. You only have to read some of the desperate threads or posts on here sometimes, to realise it's not a chocolate box lifestyle for most people.We are all much more dependent on one another these days. Every profession and trade is valued. It's a good thing. Specialist trades have improved efficiency and freed us from the drudgery of life 200 years ago where we were fashioning cart wheels out of wood in this village.
My only slight concern with this thread is that it can make some of us feel somehow inadequate or slightly a failure because we think to ourselves, well I'm struggling or hacked off with this farming job yet it's supposed to be the "best profession in the world".
Well it isn't the best profession in the world as far as I'm concerned. It's just another profession with all the same highs and lows as any other profession.
I used to work as a software engineer. If it was going well I didn't really notice that I was sitting in an office any more than I notice that I'm sitting in a hot dusty tractor cab because I would be engrossed in a project. It gave the same kind of buzz as growing a crop. Testing the software and signing it off was like a sort of harvest.
I didn't used to think like this. I used to think that farming and country life was the bees knees. But I don't any more. I'll be happy to retire to a flat in the city with a collection of books that I haven't read and my piano, all within easy walking distance of civilisation.
Life is what you make it, whatever you do, wherever you are.
I'm genuinely happy for people that get all the pleasure and sense of achievement from farming, but i suspect for many it's a poisoned chalice. Personally, there's been many times when ive wished I'd done something else and many times when financially it's been tough. Not saying that Los of people have it better in their jobs, but let's get a dose of reality and cut out the best job in the world retoric.
PS, i think we're going to be in for a real rough ride in the next few years, when it really will need to be a profession, not a lifestyle.