Farm IT

I've made a big change in my life recently; I just quit my IT job.  I've been working in IT in one form or another for the last 10 years.  If you count school and being the resident family IT guy it's much longer.  I was recently asked to help manage my wife's family farm.  It hasn't been an easy decision, but it's such a rare opportunity that I have to give it a shot. So I'm moving out to Western Kansas in a little under two weeks. 

So far my favorite part of the experience (nothing has really changed yet) has been telling people what I'm doing after I leave my current job as a System Engineer.  Most reactions are as follows: "Can I come too?", "Are you serious?",  and one of my favorites "Why would you want to do that?".  I'm finding that the closer a person has been to a real farm operation the more likely they are to say something like "Can I come too?".  Conversely if they grew up in say Chicago (you know who you are) the reaction has been more like "Why would you want to do that?".

To answer the Chicagoan's question, I'm going to try this because it is an opportunity to do something new and hopefully learn all kinds of new things.  Farm operations are becoming technologically advanced and I hope that my experience in the IT world will be a benefit to the Farm.

I have been asked to call a TV studio to see if they would make a reality TV show about an IT city slicker trying to be a rancher/farmer; I polity declined that request.  However, I have had a lot of people ask me to create a blog.  So here we are friends, ask and you shall receive.

I've named this blog My Grain Headaches not because I expect this to be a bad experience, more just to elude to that fact that I know that I'm going to make a lot of rookie mistakes and I will probably make an idiot out of myself most days.  Whatever the outcome of the next year, I wanted to document what I learn and hopefully you will all be able to learn with me about what it takes to run a farm.

For those of you that I'm leaving in Kansas City, thank you for the love and friendship you've given me over the last 5 years.  I'm going to miss you all.  If you are driving out to Colorado sometime and get stuck in a blizzard or need a place to stop, give me a call.  I'll be happy to see my city friends again.

Farmer Ryan