I have not quit programming but I do run a meat sheep operation with my wife. It's almost profitable.
There is a steep learning curve. It's a lot of hard work. The pay is not great. You have to be the right kind of person, and it helps to already have capital so you don't start out in debt.
In my case, my wife is a large animal vet so our vet bills are minimal.
I strongly dissuade anyone considering this change from just quitting their day job, buying some land, and starting from boot. Go work on someone else's farm first, or start as a side gig. Figure out what you are doing and where your market is. You can go bankrupt very easily and surprisingly quickly — one disease gets into your herd because you didn't take the right bio safety precautions, or your feed gets contaminated and you have an abortion storm, and you're out almost all of your capital, and the characteristic time period for making more income is - of course - a year.
I did and I did. I still raise goats and run a business selling soap made from their milk, but I also work remotely as a SWE. We never wanted to do it full time, but I did get to take a bit over a year off before going back.
I have absolutely loved the change. I spend my day alternating between coding and farm tasks. It's a great balance to my day.
It's full time. Fortunately, it's very flexible, so if I need to go do some chores for an hour in the middle of the day, I can make it up later. Goat pics also help with team bonding.
I can't answer that question, but doing both (ie a 'hobby' farm), it's nice to be able to just afford a vet.
We went from 2 miniature dairy goats on our 400 square meters urban home, to rural after they had kids. It'd be very hard to more than 2 adult goats on a city block, noise issues.
I think the droughts and fencing and killing would be an impressive thing to do as a farmer, but not for me. I do see a market around Airbnb, I know a few hobby farmers who get far more from their Airbnb. Also WeWork would be interesting to test.
