If you work in town ... "you'd have an easy life, in some ways. You wouldn't be out in all kinds of weather. Cold winter nights, you could lie snug, in bed and not worry about young stock freezing. Rain or shine, wind or snow, you'd be under shelter. You'd be shut up, inside walls. Likely you'd always have plenty to eat and wear and money in the bank.
"That's the truth and we must be fair about it. But there's the other side too. You'd have to depend on other folks in town. Everything you got, you'd get from other folks.
"A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you're a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please and no man can tell you to go or come. You'll be free and independent on a farm"
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote that in her book about her husband's childhood on an upstate New York farm in the 1860's. I like to think it is still a little bit true.
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