They are not farmers. They have a quite serious hobby (and some savings or other income to rely on probably). It's impossible to make a living out of a 1.25 acre of arable land.
I know people making 100k annually in side income from farming microgreens alone in a very small area. This entire thread is full of weird gatekeepy false information.
There’s a lot of interesting and profitable niches that can be done in a small scale such as microgreens, certain species of mushroom, certain varieties of pepper, etc.
This will entirely depend on local market conditions and suchlike, of course.
To a great extent that depends on where you live, and what you grow.
One of my neighbours produces 10,000 litres of wine/year on ~4 acres of vines. An acquaintence runs a market garden on less than an acre. Another raises pigs in a barn on half that.
I didn't say you cannot run anything. As a side project, sure - 1 Acre is quite a piece of land. But it's impossible to rely on it as your only source of income (i.e. definition of being a farmer). Even in the wine example - let's say they make 2$/liter, that's $5k/acre/year. Pigs actually make very little profit on average, when you combine all the other costs associated with raising livestock. I would be very surprised if they make more than $100/pig/year (averages have been <0 for the last few years).
If you live off the land then you don't need much income, and the income you get from selling your surplus can be sufficient.
Take a trip through rural America sometime and look around. You'll see lots of very poor-looking households, but if you look carefully you might notice that they keep chickens and have a garden, and larger properties have more in the way of animals. Many are dirt poor, but they live off the land, and can afford to be dirt poor. Not romanticizing it or anything -- the homesteadies I know are not into being dirt poor, but they are into being more independent and living off the land so as to stretch their savings.
In this case the wine is being sold directly to restaurants, removing any middlemen. The pigs are being made into artisanal chorizo onsite, and direct-to-consumer sales allows the farmer to capture most of the markup. Similar goes for the market gardener selling fresh and washed vegetables directly at markets and to CSA box subscribers.
I'm not suggesting everyone can be Jean-Martin Fortier, but with sufficiently low overheads and access to somewhat affluent markets, it is possible to make a living on an acre.
This seems like an unnecessary distinction with no purpose other than to gatekeep. A bartender is still a bartender if they only work weekends. An artist is still an artist if it's not their dayjob. A barber is still a barber if they have to work another job to make ends meet.
No, you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking that farming an acre or two is going to replace the income of most 9 to 5 jobs, but at a time in history where we absolutely need to be working to preserve and promote small-scale farming, we shouldn't be gatekeeping people.
ok, fair enough - I agree that the definition of a job shouldn't be tied to the income generated from it. However the main argument presented above was that people shouldn't assume farming is easy and relaxing - and working on a 1 acre farm with no expectation of income is not the same as "being a farmer to make a living" which is 100x harder.
It's not easy, but it is relaxing. When I'm with my bees I have no other cares in the world. The buzzing alone makes sure of that. If I slipped up, they could kill me, so there's also that. But mainly it's just so darned fun and interesting, and not killing bees is a challenge (which is why we've converted our Langstroth hives to top-bar hives, so it's actually feasible to not kill any bees, but it still requires care and attention). When we eventually take up larger animals, I expect much of the same.
