[Barred-Rock-or-Brahma]

My two cents is to see if you can’t incorporate his strengths into your system, rather than try to get him to do something that he’s not interested in. This is especially important given that the farm life seems to be your dream, not his.

My wife is a city girl from Amsterdam, and I’d have thrown myself in a canal if she had tried to force me into that lifestyle. My wife and your husband deserve a great deal of credit and patience for agreeing to humor us in the first place when they’d probably prefer a lifestyle that we’d be absolutely miserable living.

There is plenty of room on a farm for a techy types, especially if he can actually install things. Maybe he’d be interested in setting up a security camera system that has on-site storage and can send motion alerts to your phone. Maybe he can rig chicken coop doors that automatically open and close with the sun. Techy people seem to enjoy solving problems, so maybe he’s beter suited to help you come up with creative ways to solve problems than he is to flipping compost and shoveling manure.

Also depending on the profitability of the particular flavor of tech nerd stuff that he’s into, you might be better off having him behind a keyboard than behind a pitchfork. A guy that can make $50 an hour typing is wasting his time by doing work that he could pay someone else $10 an hour to do.

Lastly, kids love to work. If I had known that I wanted this life 10 years ago, I’d have had a lot more sons.