Spending your whole life doing back breaking hard work, tilling soil, planting seeds, hoeing weeds, harvesting, eating and sleeping. Rinse and repeat for years on end, with nothing to show for it except that you've managed to stay alive, all just to die of skin cancer at the age of 65 from being out in the sun all day (or from being around so much fertilizer and insecticide chemicals). Sounds fulfilling!

Source: I grew up on a farm, too.

Glad to hear you are entering your next profession with eyes open.

My first job at 13 was on a farm and I lasted about a week before I realized I wasn't made for that life and I started planning on going to college. There is a long tradition of people claiming that life is for them without having ever actually done it successfully (I'm looking at you Thoreau).

If you think that you'd be happier living that way I don't see much reason not to go do it. But the complaints in your comment don't seem to be addressed by your desire to work as a farmer. Your debt levels, insurance rates and chance for retirement are all likely to be much, much worse as a farmer (subsistence or otherwise) than as a software developer. In fact, right now, you would be hard pressed to find an occupation that optimizes for those 3 things better than working as a software engineer.

But, of course those things don't have to be tied to someones happiness. If they aren't tied to yours, don't conflate them.

you have loan and big medical bills (ie bad health?) and you want to go to work on a farm doing backbreaking hard work? not a very smart move, but than again you don't describe the smartest software dev out there (you can easily retire earlier in this kind of job if you want and work a bit, if not you are doing something very wrong).

By all means if this is what you desire, go for it. It just doesn't seem like a smart move to many here, me included (but we have very few info, so whole picture might be different)