But can I plow/plant/harvest it with a click, click, click? And grow disco ball and macaroni & cheese trees?

Well, presumably you aren't doing the plow/plant/harvesting yourself, so sort of?

And if enough people wanted disco ball and macaroni & cheese trees, I guess they'd have to install a few?!

If you could muck out cowshit with a click, you would be a billionaire overnight.

I've got Village Green Preservation Society stuck in my head now.

This is a really clever idea.

"I have a farm. You can pretend to manage my farm and pay me money. I'll do it and I'll take your money."

I wish I'd thought of it. Instead of just thinking "if people want to grow things, why don't they just buy seeds?"

I think the idea is that people aren't going to grow things on the scale of a farm. And there are lots of people who spend lots of hours playing things like Farmville. This is a way to reach out to people who like to do things like play Farmville and who don't have the inclination to take up the full-time work that a farm would be, and let them learn a thing or two about how it really works where food comes from. The blog entries that I've read do a pretty good job of explaining how things are working on that real actual farm.

Think of it as a little bit like MetaFilter: anyone can read, but you have to pay once if you want to make comments for the year. I imagine that this "crowdsourcing" of the farm is a good parallel to MetaTalk. I don't want to be a moderator or run a website, I'm happy to let them run the site, but I sure do appreciate the benefits of MetaTalk. Not everyone wants a farm, but I think it's a good thing if there's a farm out there that's getting people involved in interesting learning-oriented conversations.

... and the money means that the farm is able to dedicate energy to actually having those conversations with the public.