I grew up doing one of the most dangerous, dirtiest (at times), most demanding, longest hours (try on-call 24/7/365), worst paying (you might break even at the end of the year if you are lucky) jobs you can imagine: ranching. My parents have a cattle ranch in Nebraska. I had to ride horses to round up cattle. Sounds great right? It's ok at first, but try doing it all day long riding for miles at a time with no break, chasing down cows who won't go where they are supposed to (especially the calves as they are so dang fast and hard to catch).
You have to be able to do just about anything at any given time, sometimes using tools that were not even meant for the purpose. Try fixing a tractor in sub-zero temperatures with worn out hand tools. Real fun. Or, cleaning out moldy, caked on cattle feed out of a feed truck so you can wrench out the broken auger and try to fix it. If it's really cold, even the water in the troughs freezes and you have to break holes in it with a long, iron chopping bar.
In summer, you get to spend the whole day cutting hay. For variety, you get to try to fix the hay equipment when it breaks down. Try crawling inside a round baler and unplugging the hay feeders with your gloved hands when it's over 100 degrees out and well over 100 degrees inside that metal contraption. You nearly pass out after a while.
In ranching, you get to be exposed to injury from heavy machinery, livestock (getting bucked off your horse is a blast, let me tell ya), barbed wire (really nice when it breaks while you are trying to tighten a fence), extreme weather (cows have to be fed and calves have to be birthed no matter how cold it gets) etc.
You risk losing money from break downs, dying livestock, seed you plant that doesn't come up or does come up and then dies from some disease or hail storm. The price you get for your crop, cattle, is dictated by the markets and the government (run by a bunch of idiots who know nothing about what it takes to raise the commodities they trade back and forth). If you have a good relationship with your banker, you might get your operating loan extended in years where the prices are low and expenses are high. If not, you can possibly lose your whole ranch in having to sell it to pay your debts. If you are lucky, you break even. If you are really lucky, you make enough money to pay off some debts (never really get them all paid off), reinvest some money in buying replacement equipment, bulls, horses etc, and maybe even a few things your family wants like say new clothes, a new appliance etc.
Sure, there were times that were fun, but most of the time, it's back breaking work with little chance of making enough of a profit to actually put it away in savings. These days, I live in Vegas and do retail jobs (at game and/or electronics stores when I can) and computer repair out of my house. I still don't make a lot of money, but the work is far easier and far far less dangerous than ranching.
