Emotions and the Farm

I wrote this several months ago to try to explain emotions on the farm to city friend of mine, but I never made it public.  Recently, my sister asked me to proofread a paper for her.  In the paper, she talked about "coming from a farming community where emotional vulnerability simply isn’t part of daily life."  It is true that we aren't particularly "emotionally vulnerable" at home.  However, my sister and all the rest of us know that the emotions that come with the farming life can be overwhelming at times.  We just don't always express them.  I have decided that it is now time to share what I wrote about emotions on the farm.

Farming is an extremely taxing job emotionally.  As farmers we do all we can to keep our livestock healthy, our crops growing well and our machinery working, but sometimes things don’t work out. 

Calves die, no matter how much doctoring we give them, no matter how many vet bills we rack up trying to save them.  Even when the vet gives up, we don’t because we can’t just watch a creature suffer and die without trying to save it.  Sometimes the calves do the impossible and pull through and when we see the vet at church and tell him about, he celebrates with us.  Too often, though, the sick calf will die and when it dies, it hurts, but we have to carry on, so we keep it inside. 

Crops fail, no matter how precise our placement of fertilizer is, no matter how many weeds we kill and how much water we give.  We can’t control the weather and all too often, the weather kills our crops, but we harvest what we can anyway, because we can’t just watch the field rot.  We harvest what we can because we have to have something to feed our cattle through the winter.  It’s ever so frustrating to be so totally helpless, so relentlessly subject to something that most others talk about only in passing conversation, but there’s nothing to be done about it, so we keep it inside and keep going because next year will be better.  Next year has to be better. 

Machinery quits on us and breaks down, no matter how well-maintained it is.  All it takes is one rock, one weak spot in the hydraulic hose, and work grinds to a halt.  All we can do is fix it and keep going, praying all the while that the rain will hold off long enough to let us finish.  Sometimes all we want to do is shout and throw things and kick whatever has broken, and sometimes we do those things, in the back of the field, where no one can see.  But we can’t afford to call the mechanic for every little breakdown, so we calm ourselves and fix it and keep going.

Sometimes the economy changes and once again, we are ruled by something that is utterly beyond our control.  Bottoms fall out of markets and we are forced to sell our livestock or crops for far less than what it cost to grow them because we can’t eat it all ourselves.  Prices for our crops or livestock might skyrocket, but then everyone else wants a piece of the pie, so land rent, fuel, and everything else skyrockets, too.  When it gets really bad, we want to rant and rave and ask that we be allowed just once to look at our bank statements and not feel sick because the margins are so tight.  But, we don’t know who to rant to, so we keep it inside and pray that next year society will give us a break.

Often it’s the unexpected things that hurt the most.  Grown men will kneel in a field blooming with a bountiful hay harvest on a clear, sunny day, weeping because they have just run over a young fawn with the haybine.  It was hiding in the hay and try as he might, the farmer just couldn’t see it.  It is still alive, but its legs are cut off.  There is nothing to do but put it out of its misery.  He can’t let it suffer while he goes all the way back home for the gun.  That will take too long.  So he has to kill it with what he has: a rock, a stout branch, anything to get it over with quickly.  The man that fights so his own calves can live must bash in the head of a helpless baby deer because he didn’t see it in time.  Non-farmers don’t see us weeping over what we must do.  They only see the horrific videos online of animals being killed by the hundreds in slaughterhouses, or of some idiot farm workers abusing the animals.  At best, the public sees emotionless, weather beaten work machines.  At worst, they see cruel monsters.  Those perceptions hurt the most.  These people have no idea of the emotional roller coasters that we ride because we hide behind optimism and stubborn pride, so they think we don’t care when a calf dies, when the crops fail, when they want more from us than we can give, when everything breaks, or when the weather just does its thing.  Only 2% of us truly understand the frustration, but we have trained ourselves to move past it and keep going, so we don’t even stop to defend ourselves.  We just keep it inside and move on because how else can we keep doing a job that takes and takes and then takes more?

Some years, things go well.  Fewer calves die than normal.  The crops do well.  The weather and economy both cooperate.  There are fewer breakdowns than usual and they don’t all come at once.  The public, by some unknown miracle decides to at least tolerate, if not accept farmers again.  And we celebrate in those times.  Our celebrations are not big parties and community gatherings.  They are quiet sighs of relief, a lighter tone in our conversations with the neighbours, a lifting of stooped and weary shoulders, a nicer Christmas than last year, maybe even a new tractor or cattle handling system.  These are the years when we have time to remember why we farm.  We don’t farm for the money.  We don’t farm to feel pride in our abilities to keep our animals alive and our crops growing bountifully.  Just as we suffer with the things we can’t control, we also rejoice in the little pleasures that come without our asking.  A new calf figuring out how to suck, the new farm dog obeying "stay", the rain coming just when we need it, sick calves coming back from the brink of death, birds flying alongside the tractor as we work the fields, deer leading their fawns out of the hay before we get there and pausing just long enough for us to marvel at their beauty, the feeling of relief and a job well done when the grain bins are full and the equipment is put away for another year.  These and many others are the things that make farming worthwhile.  And we keep them inside too, along with the hurts and frustrations.  When the hard stuff seems to come all at once and overwhelm us, we can stop, and look around and know that it’s all worth it, that we’re going to be okay.

Farmers don’t show a lot of emotion.  If we did, we would be overwhelmed by it and unable to properly do our jobs.  We don’t see death and carnage on a daily basis as those in other professions do, but we see enough of it to know that the only way to keep going is to become a bit callous, even as our job demands compassion.  So, we deal with the tough times in our own ways.  We don’t ask others to understand.  We ask only that you not judge us by what you see on the outside and that you don’t ask to see the inside.  If we trust you enough, we might let you see the hurts and triumphs we carry with us.  That is a rare gift and a sign of trust.

This is Squirt.  He survived against the odds.