Why's it all so hard?
Somewhere around Memorial Day last year, my husband and I started having conversations we’d never had before. We’d planted maybe 300 acres at that point, most of it back in April, and meteorologist Eric Snodgrass was forecasting rain until June. Those conversations boiled down to one question: “So, like, what happens if we don’t actually plant a crop?”
Neither of us really even wanted to say it out loud. Conditions didn’t look good, but giving voice to contingency plans for not raising a crop for the first time in 21 years — that thing that the entirety of what we do hinges upon — made my heart pound. Saying it out loud named the burden of the stress we were carrying.
So we talked about it. We could sell some cows, we had my job, we’d put some other plans on hold. It would be fine. We were lucky.
Nearly every conversation I’ve heard between farmers this past year has hit on the stress they felt grinding through 2019. The reality of having work to do when circumstances won’t let you do it wears on a person. Day after day, week after week. So while we’re spending a lot of time lately looking at how to plan for 2020 in light of 2019, what about mental health? What did we learn in 2019?
First of all, contrary to a lot of jokes I can think of, family time can keep us sane. Mike Nelson, Paxton, Ill., tried not to take work home and instead spent quality time with his wife and 3-year-old son. “Family time was a valuable commodity,” he adds.
In general, being with people is good for us when we’re stressed. We’ve had a close group of friends from our young farmer days, and I can always tell when my husband’s talking to one of them on the phone. The stories and the complaints and the laughs are all different. It helps. Bill Christ, a Master Farmer from Metamora, Ill., concurs. Some of his go-to people work in ag and some don’t, so they give him a good cross-section of advice and support.