Keep Family First in the Family Farm
Cam Harder
“I feel like a new man—a huge weight’s been lifted off my shoulders” a farmer
friend said to me. I was surprised. He was liquidating the farm’s assets. I thought he
would be devastated, grieving. But he said, “I discovered something that has changed my
life: I am not the farm.” Sounds odd, but I suspect that many farm families understand
what he means.
A number have told me how deeply they identify with the farm. Randy (I’m not
using real names) said that he and his wife were talking about their operation one night.
She was ready to say “the hell with it” and walk out. She couldn’t understand his
reluctance to leave. He told her that the farm has been home his whole life, and his
father’s and grandfather’s before that. He had rebuilt the place—”every granary, the
shop and the machine shed, corrals, dugouts.” It was, in his words the “tangible
evidence” of his life’s value. Losing land, he said, felt like having an “arm amputated.”
Unfortunately this “farm-self” has some real drawbacks. Sarah said, “I wasn’t sure
where his loyalty stood—with me or with the farm.” Sandy, recently separated, said “He
was married to the land. I was never the first one in his heart. He let me go. But I doubt
he’ll ever be able to let the farm go.” She felt less like his wife than his hired hand.
Children are even more at risk. They don’t see much of parents working long hours
off-farm to keep the operation afloat. Their little time together is often sabotaged by
parents’ tiredness, irritability and alcohol consumption. Left without adequate
supervision they may struggle with problems at school, with drugs and a deep sense of
purposelessness. “I feel like I have no future,” one said to me.
I would be the last person to suggest that farmers not fight to stay on the land. I’m
working vigorously to reverse rural depopulation. But over-identification with the farm
actually makes keeping it more difficult. Identifying too closely with a farm ties our own
emotional health to its success. Farm failure leads to debilitating shame and depression.
It also closes us to other possibilities for supporting our family. We can fall into the same
trap that our society has—assuming that people exist to serve economic structures and
can be disposed of if those structures don’t need them. The truth is, farms exist to
support families and communities. Family members should neither be slaves of the farm,
nor disposed of when technologies make their labor unnecessary.
When a farm operation can’t sustain a family without enormous stress some
decisions have to be made. The family comes first. The operation may have to be
dramatically altered, or down-sized. Counseling—both family and farm—is absolutely
essential. Cooperative arrangements with other community members may provide a
solution. Liquidation and a new start in another occupation may be necessary. Whatever
the case, knowing that you are not the farm, makes it easier to remember that family
comes first in “family farm.”
Cam Harder—crharder@shaw.ca