The Simple Dream of Farming Is Gone and It’s Not Coming Back
You can deprive yourself of a future if you insist on living in the past
I remember the day Farmer Mike’s barn burned down with all his dairy cows inside. My dad went over to shoot a video for the insurance company. I looked upon the smoking remains of the charred animals and became sick to my stomach.
It must have been horrible for them. In the silence of the wreckage, the fear and the agony lingered in the air.
My dad said the fire was “Probably caused by something stupid.” It might have been a short wire, or a heater left on, or an errant spark. Who knows?
Farmer Mike numbly surveyed the destruction. His family land had been handed down from father to son for generations.
But then the barn burned down and with it all his cows. A few months later, the land would be sold. My dad shot a video, but the insurance wasn’t enough.
Often, I went to play with Farmer Mike’s son Jesse. At only four miles away, they were our closest neighbors. I rode my bike down dusty roads and tossed it into the ditch on my way to the doorbell.
During those visits, I grew to dislike Farmer Mike. If he happened to see us playing, he’d find something for us to do. He thought that my presence made me his servant. “Quit wasting your time and come help me with this!”
He worked Jesse too hard. Eventually I stopped visiting. By the time of the barn fire, I hadn’t seen them in a couple of years.
The house had been untouched by the fire, but it hadn’t been spared from the ravages of poverty. The walls sagged and many of the shingles had fallen from the roof. The state of disrepair was obvious to anyone but those who lived there.
Most people would be shocked to sit down and go through the finances of a family farm. It’s a life lived with your back against the wall. You’ll see big numbers with at least 5 zeros written in red with a hostile minus symbol out in front. When you compare that to the ink written in black to represent positive cash flow, the situation appears hopeless.
All of the farmers I’ve ever known have resigned themselves to never paying off their debt.
How is that possible when the land has been handed down for generations? Well, there are always new taxes and new expenses. The asset is mortgaged to pay for a future that will never come.
Year after year, harvest after harvest, somehow they get through. They kick the can down the road and try to ignore how it’s getting steadily bigger. They hope and pray for some kind of miracle, and they get one every now and then.
The lucky ones get one. The rest are forced off eventually.
I grew up when Little House on the Prairie was a hit show. Farmer Mike stomped through the room if anything else was on the television. But when Little House came on, he’d stop and a strange smile would come to his face. He liked that one.
It was a story of a husband and wife with a wagon and a horse. If they needed something, they built it. If they wanted to eat, they grew it. They survived on their work ethic and their wits. They didn’t need anything from the government. They just wanted to be left alone to cultivate the Earth and read their Bible.
Farmer Mike saw that and he’d leave the room with a spring in his step. There’s a characteristic gait of farmers. They look like a boulder rolling in slow motion down a hill. If they encounter obstacles, they go right over.
These are people who harness the power of the sun and the seasons to create the food that gives us life.
They feed the nation and would be content to do it until their last day. Some of them make it, the lucky ones, but they’re a dying breed and even the lucky ones know it.
Little House on the Prairie never wasted much time talking about the pioneers who died from starvation or violence or disease. It’s an idealized version of the past, yet it’s the version folks like Farmer Mike took as a model for his own sense of identity.
I wouldn’t begrudge a man his pride, even if that pride is based on false assumptions. Your pride gives you the strength to overcome the obstacles of life.
Farmers look at bank statements written in red with hopeless numbers. When despair starts to creep in, they remember the importance of their labor. What do all those fancy bankers know with their slick suits and their spreadsheets? Who are they to tell a guy like Farmer Mike that he should submit to the yearly expense of an exorbitant insurance premium?
What do they know?
They’re the ones who send the statements and the “past-due” notifications. They can see he doesn’t have the money for an inflated expense he might not even need. In fact, they insult him with their nagging.
Thoughts like these must have floated through Farmer Mike’s mind as he looked at the charred bodies of his cows. They were all dead. His life as a farmer was dead. Everything he had been up until that point in his life was dead.
The thread connecting him to his identity had been cut.
Farmer Mike came to work at our place for a while. He thought it different to take a job instead of charity.
I remember sitting with him at lunch. He was a fraction of his former self. His mind was elsewhere to the point where he couldn’t even participate in our conversation. He tried to tell stories and they’d trail off into uncomfortable silence.
He floated.
I learned the lesson. I resolved not to chase after a life that didn’t really exist.
My dad, too, wished for me to take over our land. But I saw in Farmer Mike a warning. The barn fire hadn’t been the end of his identity. The crumbling house stood as proof of that.
The bank statements and the loans and the constant struggle revealed the reality. The fire only served to put the romanticized version of his struggling life out of its misery.
No matter what we think, the land is not ours. What happens if the fires come, or the tax man? What if the bank says they can’t approve your loan? What happens if nobody wants to work for what you can afford to pay?
The land can be taken away.
I didn’t want to be caught in free fall like Farmer Mike.
I remember the smoking remains that could still be identified as cows. I remember the smell. I remember the fear and uncertainty that clutched at my nostrils.
Farmer Mike surveyed the desolation with despair.
Before the fire, Farmer Mike’s wife took a part time job to get them through a lean patch, but the lean patch kept getting longer and longer. Her part time employment became full time, and soon she was the primary breadwinner. Still, it wasn’t enough.
It costs more to be a farmer than it pays.
Eventually, I left my father’s land and took on the risk of college. No fire or taxman can take away your knowledge. The futile pursuit of an idealized past is poor compensation for an unlimited future. There’s less comfort in tradition when you consider the harsh certainty of change.
“I'd rather Be Writing” exists because of your generous support. If you have the means please consider upgrading to a paid sponsorship. I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year. I'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.
My CoSchedule referral link
Here’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).
I have friends in US and in UK who are farmers and yep they are rarely if ever in the black. Add to that the hard work which happens 24/7/365 - no days off unless you can find someone to take care of the farm. My US friend is a fiber farmer, she raises llamas for their fleeces, shows them, and sells them to other fiber farmers or as pets. She works away up and down the east coast all spring as a shearer to make more money. I've attended wool shows with her and inevitably we meet people who rhapsodize about having a llama or alpaca farm in retirement. We laugh wryly and remind them of the work commitment, all day every day, regardless of weather. Vet bills, shearing bills, hay and feed bills, mortgage, heat, water, etc., etc., etc. People have romanticized farming and they need to stop. Farmers are among the categories with the highest rates of suicide.
Little House on the Prairie. Walter, have you read ALL the books, and the others by the adopted daughter of Rose (I think it was)? It's been 30+ years for me, but the picture there is not far off what you tell here. The hard life. The broken dreams. Far from the TV fantasy.