
One topic that seems to be brought up a lot is farming and mental health. After this past fall, I can see why.
There were some pretty good vibes on the farm last year. We grew some pretty good wheat. We got to host the Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance summer field day. Our sunflower crop was good, and our fall agritourism excelled.
Then, harvest came. I knew that it wasn’t going to be good, but I was trying to be optimistic that it would be better than I thought. I was wrong!
We cut a lot of beans that had single-digit yields. It was disappointing. The acres were knocked out, and hauling them back to the bins was easy, but the truck was never full. I kept telling myself that harvest would be done sooner than ever, and that I could get back to the list of projects that didn’t get finished this summer. I was trying to be positive.
When corn harvest started, the only positive thing going for us was that we didn’t have to dry anything. Most of our corn came out of the field dry; some fields got as low as 13% moisture. Our yields were horrible. More than half of our corn crop averaged less than 30 bushels an acre.
My friends and neighbors experienced low yields, too. If you have never harvested corn that bad, let me tell you, it’s not easy. It’s stressful. The ears are low, they don’t feed, the combine doesn’t clean, and things still break, especially the snouts on the corn head when you run it that low to the ground day after day.
It got so bad that our daily repair bill was greater than the daily harvest. This lasted for a good 10 days, and it felt like the deck was stacked against me.
Nothing was going right, including things on the homefront. Everyone in the house had an issue of some sort. Nothing major, but this just added to the stress. And the parts bills kept adding up, too.
Sleep was one of the first things I noticed I couldn’t get. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sleep at night. My mood was bad, too. Sheilah tried her best, but I didn’t want to talk, and I couldn’t smile. The thought of being done earlier and catching up on things never happened. I slowly drifted. I was negative about most things. This wasn’t me at all.
Two weeks before Christmas, we had our tax planning session for the year. This was something I was not looking forward to. But while things were not great, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We talked about our concerns for the coming year.
Then, while loading out the last of our soybeans for the year, I got a voicemail from a friend who was also friends with our accountant. He said to give him a call because he had heard that I might be a little down given the crop we had. An hour or so later, I called him back. We had a good conversation about all that’s been happening.
From that point forward, things have started to look up, and I’ve been able to get my head on straight. I’m slowly catching up on things that needed to be done six months ago.
The struggle of what we do is real, and just being able to talk to people who live it and know it, too, makes it easier.
Call and check on your friends and neighbors. Complain to one another about your problems, and don’t hold it in, and know it all comes out in the wash.
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