Farmer's Mental Health: Work and Life Balance

I grew up a few miles away from here, just north of Princeton, on a family farm, and I started farming and helping out on the farm when I was 10 or 12 years old. I did not grow up around here. I'm a city girl at heart. I grew up in Syracuse, New York, went to school in Chicago, so it was a huge adjustment for me to move to the country. I really didn't know the magnitude of what I was getting into moving out here. I think I anticipated lots of tractor rides and no Starbucks, but what I wasn't anticipating was being alone or trying, you know, single parenting for, you know, three to four months out of the year. That's been the hard part. As a farmer, it is difficult at times to have a balance, especially considering the busy seasons of planting and harvest. Oftentimes, when I first started farming on my own, there was always a decision to be made whether or not to go out and work and try to get as much done as I could in a given amount of time or, you know, do a family event, whether it be a kid's sporting event or just spending time with the family at home. And I found myself often choosing to go work just to try to get that last thing done. At the time, it seemed like the right decision to make, but looking at it in retrospect, it probably wasn't necessarily the right decision because of seeing the kids' disappointment or just knowing that I missed out on something that was important to them. This farm has been in the family for several generations, and so there's just a lot of pressure, as with many other family farms, just to kind of keep the operation surviving, but, you know, you want to grow the business. And so oftentimes there's that extra added pressure just to stay working and doing that last task that sometimes just needs to get done. During those times when your partner is busy and gone for months, it is so important to build a community of people who are in a similar season. So for me, I will reach out to my other friends who have their spouses farming, and we'll do dinners together with our kids. So I'll have sometimes a couple moms over and we'll have a house full of kids, and it's a great way find support and connect and, you know, talk about the stress of what we're carrying right now, but also just to laugh and let loose and remind myself that there's beauty in fruit in what we're doing, and right now it just looks like connecting with friends. And in that too, when we come together, we're supporting our husbands and what they're doing. Balance is definitely the key to making this whole career work, as with any career really. I like the challenge of the job. I think the biggest thing is I like to see the fruits of my labor. And so, you know, watching stuff grow and then being able to harvest that and, you know, make money off of that is very rewarding. And then being able to do it alongside with my kids and seeing them and knowing that someday maybe they'll have a part in this that I can hopefully build and leave something for them. This brings me a lot of joy, knowing that that may be a possibility.