It will soon be 25 years. Twenty five years of anything is usually a time for celebration. A time of feting with silver decorations and dances and fancy dinners.
Not so with this anniversary year. It has been twenty-five years since we lost the farm. Twenty -five years since we were worried about seeding, haying, baling, harvesting, and bankers.
A quarter of a century has passed since I sat at a neighbor's for coffee and had one eye on the gathering clouds as my friend chatted about how she hoped the rain would help her garden, and I simultaneously worried about the rain ruining the hay.
Those long lonely days of busily looking after a four and a two year old while my husband would be, what I thought having a good day, harrowing, seeding, cultivating, or swathing ; only to typically find that he had been at the garage most of the day getting a weld or repair done on a broken piece of machinery were far too frequent.
I will never forget the terror of the spring morning when I awoke and realized that he hadn't come in off the field all night. I packed up the kids hurriedly, grabbed some bread and an orange and a bottle of juice and drove the 15 miles out to the field hoping against hope that he had simply fallen asleep in the tractor and nothing else had happened. As I approached the field I saw the puff of the exhaust from the engine and realized that he had been cultivating all night long.
He also baled all night long that last fall. The twinkle of the tractor lights in the middle of the night as the tractor traveled round and round with the occasional pause in accordance with letting the bale 'drop', seemed like a strange sort of waltz made stranger by the fact that there were no break downs, no hammering, nothing stuck or broken for a whole 18 hours. The salesman who had delivered the new baler at 2 the previous afternoon found it hard to believe that the machine hadn't stopped since he had left the yard, when he phoned at 10 the next morning to see if my husband needed any help in understanding how to run the new piece of equipment.
We got malting barely and milling oats that harvest, and top price for the excellent round bales.
We also got our last call from the banker. Our line of credit was overdrawn, our cash flow was too low, and our debt level was too high.
The land was repossessed and the cattle were sold the same day our third baby arrived.
Big changes in lifestyle occurred. Boxes were packed. Choices were made and challenges met.
The stress was almost unendurable. The pressure of the unknown and unwanted I am sure can be compared to what refugees from war torn parts of the third world experience. Walking into city government offices and talking to people in dress pants and white shirts and ties, seeking to qualify for government retraining were times of unbelievable strain.
It was about five years later before we could actually say we were again 'doing ok'. We had lost about $250,000 but we had a steady income, four healthy children by then, had both increased our formal education, and were living back on the home quarter. We had gotten through it.
Never again would we ever feel so scared, frustrated, guilty, humiliated, and helpless.
Or so we thought.
Not so with this anniversary year. It has been twenty-five years since we lost the farm. Twenty -five years since we were worried about seeding, haying, baling, harvesting, and bankers.
A quarter of a century has passed since I sat at a neighbor's for coffee and had one eye on the gathering clouds as my friend chatted about how she hoped the rain would help her garden, and I simultaneously worried about the rain ruining the hay.
Those long lonely days of busily looking after a four and a two year old while my husband would be, what I thought having a good day, harrowing, seeding, cultivating, or swathing ; only to typically find that he had been at the garage most of the day getting a weld or repair done on a broken piece of machinery were far too frequent.
I will never forget the terror of the spring morning when I awoke and realized that he hadn't come in off the field all night. I packed up the kids hurriedly, grabbed some bread and an orange and a bottle of juice and drove the 15 miles out to the field hoping against hope that he had simply fallen asleep in the tractor and nothing else had happened. As I approached the field I saw the puff of the exhaust from the engine and realized that he had been cultivating all night long.
He also baled all night long that last fall. The twinkle of the tractor lights in the middle of the night as the tractor traveled round and round with the occasional pause in accordance with letting the bale 'drop', seemed like a strange sort of waltz made stranger by the fact that there were no break downs, no hammering, nothing stuck or broken for a whole 18 hours. The salesman who had delivered the new baler at 2 the previous afternoon found it hard to believe that the machine hadn't stopped since he had left the yard, when he phoned at 10 the next morning to see if my husband needed any help in understanding how to run the new piece of equipment.
We got malting barely and milling oats that harvest, and top price for the excellent round bales.
We also got our last call from the banker. Our line of credit was overdrawn, our cash flow was too low, and our debt level was too high.
The land was repossessed and the cattle were sold the same day our third baby arrived.
Big changes in lifestyle occurred. Boxes were packed. Choices were made and challenges met.
The stress was almost unendurable. The pressure of the unknown and unwanted I am sure can be compared to what refugees from war torn parts of the third world experience. Walking into city government offices and talking to people in dress pants and white shirts and ties, seeking to qualify for government retraining were times of unbelievable strain.
It was about five years later before we could actually say we were again 'doing ok'. We had lost about $250,000 but we had a steady income, four healthy children by then, had both increased our formal education, and were living back on the home quarter. We had gotten through it.
Never again would we ever feel so scared, frustrated, guilty, humiliated, and helpless.
Or so we thought.
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