The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.92: The Farmers Aren't All Right

Episode Date: March 4, 2017

Farming is tough work. The unpredictability of the job and the pressure to present a curated, bucolic version of the work can easily lead to various kinds of mental health problems: despair, feeling overwhelmed or like a failure, or even depression. In this episode, co-produced with Jessica Gale of Sweet Gale Gardens, we discuss the prevalence of mental health problems among farmers, and how to address them.  Mentioned: Professor Andria Jones-Bitton's work The Market Gardener (JM Fortier) The Urban Farmer (Curtis Stone) Sustainable Market Farming (Pam Dawling)

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. Producers have shared with me that, you know, they might have been struggling with their mental health, but they've been afraid to talk about it because it will be perceived as a sign of weakness or a sign of being lazy. And if your whole way of life and being and your identity is focused on being a hard worker and you think that mental health is going to perceived as being lazy you can understand why people wouldn't want to talk about that. Farming isn't easy. If you're a farmer you know that. There are so many variables out of a farmers control. The weather, pest problems that seemingly

come out of nowhere, having to set your prices based on things happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. I could go on. But when you combine this unpredictability, which has existed forever, with the pressure a lot of us feel to craft a picture-perfect outward appearance in the age of Instagram, while simultaneously being barraged with images of how well all the other farmers seem to be doing, and meanwhile it seems like all your customers really want to hear is that your life as a farmer is unequivocally awesome, it can easily result in a decline in your mental health. Often it's temporary, and sometimes it's prolonged, but feelings of despair, sadness, failure, imposter syndrome, alienation, or just being overwhelmed happens to a lot of farmers.

syndrome, alienation, or just being overwhelmed happens to a lot of farmers. If you're one of them, this episode is for you. And if you're not a farmer, it might be for you too. We're certainly not the only ones who suffer these feelings sometimes, and we don't talk about it nearly enough. That's something Jessica Gale and I agreed on last fall when she started telling me about some of her struggles on her farm. Jessica is a flower farmer who has contributed to the podcast a few times, and after trading a few stories on this topic, we agreed to co-produce this episode together. What follows are a few segments about how, even though most of us agree that we love our jobs, sometimes it doesn't feel that way at all. We hope you like it. Andrea Jones-Bitton is a professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph.

Last year, she released the results of some research she did on the state of farmers' mental health here in Canada and abroad. Her results were concerning, and my conversation with her seemed like a good way to frame today's topic. I spoke to Andrea in January. Andrea Jones-Bitton, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast. My pleasure, Jordan. Andrea Jones-Bitton, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast. My pleasure, Jordan. Andrea, in 2015, you set out to survey the state of mental health among different kinds of farmers in Canada.

And I'm wondering if perhaps you could start out by just talking about how you structure that survey and what kinds of farmers specifically you were hearing from. Sure thing. So we started off thinking it was going to be sort of a small pilot survey. And originally, it was designed just for Ontario livestock producers. And we launched the survey at the Outdoor Farm Show here in Ontario in September 2015. And what we quickly realized was online there were producers from other industry groups and producers from other provinces who were wanting to partake in the survey. And so we quickly got our ethics extended and we extended the survey to producers and farmers of any commodity group and from any province in Canada. So you discovered that farmers had a lot

that it seemed they wanted to get off their chests. Yes. Andrea, your findings were striking. I mean, I'm just going to roll off some stats here that I read. Among respondents, you had 45% reporting high stress, 38% reporting emotional exhaustion, 43% reporting varying levels of cynicism, and 35% reporting, I guess, different levels of depression. It seems striking to me. How does that compare to the normal Canadian population? Well, so I want to state that some surveys have been done in the past that have

just generally asked people, how are you feeling? So do you feel that you've been depressed in the last month? We wanted to make sure that we were using a validated scale to measure these different outcomes. So we did use validated mental health scales that are widely accepted in the academic and psychological literature. So these aren't really, did you feel depressed in the last month, but it was a series of questions that participants answered, and then you get an overall score for the various different outcomes. And what we found was that for the perceived stress, as you mentioned, such a high proportion of farmers were in that high stress category. There was also moderately high levels of anxiety and depression. And when we compare that to surveys done in other parts of the world with farmers using the same scales, we found that the results were higher

for our Canadian farmers. And they were also higher than the general population norms that were used to construct those scales. So that means that the results we were seeing were actually higher than those of the general population, as well as some comparable groups. Right. So not only higher than the normal Canadian population, but even higher than when comparing to other farmers in countries like, you mentioned, the UK, Norway, I think have lower levels of stress than Canadian farmers. And I think I read that you noted that Canadian farmers appear to be less resilient

than their American farming counterparts. that Canadian farmers appear to be less resilient than their American farming counterparts. Well, the scale that we use to measure resilience used the American general population to create what was considered normal or low or high resilience. So that was being compared to the U.S. general population. And you're right, it was about two-thirds of our producers scored lower than the U.S. general population in terms of their resilience levels. And this is quite concerning because resilience is not a measure of strength. And I think that's where some confusion comes into play.

We all know that producers are very tough and we know that they can get the job done. They sort of keep going and they can overcome obstacles quite well. Resilience is actually our ability to handle psychological and physical stress. And so I like to think of it as a tennis ball. And if you squeeze a tennis ball, it doesn't mean that it doesn't succumb to that pressure. We're humans. We're expected to be impacted by pressure.

But resilience is the ability and how quickly we can bounce back from that. is a cause for concern because when we've got low resilience, we are more vulnerable to stresses and therefore at higher risk for things like depression and anxiety. So Andrea, what makes Canadian farmers special in this regard? What do you think is going on? I think farmers, I don't just think that the research shows that farmers worldwide are amongst one of the highest stressed occupational groups. And certainly that's during times of calm and even more so during times of emergency. So UK farmers, for example, during the foot and mouth disease outbreak, we saw some pretty significant mental health outcomes associated with that.

saw some pretty significant mental health outcomes associated with that. I think if you just look at what farmers are going through on a day-to-day basis, if you look at changing weather and changing climate, changing government regulations, disease outbreaks, biosecurity on livestock farms, for example. If you look at also public scrutiny, so that's come up a lot in my discussions with producers that they feel like their entire way of life is almost under attack, and that they're being scrutinized by people who may or may not actually understand agriculture. And so, you know, you also look at the number of hours that they work, that a lot of it's in social isolation. Many farmers are working more than one job in order to make ends meet, because farming is not just an occupation, it's their entire way of life and their culture. So it's important to them that they keep that going. And so when you look at all of those things together,

so many of those very significant stressors are actually completely beyond their control. And it's that apparent loss of power, loss of control, that can lead to sort of hopelessness and helplessness sometimes. Andrea, one thing I didn't ask you before, can you be more specific about the farmer population it targeted? If you just take the issue of increased scrutiny that we just talked about, I have to assume that that would affect larger farmers who are in segments of farming that tend to produce into the commodity system.

I mean, it strikes me they would be particularly vulnerable to criticism about the way their farming practices are going versus someone like me, a super locally focused organic farmer who tends to, you know, I wouldn't tend to face that scrutiny whether I deserve to or not, just based on public perception. So, you know, when we're talking about these issues, are we talking about farmers with larger farms more likely to be participating in more like commodity chains or am I wrong? That's a great question, Jordan. And that's actually, we're starting to get into those

analyses now. So we've got so much data to comb through. So thus far, we've done the prevalence of the different mental health outcomes. Our next step is looking to see, are there certain farmers from certain groups or certain commodities, supply managed versus not, different provinces, ages, genders, etc. And to see whether or not those factors are actually associated with those mental health outcomes Okay, so great that's coming soon and I also I wanted to finish our conversation

by asking you what can be done or should be done or is being done with regards to this issue, this problem A great point. And I think a big part of it is what I've heard from many people is that historically mental health and agriculture just hasn't been something that we've talked about

or that's been talked about in the agricultural community. And so I think the more people are openly talking about this, the fact that you're doing a whole segment on it, I think is fantastic. So we need to sort of normalize mental health in agriculture. So I think the more we talk about it, the more we open the doors for other people to talk about it. There has been a perceived stigma, I think, around mental health. Producers have shared with me that they might have been struggling with their mental health, but they've been afraid to talk about it

because it will be perceived as a sign of weakness or a sign of being lazy. And if your whole way of life and being and your identity is focused on being a hard worker and you think that mental health is going to be perceived as being lazy, you can understand why people wouldn't want to talk about that. We've also seen that farmers are having a hard time finding appropriate mental health care. finding appropriate mental health care. So there's some issues in rural areas with having a lack of access to even general practitioners, let alone any sort of specialized services. There's also a concern about confidentiality in some small towns. And, you know, my truck being seen parked outside

a psychologist's office, for example. So there's a lack of access to care, and then there's a concern with confidentiality as well. So what we want to do is try to explore, and in our next phase of research, we will be exploring producers' help-seeking behaviors, so looking at some of the barriers to that. And then if they did seek help for their

mental health, talking to them about what that experience was like so that we can more appropriately respond to produce their mental health. Some provinces, Manitoba, for example, has got some great programming in place for people living in rural areas and more specifically for farmers. for people living in rural areas and more specifically for farmers. Australia, I think, is probably leading the way in this area. And so I think Canada as a whole, we can learn a lot from those places to see what they're doing. I guess it's kind of an issue of baby steps. There's a lot of ground to cover, and so you have to start at the start.

That's right, yeah. Well, Andrea, thanks so much for coming on the show to talk about this it was uh it was really interesting reading and i'm i'm just really glad to see that research like this is being conducted oh thank you and again i think it's terrific that that you're also to hear part of my original conversation with Jessica Gale about our own experiences with struggle in her farming. Jessica grows flowers for her business Sweet Gale Gardens in Ontario, and you may recognize her voice from past episodes in which she provided advice to new flower growers. After our conversation, Jessica is going to recite a piece she wrote about a particularly challenging time she had

on her farm last year. Jessica Gale, how many years have you been farming in your own business? So I've been farming for four seasons now, and this past year was my first season full-time. Oh, cool. Okay. And have you ever had any type of like mental health issues or challenges on your farm or in the context of farming? Yeah, I think I have struggled over many years for with mental health issues. And I think being a farmer, there's certain parts of farming that bring that out for better and worse. I've turned to farming for many reasons, but one of them was because I found that farming actually helped alleviate depression and anxiety. It's a funny thing because it sort of dovetails into the fact that there's parts of farming that are also very stressful and unstable. And so at the same time, it's something that is giving, but it also does have taking too.

I can really relate to that description. So much of my work as a farmer is awesome. So much of it, but then I've also had these like really brief periods of just being down or feeling despair or whatever. Can, can you talk about something that an example or two of something like issues you've had on your own farm? Yeah, I think, you know, for myself, I've, I've struggled a lot over the last few years with a great deal of doubt whether I was doing the right thing. Um, I went to school for, for many years in university. I had, um, multiple degrees and it kind of felt like I kind of turned away from that work and went into farming. And so there was a great deal of doubt if I was going down the right path

and whether that made sense after all the other work that I had done. And, you know, a great deal of fear built into it because I knew that farming could be very difficult from like a financial standpoint. Um, and then it was a different lifestyle that then I at first, uh, thought I was going to have when I was back in university. So, you know, changing of the routines and having to deal with a sort of boom bust cycle of the financial aspects of farming has been difficult. And so that's kind of like in a broader way, what I think a lot of people have felt, and especially I think with so many new farmers that are coming into farming now that have university backgrounds, there's a question of, is this the right sort of alternative path to be taking?

People are carrying debt from university. are carrying debt from university. They're carrying their own expectations of, you know, from their family and their friends about what they should be doing. It seems to me like a lot of new entrants into farming, this certainly applied to me, were partly motivated by a couple of factors like a, what am I going to, I need to do something, what am I going to do? And then also this real desire to do good, to do good. And, um, then you, if you take that step, you realize that's not quite enough and that, that, you know, and that can quickly lead to, to a lot of stress when you realize just what's, what's involved in that.

And that, um, those two, those two motivations are not sufficient to make you a successful farmer. Those two motivations are not sufficient to make you a successful farmer. Can we talk about kind of the discord that can exist between how your life and your farm look from the outside versus what the reality can be on the inside and even in your own, within the confines of your house and what's happening in the house? Do you know what I mean? Like, um, cause I find that has been a theme of my farming, whether at times when I'm really happy, really up or really down, it's been a theme throughout this, this, this, yeah. Just in terms of interactions I have with customers or even interactions I have with other farmers. Yeah. So my favorite thing to bring up with that I think is very touching, but sort of hilarious and a little frustrating is that I'm a flower farmer. And so when I'm at market, I often get two comments.

One is, oh, you must have the most wonderful job in the world. You get to be outdoors all day and you're amongst all these flowers. And then the second question I get is, oh, are these all wildflowers? Are you out in a meadow picking these? And so it always kind of makes me laugh. But I think the thing that I've started really thinking about this season is how there's a romanticism that is tied up in farming. And don't get me wrong, I think there's aspects of farming that are romantic, that are beautiful and and rush and exhaustion and so forth that people don't really want to hear about. And you also feel like for the good of your business, you can't show them either. You kind of need to hide. Yeah. And so one of the things that I find myself thinking about and talking to other farmers about is, you know, especially today with social media, there our businesses have become so much about a reflection of ourselves and our lives, a lot of times being farmers, people want to see that. They want to see our lives because it's something different, especially if, you know, you're someone who's working in a city and you're in an office all day.

city and you're in an office all day, like, you know, flipping through that Instagram account and seeing like these beautiful pictures of, you know, fields and sunsets and bugs and animals and stuff is a relief to people. And that's part of what is being sold. But I worry about how that affects, especially new farmers, because it takes a while for all of us to really realize and admit to ourselves that's not the truth of what is actually going on every time. A lot of times photos are staged. I know farmers that will go inside, change their clothes, come out, and pose in a photograph. You aren't seeing all the other things. You're not seeing the corner of the field that's engulfed in weeds. And so, you know, I think there's times I hear my peers and, and I've felt this myself, like looking through other people's photos and being like, oh my gosh,

like my farm is such a mess in comparison. How are these people doing it? There's only two of them in this place. They have like all these acres and it looks so beautiful but we don't always see the full picture we don't see some of the staff that they have that they choose not to have on their marketing we don't see the migrant workers that are participating in some of these farms we don't of these farms. We don't see all of the tractor equipment necessarily all the time and, um, various stuff like that. Social media is such a double-edged sword, you know, uh, a group that has become, uh, so popular on Facebook in the last year is called Market Gardening Success Group. And it has become such an awesome place for market gardeners to come

and swap a lot of shop talk and help each other. I love it. I love it. But I also can say that I have to be in the right mood for it. And there's some days where, because, you know, post after post after post, it's the most busy thing on my Facebook and feed or profile or whatever.

And I mean, if I'm not in the right mood, it can make me feel, and there's some really, really talented people sharing their ideas and their experiences and stuff, but it can make me feel shitty sometimes, you know? Like I don't always want to see what I'm not doing right. Even though those posts are meant to hold the potential to help me do it better.

But yeah, it's just so easy, whether it's those so easy, whether, whether it's, it's those kinds of shop talk posts or whether it's just farmers sending out beautiful shots of what they're doing or their successes, it can, it can easily make you feel kind of shitty. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And yeah, it's, it's, you know, I think all of it, as you said, it's a blessing and a curse on the one hand when things are quieter or things are going well. It's like it's those tools can be incredible. Those networks can be incredible.

I find the only way that I can feel a little bit better about it is that maybe there's just too much of it. there's just too much of it. Like we were so plugged into it in some ways that I know for myself, like I kind of put a ban on going on to certain websites or blogs or using the Facebook groups sometimes when it's really busy and hectic in the summer, because I just don't want to trigger that, that imposter syndrome. And um I try to save actually a lot of that that communication and community time for the winter when you know I've gone through the season it's what it is whatever has happened has happened and then I can go to those sites and those communities and say hey guys like this went really well. This, you know, just tanked. Like, what do you think of this? And I can approach it with a much lighter heart compared to in the middle of the season

where I'm like, man, I do not need to see another picture of someone's beautiful greenhouse full of whatever when I don't have a greenhouse and my stuff looks like, you know, terrible in the field. don't have a greenhouse and my stuff looks like, you know, terrible in the field. Um, but of course, like you have to stay plugged in enough to keep, keep the marketing wheels going. Well, I also think, I also think another reason to stay plugged in in a certain way is, is, is that Jessica, I'm convinced that a real potential source of despair or feelings of failure or feelings of being an imposter is when, and I think this is so normal for people to do, is when you, it's not so much the lack of the skill or the way your farm looks. It seems really easy to convince yourself that you're alone. Like that you're the only one that sucks. You're the only one whose farm looks like that.

that you're the only one that sucks. You're the only one whose farm looks like that. And then that gets exactly, one reason that happens, I think is because, is because, well, you've already outlined a lot of people put, you know, I mean, most of us in certain ways on social media and elsewhere, we create a kind of an image of our farm that is different than the reality often, but also we just, we're, we're scared to share. So it's's like it's awful because sometimes anyway i think the the potential to feel a lot better um exists if we would just share it but we're too scared to share it because we think we're alone and i think that applies to so many aspects of unhappiness in all aspects of life is is you convince yourself you're the only one and yeah totally and i think i think the thing that i learned this season, like, you know,

hitting my own kind of low point was that part of what really helped me was telling people I was struggling. And I think that I know for myself that part of dealing with mental health struggles has been the stigma of it like you said like feeling like you can't say anything about it and feeling and you know something there's there's just something about the mind that the more that we try to push stuff down the more it just leaks out in other ways or kind of builds up and explodes and so the best thing that we can be doing is to be more open about these things. And so I think, yeah, like I think, you know, sharing that through our online communities, like I know like I had a friend that was also starting her own farm this year, working full

time on it. And we would just send each other messages being like, man, I just bombed this today, like, or this just got totally eaten up by flea beetles or, and part of it was like commiseration, but also it was just kind of like new farmer dumb mistakes and like trying to learn to laugh about it and not take it so seriously because there were so many other things that had to be taken seriously this summer so screwing up you know your cover cropping or something like that when in the face of like a terrible drought and unbelievably hot temperatures and other stressors it's like you got to find the stuff to laugh about and poke fun at yourself and and yeah and share that with people jessica later in the episode

you're going to be reading a short piece uh that you wrote that describes a feeling of despair you felt on your farm and and how you dealt with that And it's a really lovely piece. I think people are really going to enjoy it, but I'm wondering if you could, um, maybe set it up by, by describing the actual conditions on your farm that led to, to how you felt. Yeah. So I think it's a bit of a common tale, uh, amongst a lot of farmers in this part of Canada this spring. What started, you know, very dry, very hot, very soon. And so for me, I was starting at a new property. I had moved from an urban farm in Toronto to a more rural incubator farm north of Hamilton, Ontario. And it was also my first season starting full time. And I scaled up pretty much about doubling slash tripling the size of my production. And so there is, you know, a lot of change going on, you know, you know, for myself,

but then also having to get this farm, you know, off the ground and running very quickly, um, in the spring to make, you know, and I, you know, had been farming for a few years and had some good connections, but I, you know, had made some commitments and big plans and so forth. And so basically it was just, you know, in June things were not growing. Um, it was so dry and I was a lucky farmer. I had irrigation, but even like it this move and, and scaling up and, you know, making this big commitment, uh, to working full-time on my business. Um, it just sucker punched me, like to realize that there is a possibility that things could just fail. And, and so that, for me brought up a lot of prior mental health issues that had never been fully addressed. And so, for me, they kind of fed into each other in this really toxic way that, yeah, kind of really hit the fan in June. And yeah, I think that that sets it up quite properly.

I think it does. Well, Jessica Gale, thank you so much for coming on to talk about this. I think it's really important. And I think people are going to like this little piece they're about to hear. It was June. It was a time in previous seasons when I could stand back, look at my fields and feel proud of all the tidy rows, the transplants all nestled in for the season, and with weeds under control. For me, June was the last deep breath. In spring, I was the sprinter, running as fast as I could after the gunshot goes off. In high summer, I was the marathon runner, preparing for the long haul. I was the marathon runner preparing for the long haul.

In June, even if it was just a week, there was a small pause where I could walk instead of run. But for 2016, June was the hard bottom. Every time I looked at my fields, I felt a cold, heavy weight settle onto my chest. Scorched, toppled, failing. I believed the worst. Nothing was going to grow. A moment stands out during that period.

Feeling crushed by doubt, worry, and fear, I walked into the meadows bordering my plot and sat down in the tall grass. I used to have dreams, I guess, left over from my childhood of rambling in the meadows near my house, of running and hiding from whatever was chasing me and feeling safe. So when I sat down and then laid down in the grass, I immediately felt relief. Here, I was lost amongst the weeds. No one could find me. Nobody could see me. Staring up at the sky, I could watch the insects crawl along the grass, the clouds slide across the sky. I cannot say if in that moment something changed.

if in that moment something changed. Most likely not. In the coming weeks, however, I resolved I could not continue to allow despair and fear to get the best of me. I knew my farming struggles were entangled with my own mental health struggles. There was work to be done, but it was not the farm that took precedence.

It was myself. And for once, I made that resolution and held tight to it. Alright, so this last segment you're about to hear was produced specifically with new farmers in mind. We seem to be in the midst of a surge of new farmers, particularly of small-scale market gardeners, and I have to assume that this group is particularly prone to occasional feelings of despair or insecurity in their farming. In my conversation with Jessica, I mentioned that I personally find it pretty easy to feel that I'm unique in my limitations, which makes the occasional feelings of inadequacy I experience feel even worse. So I decided to talk to a few people who are generally regarded as exceptional farmers about whether they've ever struggled with the

challenges discussed in this episode. As it turned out, not all of them do. When I asked author and former guest Steve Solomon to come on the show to talk about any struggles he experienced with mental health in his long career as a market gardener and seed producer, he wrote back the following. I'm always pleased to assist you and share my experience with others, but in this case I think I must pass because I've never experienced any depression or mental health issues connected with the garden or with gardening or connected with the lifestyle I've chosen. If anything, the garden has served as an escape and relief on occasions that I was in turmoil. I mentioned Steve's response because Jessica and I don't mean to pathologize farming as a vocation or to speak for all farmers.

Anyway, I also reached out to Curtis Stone, Jean-Martin Fortier, and Pam Dawling, all successful and acclaimed market gardeners and all authors of books that aim to help other farmers succeed too. All of them admitted to having experienced challenges, which continue to this day. Here's some of what they told me. When I got Jean-Martin, author of The Market Gardener, on the phone to ask him whether he's Here's some of what they told me. When I got Jean Martin, author of The Market Gardener, on the phone to ask him whether he's ever experienced despair or failure or imposter syndrome, he zeroed in on the latter. Well, you know, like Jordan, a lot of people have read my book and my name is pretty well known and talked about in the U.S. and Europe. And people assume that I'm like an expert that knows everything about growing vegetables on small farms.

And I don't. And so often I feel kind of like, well, you know, I know my stuff. I know what I do, but I don't know everything. I know my stuff, I know what I do, but I don't know everything. You know, I go to a conference and there's like 300 people, 300 farmers that are waiting for me to come up with, you know, all the answers and everything. And, you know, I often feel, I don't want to feel like an imposter, but I don't know everything. When I talked to Curtis Stone, author of The Urban Farmer, he focused on the countless mistakes he's made on the way to becoming successful. Oh, it's absolutely true. I mean, this stuff still happens even now. Like right now,

I've got this pandemic aphid problem in my new heated greenhouse. And it's just like we had probably a fifth of our tomato stock wiped out and i'm just like god how does this stuff you know the problem never stopped it's just you have to just stay positive and understand that life in general especially farming is a constant learning experience and you're always going to fail and you're going to continuously learn and get things and make things better as you go and and hopefully you'll have less mistakes and that's certainly the case i mean i've been this is my eighth year of farming now and i've definitely made a ton of mistakes i have to tell people like in my workshops or even on my YouTube channel. It's like there's not much difference between myself and where you are as beginners.

It's just that I've made thousands of more mistakes, but I haven't stopped. I didn't let those mistakes or disappointments stop me. And that's the key is we only get better by just doing things more. And you do them enough, you get pretty good at them. And that's the key is we only get better by just doing things more. And you do them enough, you get pretty good at them. And so I think I'm pretty good at just making mistakes and learning from them and leveraging that information to move forward. Pam Dolling is the author of Sustainable Market Farming. Here's what she had to tell me.

I mean, I'm not a person that suffered a lot with depression. I did once in my life, but it wasn't related to farming, and I did recover from that. But I certainly suffered from feeling overwhelmed often and feeling afraid that things weren't going to work out right, doubting my abilities, absolutely, yes, feeling like that other people, especially since I wrote my abilities, absolutely, yes. Feeling like that other people, especially since I wrote my book, feeling that other people might imagine

I kind of know everything, and of course I don't, and that they might be overestimating me. So all that side of things I've dealt with, yeah. The last thing I asked of each author was whether they had any advice for people struggling on their own farms. Here's Pam again. Really, I think three things.

You need emotional support, a peer group, and some mentors. And the emotional support are the people you could really cry on their shoulder if you need to. That's really, really important. And the peers, it's like I just said. And then the mentors, it's people who know more than you currently know about the thing that you want to learn about and I found other growers be so gracious about showing me their farm or taking time to talk with me and explain what they do

and so I think having all three of those is really, really important. I would say that it does get easier with experience as you learn more ways to be resilient, both emotionally and technically. If you've dealt with flooding before, then you've got some ideas about what to do if flooding happens again. So that sort of thing does get easier. So long as you pay attention the first time and you either remember really clearly or better still write down and take photos and stuff

so that you know what you might do next time. And so in that way, it can get easier. The first year or two can be hard without enough help, yeah. Curtis, meanwhile, kept with the theme of making mistakes. So it's these mistakes that help your experience. And if we can, as individuals in this space of market gardening and small-scale growing, if we can share each other's mistakes, then all of us can get off the ground running a lot faster because it's not really about

figuring everything out right away. It's figuring out what you know you shouldn't do and go, oh yeah, I saw so-and-so make this mistake. I'm not going to make that one this time. So I think it's important. I think it's important that we share those mistakes and don't feel ashamed by them. This is just human. It's human this is just it's human it's

human to fail and and it's good you just need to fail forward and just and just keep moving on and as for jean martin's advice for people who are struggling he was a little more blunt smoke a big fat doobie so so just generally chill out i guess is what you're saying well yeah you know yeah and and i don't think you can give that advice to somebody that's in that moment because but you know if you're gonna make a mistake fine because that's how you'll learn um it's probably not going to be a fatal mistake and yeah, just

understand that it's going to go away leave it, let it be, let that feeling be whatever feeling that is and just understand that in the next day it might be gone so don't worry too much you should

if I would talk to me myself I'd say I should worry in two days but for now I'm just going to go with it and we'll see because sometimes you know these strong feelings they just possess us for a little while and they take all

that's there in our head space and then you don't feel good about yourself but you know the next day you do so it's just about learning to accept that this feeling is passing through now and it's going to go away or smoke a big doobie yeah well i can certainly relate to that last part of what you said i uh there's been so many times when uh some problem in front of me has seemed overwhelming in the moment. And then, and then lo and behold, a week later, you know, it may still be a problem, but, but all of a sudden it's put more in context and I realized it's something I

can actually, I can actually address and it doesn't seem as bad. Yeah, I think that's a good one. To understand that pattern and recognize that pattern so that you don't get overwhelmed by it. pattern and recognize that pattern so that you don't get overwhelmed by it. Oh my god, it's over. Folks, that episode took a lot of effort, many hours to produce, and I'm very thankful to all the people who participated. First off, Jessica Gale. This episode wouldn't exist without her. She kind of helped conceive of it with me and then made some major contributions. So thanks to Jessica. Thanks to Professor Andrea Jones-Bitton

from the University of Guelph for her contribution, as well as those last farmers you heard, Pam Dolling, Curtis Stone, Jean-Martin Fortier. Thanks folks for giving me and us your time. All right, so it seems I've got some winners to announce. Two episodes back, I did that review for Two Bad Cats, and Peter over at Two Bad Cats made two of their wire weeder hoes available to people who shared this episode at their Facebook page. And so, Caitlin Blood and Darren Volmar, you win. So I'll get in touch, or Peter will get in touch, to arrange receiving receiving your hose. As for the copy of Finding the Flavors We Lost by Patrick Q from the last episode, that goes to Jennifer Cockrell-King of Naramata, BC. Jennifer, I'll be in touch. And that's all I got, folks. This episode took a lot out of me. It's done. I hope you enjoyed it talk to you soon

because why would we live in a place that don't want us a place that is trying to bleed us dry dry we could be happy with life in the country with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking some real soul searching and here's

my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and graces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be Do-do-do-do-do-do Do-do-do-do-do-do