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Hey, watch out, there’s a rock the size of a loaf of bread about to go through the header!” I yell to my new hubby in the cab of our combine as we harvest in 1981.“Don’t worry, I saw it, and there will be more,” he confides to me.
The cartoon featured a man and wife sitting upright in their bed with the man holding a pitchfork – and a Holstein cow between them. The caption reads: “Honey, you love your cows more than me!”
One snowy day at a beautiful ranch home in southern Alberta around the expansive kitchen table, the farm team said, “Elaine, you should make a list of the top phrases you use in coaching.”
“An experiment was conducted in 1992 at Stanford University, in which 4-year-old children were given a choice. A marshmallow was put in front of them; they could either eat the marshmallow now or wait 15 minutes, after which they would be given two marshmallows.
A lovely poem (see below) was sent to me by a farmwoman who found it late at night as she pondered her new role on the farm. She is about to become an “empty nester.”
She came up to me quietly after my presentation, looking tired and sad. “Elaine, I haven’t been off the farm in months, and I don’t know who is going to help us with seeding. I am 70, and I cannot take this anymore. My husband is very verbally abusive and won’t get help for his depression. What do I do?”
As an outsider looking in to the many farm families I am honoured to share time with, it always saddens me to see people who cannot seem to grasp happiness beyond what they do as farmers, especially when it is time to let go of controlling the decisions and let the next generation be the key decision-maker.
One snowy day at a beautiful ranch home in southern Alberta around the expansive kitchen table, the farm team said, “Elaine, you should make a list of the top phrases you use in coaching.”
As the farming population of boomers ages, so does the 80-plus crowd. These aging patriarchs and matriarchs are still ruling farms – some with a heavy hand.
