When I was a child, I would often lose an item. As the organizer in my family, I would always ask my mother where my missing item was.
“Mom, I can’t find my boots,” I would whine.
“Where did you have it last?” she always responded.
I would go to the last known location and find one boot.
“I found one, but I can’t find the other,” I would whine again.
“Look where you found your boot – the other should be nearby,” my mother would state the obvious.
Following her advice, I always found my missing boot.
Armed with these tools of discovery, I should be better at finding missing things. Instead, finding lost items is more, instead of less, difficult. I lose my slippers, for instance. I go to the last place I had them; I look near the one I could find, but still no slipper. Two weeks later, I find my wayward slipper in the kitty condo because my children want the cat to play with it. Such is the struggle with domestic life.
My wife and kids are often the source of my lost and unfound problem, but dementia explains some of the items I misplace. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel like an old man, but time is creeping up on me. If you’ve ever attended a branding, there are two reactions when someone falls. When a younger person hits the dirt, laughter and ribbing will follow. On the other hand, when an older fellow hits the dirt, there is no laughter, just gasps and uncomfortable silence. I am at the age that a fall at a branding causes fewer laughs and more gasps. I can’t see dementia from here, but it has started showing up on road signs.
There is a fun game that we play at our house. It’s called wife, kids or dementia.
Again, I will lose something … an increasingly common fact pattern. I can’t find my vehicle title. I ask my wife first. As the organizer in our family, she explains that the “piles system” of filing important documents is lacking. She filed it in a more logical place, like a filing cabinet. In this game of wife, kids or dementia, wife is the answer.
Let us take another scenario. Surprisingly often, I lose my pickup. Again, I ask my wife about my wayward pickup, and she suggests I ask my kids.
“Have you seen my lost pickup?” is another in a long line of ridiculous questions I am forced to speak to another human being since fatherhood.
“I had to drive it to school because I have a flat tire,” is the response.
“Change it,” I think to myself, “or walk, but don’t steal my pickup.”
Put a check mark in the kids' column for this missing item.
The final type of missing is the most exasperating but is becoming increasingly frequent. I lose something … my keys for instance. I ask my wife about my missing keys.
“Where did you have them last?” is followed by the whole fruitless searching litany.
I ask my kids about my missing keys and get an I-don’t-have-time-to-find-you-a-nursing-home look. A few weeks later, I find my keys hiding in my left pant pocket instead of my right pocket. You guessed it, dementia wins this round.
As evidenced by my game of wife, kids or dementia, I am part of a growing number of dementia-riddled farmers and ranchers. In the most recent USDA census of agriculture released in 2024, 40% of farmers are over the age of 65. This statistic, like most statistics, is meant to be terrifying. For people that eat food, the thought of 40% of the food-growing knowledge base retiring or expiring over the next decade should be terrifying. The number of acres that will be changing ownership over the next decade is staggering.
Therein lies the opportunity. If you are under the age of 35 and have an interest in production agriculture, 40% of farmers and ranchers need a succession plan. In the past, family members took over the farm. In the same way that the baker’s son and the mechanic’s daughter chart their own paths and find a profession different from their parents, farmers and ranchers increasingly lack an obvious successor.
If you are a young adult interested in agriculture, work for these aged agriculturists, and they may include you in their succession plan. Granted, you may put up with someone like me wandering about the place muttering, “Where’s my missing tractor, and pudding, and get off my lawn, you filthy hippie.”
Sure, this philosophy of “one man’s dementia is another man’s opportunity” may be a little exploitative, but there are millions of the food-eating public relying on the productivity of these farms and ranches. Our food supply hangs in the balance. If you are one of these youngsters, could you see yourself running your own farm or ranch? You too could feed the world for decades. Or until you play the game of wife, kids or dementia.
