My father asked for help cleaning out my grandfather’s shed. He and my grandfather had separate farms but shared the land and equipment. My grandfather had just retired, and we were there to sort through what was left.
We mostly worked in silence, dumping tools into 5-gallon buckets and carrying away old compressors and barn fans. My father would look over a power take-off (PTO) shaft or plow coulter, turning it in his hands before throwing it into the back of the trailer to take to the scrap yard. He had worked with my grandfather all his life, so I knew he saw things in the dusty objects that I did not. Before the day was over, he mentioned that cleaning out that shed was hard, and that was the type of thing he seldom said.
At one point, we had to lift an old tractor door together. “You probably don’t remember the John Deere this belonged to, do you?” he said. He then told about a day he disked the Beehive Field as a young teenager while my grandfather started planting it. After a few hours, my grandfather eased his tractor to a halt and stopped to urinate next to the front tire. My father also pulled his parking brake and, looking to surprise him, threw a small flat stone toward his father’s feet. The stone curved through the air, hit my grandfather on the back of the head and dropped him to his knees. As the story goes, my grandfather recollected himself and pulled up his pants. He immediately remarked, “I think I got some on my hands.”
I had heard that anecdote a few times but always enjoyed watching my father tell it. Although he never said this to me, I believe my grandfather taking the moment with humor made my father feel like an adult.
It was in my father’s nature to tell stories. Before, I thought they were entertainment, but eventually, I learned that they were his compensation. Many people of his generation who farmed long enough saw the milk check fail to cover the costs of feed and fuel and watched their equipment get older without being able to do anything about it. Still, like everyone else, they had to make sense of what they did and the reasons for it. A narrative is a way to have ownership over what is difficult to hang on to. If you can tell a story about something, then it is not entirely gone. Eventually, I began to realize, whether or not I would become a farmer myself, that it was my place to listen to what people like my father said.
The belief in stories that my father unknowingly passed on to me is probably why I became a writer. As a child growing up in the ’90s, I saw families like mine struggle to keep a farm going, but no one was writing about it. There are surprisingly few novels set on dairy farms in North America, especially toward the end of the 20th century. My second book is a memoir of the experiences our family went through on the farm, as well as a consideration of the ag policies that created those conditions. However, after the death of my father in the winter of 2021, progress has been slow. Five years and 1,200 hours of working on the project have passed, and it’s still not quite ready to show to agents.
In the meantime, I’ve tried to honor the importance of stories by helping others share their experiences. Several years ago, I received funding from a university to publish an anthology of short stories, essays and poems by Irish farmers, most of whom were writing for the first time. I’ve begun teaching creative writing courses through The Milk House website and will have a class this fall titled “Tell your Story.” Also on The Milk House, the second annual Best in Rural Writing Contest will be held this summer. The intent is to highlight stories and essays that deal with rural life, giving people from the countryside the chance to see their experiences reflected back to them in the things they read.
I think sometimes there’s a tendency to see the arts as less valuable than other fields, such as science and economics, but in truth, they’re all interconnected. Telling stories is arguably what makes us human and creates personal significance in a variety of ways, but it is also crucial in the bigger picture. The loss of the farm narrative, in books and stories, is eventually a loss of power. Social and political capital – or in other words, the ability to get legislation passed that is beneficial to farmers – ultimately comes from making the general public care about what happens to farmers. Without sharing these narratives, those who don’t farm become further disconnected from what farmers do. They are less aware of where their food comes from, why it is important to support family agriculture and why cheap food has larger consequences. Without that understanding, farmers lose an ally.
Everyone has stories. Regardless of what you think your writing skills might be, consider putting some of them on paper. Even better, afterward, give them to someone else to read. In the end, it matters. There’s a lot at stake in making sure your story gets told.
