Three Farms a Day
A rough and modest tribute to my dad and family produced for his funeral in 2011.
History has a way of repeating itself—often without us even realizing it at the time.
A few years ago, I undertook a two-year writing project. It was largely an effort to process, in adulthood, the era that shaped me most during my adolescence in the late 1970s and 1980s. These words from the introduction ring true once again:
“Sometimes, when you’re living through something big (like an era that will eventually—but does not yet—have a name), you just keep living through it because it’s all you know. That place, that circumstance, that moment in time is normal because you know nothing else. It’s your normal.
“But the reality is that deep inside, there’s a broader context just outside your understanding. The truth is, you may be living in the prime of something grand, or in the bowels of a monster. Yet you keep living, smiling, and doing your best—no matter the twinge in your belly, or the fact that you’ve cried yourself to sleep three nights running.”
Eventually, through the heartland’s heavy fog, an identity emerged. We called it the U.S. Farm Crisis.
And today, it’s déjà vu all over again.
Consider the current state of affairs for American farm families (compiled nationally and by the Arkansas Farm Bureau and Arkansas Cattlemen’s Association):