Advice on Keeping Your Retired Farm Parents Active and Happy

We know that farmers rarely retire and for those of us living the farm family lifestyle, we are well aware of that statement… but did you know that one in three farmers in the US are over the age of 65? While we have plenty of resources for how aging farmers who are actively farming, can stay healthy… What about those farmers who DO retire - who actually walk away from their work - how do they stay healthy? We know that for farmers, retirement is not just a financial or physical decision - it’s also emotional and social. Retirement from farming is tied in with identity, family, community and much more. That brings us to today’s topic – improving the health and well-being of retired farmers through community and familial engagement.

Welcome to Talking Total Farmer Health, I’m your host Linda Emanuel. Today we are joined by Beth Singer, who is the IT Compliance Director for CHS, Inc. Beth, thank you for joining us!

Well I am absolutely delighted to be here and I'm excited about this topic that's so close to my heart about helping that farmer, life after farming.

I’m excited too! Now, dear listeners, while Beth works in cybersecurity, that’s not our focus.... Beth, would you please share some of your background, where you grew up and why you’re here.

As you mentioned, my name is Beth Singer and I, and I do have that story that I think many of you will find relatable. So, I grew up on a farm in eastern Iowa. I'm the youngest of three girls. The farm is 150-year-old heritage farm, and that's where my mom and dad has, they have primarily had grain and soybeans over, and they have done this for 60 years together. And even though I left the farm like 31 years ago to follow my high school sweetheart, who's now my husband of 30 years, we still try to come back on a regular occurrence and try to stay connected, although it sometimes is hard since we live in Minnesota. In this world, I've decided to pursue computer science and cybersecurity. You mentioned I worked at CHS, and I really like to always tell the story of when I walked into CHS for the interview, it felt like I was walking to my dad's machine shed and I was coming home.

And my parents were just thrilled that I had this job at CHS. They seriously said, “Yes! She's finally going to take an interest in the farm!” Because growing up, you either saw teaching or you saw farming. And it's like, which way do I want? And I tried to pursue teaching and then decided computer science was the way that I wanted to go. But that farming background has been so beneficial for my career at CHS. It, it gives me that relatable perspective on agriculture from multiple angles. And plus, whenever I had the opportunity to give presentations to our member-owners, I always like to ping mom and dad because they were my target audience and I also used them many times in my examples in cybersecurity. So, it's been a really wonderful journey with, with them and CHS.

Now, if we fast forward a little bit more about why I'm here... So, my dad started the retirement process when he was about 84. Started with just renting out one parcel of land. and then the following year it was renting all of the land. So, by the time he was 85, he was 100% retired. And I have to say, from my perspective, it was a bit heartbreaking to see his health deteriorate and see the depression set in. Despite his long, successful career, that I remember trying to talk to him about his successes, trying to get him to remember those good days.

He would just double down on. He wasn't doing anything now, and he felt like he didn't have that purpose, now. He couldn't do anything, now. My sisters and I, would all try to suggest different hobbies, but by this time it was kind of too late and he just wasn't interested. Then he had a bad fall back in November, and he was in various care facilities until he was finally put on hospice and then brought home. And then he passed away this Christmas Day. It's still a little raw, but I'm here because I really feel strongly about discussing that, the farmers mental health and the importance of finding that purpose post-farming. And I really want to encourage farmers to explore other hobbies and find those new purposes after retiring. But I totally understand that that's a really hard pitch, because farming is a way of life and that stopping suddenly can really take a toll on them. And that's what I believe, that it's crucial to have some, generate some discussion, around life after farming. And really, what can we do to support our farmers during this transition?

Absolutely, I feel like there's so many of us that are children of retired farmers or farmers that have passed away, that can relate so easily. I too had a retired dad, because of his physical health, could no longer farm and it is hard. It's really hard for the children to see them decline mentally and spiritually and how that light dims and they really sort of lose their purpose. And so this is going to be a great discussion today. I think many of our listeners will find some good things, maybe some helpful things, to help them understand what's happening to their parents. And maybe it's going to generate some more discussion on the resources, and what can we do better as a community to support those retired farmers. So, for our first question, and this is the question that's heard in so many agricultural circles is do farmers ever truly retire?

And my answer is absolutely not. There are so many times that I would refer to my dad, and I'd always put the finger quotes up as that “He's a retired farmer of all of 80 or 82” or whenever I was talking about it. But, you know, farmers give everything to their crops and their livestock. It is literally blood, sweat, and tears. So you go from farming because you love it. And then now whoever wants to stop doing what they love. And one way that my dad would always try to stay active and still farming is he would make modifications to his equipment. So, he would, anything that would make it easier for him or my mom to get into the combine or whatever piece of equipment it was... And I always laugh because I think, as I've heard, implement dealers had kind of lined up and said, “ooh, that's interesting what you did there,” because he should have probably had some patents on some of those things.

Yes. Oh, yes.

But that's how he really always tried to stay so active until his body just couldn't do it anymore.

Right. They are great engineers. Those farmers, right?. Resourceful. They use duct tape to fix most everything.

Or they take it out to their shop and weld it together. And they have every single piece of equipment that you can think of somewhere.

That's right. That's why they have such a stockpile of all kinds of things, including lots of iron and other things. So, when we think about retirement, and especially for our farmers, how does retirement impact health?

So I think, you know, there's definitely that, that thought of not getting up and moving around as much and let alone not having income, which can always feel a little uneasy. But that's true for anybody who retires in any field. But it's not just the physical and financial - it's the emotional changes. I think that was the part I wasn't expecting as much to see. My dad was always a workaholic. Like I would say, most farmers are, because it never ends. Because again, it's something that you love, but it was part of his identity. It was so part of his identity that it couldn't he couldn't disassociate from it. So, when his body finally stopped, in my view and my opinion, I could see that that was he was lost because he didn't have those other hobbies. But I like to contrast that with my mom. So, my mom, who I'd always consider a farmer all the time, they were partners through and through. Now she's also 100% retired. But and besides just the normal grief of losing her, her loved one, she smiles when she talks about retirement. There's just this excitement because she has so many other things tied in with her identity. She is part of the community, the church. She tries new things. She loves to sew. There's just a plethora of things that she does. So, it was her purpose beyond farming. But she's always been that way. And so that's where it really feels like that impact for retirement. How important it is to have those other things to kind of focus on.

I know, and I would totally agree with you, for most farm couples, as they continue to age in place, and I have a feeling that farm couples looking into the future that's going to be their most desired way to spend those retirement years is to age in place on the farm. But my question is, why do females search out other opportunities to find purpose to be of, of benefit to others? I, I'm trying to wrap my brain around that one.

Sometimes I do think we're kind of the natural communicators. And I mean, it goes into creating that family atmosphere and, and knowing you, your relationships. And I think that's a piece of it. Yeah. But it's an interesting question.

It is, again, another research topic for all of those researchers out there. Yeah. We are. You know, when you think about females, we are the nurturers of our family. We're great at social connections. There's, there's a little post going out on Instagram about kin keeping and what it means. People have heard of kin keepers, but a kin keeping and especially for women in agriculture. So kin keeping is the labor that it takes to keep culture and traditions alive. So many times it's shared between the grandmother to the daughter, to the granddaughter, and down the line. So it's like the passing of recipes. It's the holiday get togethers. Who sends the invite? Who makes sure everyone is taken care of? Who does all those special things during the holidays? Usually, it's the females and it takes a lot of work. It's a lot of stress and it frankly is kind of exhausting. And so I feel like with females, that's kind of part of who we are keeping culture tradition alive and keeping everybody connected.

That is a wonderful point when you think about that tradition of going from different generations, because my dad never had a son, he never had that to be able to pass down to. And I so sometimes you wonder, like, what would, what would life have been like for him had he had that generational pull to the next generation? So, because I wonder whether, if you have families that are all sons and they're all doing the farming thing, maybe then the mom doesn't necessarily feel like they have that to pass on. So that's an interesting point to kind of look at.

So you've talked in, in very nice fashion about your dad and in how you saw things change about him and, and how it looks so different for your mom. But for those of us of children, of retired farmers and or community members, how can we help to counteract some of these health impacts similar to what you saw?

I really think it's trying to adopt some of those hobbies early. Like I mentioned, by the time dad was, he set in his ways and it was really hard to think about him changing. anything to find those hobbies to enjoy in addition to farming. After dad passed, there were so many young farmers that came up and said, I wish I could have learned from your dad. I really wanted to learn from your dad. The gentleman who he rented the farm to was saying he was so looking forward to that. And I know that he asked about, you know, asked dad about teaching him different things, but by this time he was older and he's probably lamenting what he is missing. And so I wonder, what would life have been like if he had been asked earlier? Like, if you're that young farmer and you see that elderly farmer, ask them to get together for lunch. Tell them that you're interested in learning from them early on and build that community. I don't know if my dad would have made a good teacher at all because again, he's kind of stubborn, but it would have been interesting to see if that would have been a possibility.

I like that idea. I like that idea a lot. I just saw that type of conversation happen at a family event over the weekend, where this young farmer, just stepping foot into the business, came up to my husband and was asking him some questions and looking for, you know, who would be the right person in ag business to help me with this solution? And who do you rely on for whatever questions, whatever input questions Tom had had? How could Tom be of assistance to this young man? So anyway, that's a, that's a great idea. The mentoring.

Absolutely. And just and kind of embracing - it takes a bit of bravery, right, to ask somebody. But I think it builds that community. and I think it's worth giving it a try. The other thing I kind of thought about for this is to celebrate the legacies, celebrate in terms of what were things like in the beginning, and look how much you've grown. Look how much you've learned. Again, trying to get to that positive point, to see that purpose in life that you have in this, to celebrate that and somehow apply it to, to others or into like another hobby, or writing it down or dictating it something, to share that wisdom and share that legacy even further.

I think it'd be a great 4H project for a grandchild

Yes!

Or anybody in the community.

Absolutely.

And then, then it's a treasure for you as family members. That's a great idea, Beth, I like that. So before we started recording today, you had talked about self-compassion. You know, how does this play into the health and wellbeing of those retired farmers? And how can they engage in this, this concept of self-compassion?

Yes! So self-compassion is really something that mixes the mindfulness along with the common human experience, all covered and surrounded by self-care. And I normally explain it as in all our tough days when you feel like you're getting beat down, we always have that little voice inside our head that's talking to us, but we say really bad things to ourselves. We get really down on ourselves. But what, we would never say these things to a best friend or a loved one. So self-compassion is about saying those things to yourself as you were to your, your best friend. And like examples would be like when you're thinking, “I'm so dumb. Oh wow, that was so stupid.” One thing that my dad kind of always remembered was, “oh, that teacher said I'd never amount to anything.” Well, rephrase it, rephrase it as you as to, “We are learning. Tomorrow will be another day.” And that you're worthy of the love and good things. And the reason why, I guess I always feel so strongly about this is fun. Fact is, I'm a certified yoga instructor, so that was something I did to kind of manage my stress. And, and I still teach at a juvenile facility for young girls, and I teach self-compassion all the time. It's that, giving yourself that that love and tenderness. And I really think to help those retired farmers, family members can remind them, maybe they just need your voice to remind them of these good things and to help them rephrase it. It's hard to deprogram things from so long ago that were said, and reminding ourselves to be good to ourselves, just like our loved ones would be what we'd be for our, our loved ones.

Oh, absolutely. And, and like you said, it's going to take some practice for those of us around that retired farmer to help them reprogram, right? To help them redirect their words. And maybe it's just giving them a few key words to work off of when those old things come back in their mind, those old negative things that teacher said, or maybe their parents told them. And so it takes a little bit of work and direction and commitment to do it. Well, and it's then, it's all those of us on the outside, too, like being compassionate and understanding that yes, this aging person is changing quickly.

Yes, because you're absolutely right. It's not just that person that's aging, it's the, the caretaker to, that's also going through this. It's the family members that are going through this. And just to kind of call it out that, “you know, it sucks. I'm sorry that this is happening. And, and you know what? You'll be okay. People go through this, it, but it doesn't take away how awful it feels.”

Right? And how valuable your dad or whoever it is, is to you and, and the importance that they played in your life and the legacy they're leaving, the legacy they created. So, as always, our time goes quickly when I have these meaningful conversations, Beth. But are there any final pieces you'd like to share or perhaps some resources you've run across?

Great question. There are lots of resources for mindfulness. There's also just that having that bravery to have those conversations early and trying to find that purpose outside of the, the farm. It's hard. And I get that. It's a matter of just keep trying.

Right. Exactly. And, and I think sometimes as children we're like offer the ideas and then we go about our busy life. So perhaps it's taking them by the hand, your loved one, and saying, “you know what dad I'm going to go with you to bowl or let's go shopping for tools for the farm.”

Yeah, just, spending time together, I think, is important. The traditions, the family photos. I can't stress enough about celebrating those successes and those wins. Because even in the hard days, those are learning experiences and opportunities to learn and grow from each other. And just to be there as part of a family together.

Yeah. Oh for sure. Oh gosh, Beth, you've hit on some really, really nice topics. And, and it's been very beneficial to me personally as I too am somewhat grieving my father passing away a little over two years ago. So thank you for your time and thank you for your interest in this. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to be able to talk about this and generates maybe some more discussion.

Thank you. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you. Okay folks, that’s another great conversation and a wrap. Thank you again for tuning in to another episode. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast to hear more from AgriSafe on the health and safety issues impacting agricultural workers. We are always open to new ideas or stories to share on this podcast. So, feel free to connect with us by email at info@agrisafe.org, and title that email “TTFH Podcast.” You can also get our attention by using the hashtag "TTFHpod" on Twitter! To see more from AgriSafe, including webinars and our newsletter, visit www.agrisafe.org.

This episode was created by AgriSafe Network, directed by Laura Siegel, hosted by me, Linda Emanuel, edited by Joel Sharpton for ProPodcastingServices.com, with special guest Beth Singer.