07/22/2025
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The same land that fed 300 families couldnât feed me and my wife last winter.
Thatâs not metaphor. Thatâs not exaggeration. Thatâs just the truth of it.
We sat at the kitchen table in December â no crops in the ground, no firewood left but damp split logs, and two slices of store-bought bread between us. I remember looking down at a can of soup weâd opened and thinking, I used to grow everything in this meal. Now Iâm buying it back from a shelf.
Not long ago, this land fed half the county. Corn, soybeans, tomatoes, pumpkins, sweet corn, sometimes wheat. I rotated it like my father taught me. I tended to the soil like it was a living thing â because it is. When I was a boy, Dad used to kneel in the dirt, scoop up a handful, and let it sift through his fingers. âYou treat this land right,â heâd say, âand itâll treat you right.â
But we kept our end of the deal longer than anyone else did.
We were proud once. Farmers used to be called stewards.
Not owners, not businessmen. Stewards.
It meant something to grow food. Meant you were part of something bigger. A cycle, a rhythm. Spring meant muddy boots and planting fingers deep into the ground. Summer was sweat and cracked skin and meals eaten standing up in the shade of the combine. Fall was dust in your lungs and calluses like leather. Winter â that was when you caught your breath, counted the losses, and prayed the bank still remembered your name come January.
I was never rich. Never even close.
But we lived. Honest, tired, bone-worn lives.
We sent food to the schools, to the church pantry, to the diner downtown. My wife, June, used to say she could walk through the town square and see our labor on every plate. That meant more than any bank balance ever could.
But one day, the trucks stopped coming. The co-op closed. The local mill started buying from Brazil. Walmart went up on Route 9, and suddenly, folks didnât need a farmerâs market â just a frozen aisle and a microwave.
Then came the hard years.
The first flood washed out the northern fields.
I remember the sick feeling in my gut when I saw the soybeans drowning under two feet of brown water. Insurance said it was âan act of God.â The banker called it âunfortunate.â I called it a punch to the teeth.
Then the heat came the next year â a dry, crackling summer that cooked the corn stalks before they could flower. We dug the well deeper. Then deeper again. By the time it rained, it was too late.
And the costs â God, the costs.
Seeds were more expensive than ever. The good stuff was patented by companies that had never set foot in a field. Fertilizer prices went through the roof. We used to buy sacks in bulk and pay cash. Now I was signing contracts just to get credit.
I took out a loan for the new tractor.
Then another to repair the barn.
Then another to get us through winter.
One spring I realized I was working not for my family, not even for the land â but just to keep from sinking under all the debt I owed to people whoâd never grown a damn tomato in their lives.
My son left in 2014.
Said he was tired of seeing me break my back just to stay broke.
Heâs in Denver now. Works in tech. Drives a car that plugs into a wall. He tells me about meetings, Zoom calls, working from a coffee shop.
When he came home for Thanksgiving last year, he looked out the window and said, âWhat are you still doing this for, Dad? You could sell it all and retire.â
He didnât mean it cruel.
But I stared at my fields, at the bent fence post by the old maple, at the crows circling above the soybean stubble, and I said, âBecause itâs who I am.â
He didnât answer. Just patted my shoulder and went back to his phone.
We held on longer than most.
But last year broke us.
Another drought. Diesel hit six dollars. Equipment rusted faster than I could afford to fix it. And then June got sick â blood pressure, maybe something with the kidneys. I drove her two hours to a clinic because our local hospital shut down in 2019.
I remember walking past the shelves at the store while waiting for her prescription. Picked up a tomato out of habit. It was pale and mushy. Cost nearly three dollars.
I used to give better ones away at church potlucks.
That night, I sat in the barn â the air smelled like old hay and mouse droppings â and stared at my ledger. Numbers bleeding red. My hand trembled when I made the call.
The developerâs name was Mark.
Wore khakis and had soft, pink hands. Smiled like a politician. Told me I could keep a few acres âfor sentiment.â Said they were going to ârevitalize the rural communityâ with solar fields and modular homes.
I signed the papers in my kitchen.
June cried.
I didnât.
I just stared at the pen, thinking of all the times Iâd held one before â in school, on tax forms, writing checks for seed. But this one felt heavier than all of them.
That spring, the bulldozers came. Tore out hedgerows, flattened the slope behind the barn. The first time I heard the backup beep of the machines, I nearly collapsed.
Now?
I walk the edge of whatâs left.
Thereâs a fence. Chain-link. Keeps me out of what used to be mine.
One acre I kept. For sentiment, like Mark said.
Thereâs a peach tree, a rusted plow, a bench. June and I sit there sometimes, drink coffee out of old tin mugs. The soil still smells good. Still rich. Still ready.
But thereâs nothing to plant.
The storage units cast shadows over the western edge.
A little boy rode by last week on a scooter, pointed at the asphalt and said, âWhat used to be here?â
His mother shrugged.
I clenched my jaw. I wanted to shout,
âFood. Hope. Work. My life.â
But I didnât.
Just tipped my hat and watched them disappear around the bend.
Itâs funny, what people forget.
Theyâll tell you all about the stock market, new startups, whoâs trending on TV.
But they wonât remember the man who kept their shelves full before the trucks ever came.
Theyâll build shopping plazas where soybeans once flowered.
Theyâll pave over stories with concrete and logos.
But the soil remembers.
And so do I.
Every groove my boots made. Every blister on my palm.
Every time I prayed for rain â or for it to stop.
Every damn meal this land ever helped someone make.
They used to call us the backbone of America.
Not anymore.
But I still believe it.
I still believe that you canât build a country on silicon and Wi-Fi alone.
Somebody has to break the ground.
Somebody has to feed the people.
I donât know if thatâll ever be me again.
But Iâll say this, for whoeverâs listening â
You canât have a nation without its farmers.
And if this countryâs ever going to heal what itâs lost,
we better start by remembering who kept it fed.
Because American farmers deserve more than just survival â they deserve to be respected, protected, and placed at the very heart of this nation once again.
