Farm Confessional: I Hope My Family’s Farm Doesn’t Become a Golf Course—But I Won’t Take it On

When I asked him why he didn’t want to take over his family’s farm, he rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers. Money. I couldn’t blame him. As a senior in high school, I applied to every need-based scholarship I could to go to college, receiving many. One of the organizations that awarded me a scholarship, however, thought I doctored our tax returns. They called me on the phone, unwilling to believe a family could survive on such little money. “We want people who are needy, not greedy,” they said. “People are used to a paycheck every other Friday,” my mother tells me as we discuss the future of this farm and others in the country. “They don’t know how to live on a paycheck that comes a few times a year.” She’s right. I couldn’t do what she does—and I feel a wave of regret, as if I am betraying her.  The story of the American farm is a strange one. With a romantic tendency to focus on small, family farms and vilify vast, corporate farms, we leave out the stories of crucial, mid-size farms. In a bizarre echo of our country’s current class structure, these operations in the middle disappearing, while the small and large ones continue to grow. Even if I was strong enough to endure the physical demands, I would be crippled by the lack of clarity that comes with farming. I can’t handle not knowing what the weather will be like, what machine will break, what animal will die. I went into teaching where I savored the control and the crystal-clear knowledge that came with planning a syllabus months in advance.