The Rural Voice, 1979-02, Page 5stress.
Brenda McIntosh, a farmer's wife who lives at RR 5, Seaforth,
said she and her husband Jim have found that stress in farming
"is quite a steady thing."
Harvest becomes "A three or four week marathon" and the
ptesssure stems from the fact that "You've got only so much
time to get a job done, only so much family labour available and
breakdowns (in farm machinery) put you behind schedule."
Along with machinery repairs many farmers have to cope with
illness in livestock. It can be very stressful to see a herd cut by
disease.
ACCIDENTS
Undoubtedly, one of the most pressured times on the farm is
the harvest season. It's also the time when the Farm Safety
Association finds the majority of farm accidents occur.
Larry Swinn, director of the association, said during this peak
period, "people start to shove themselves", working 12 to 18
hour days, and then "monotony sets in and the stage is set for
accidents."
Accidents do happen, with increasing frequency. In 1978, up
toNovember, there were 43 fatal farm accidents in Ontario, 27 of
these related to tractors.
The minister, who has witnessed a number of such accidents
in his part of the county, finds the farm population tends to take
the attitude, "oh well, accidents happen and that's the way it
is."
Although they don't consciously realize it, sometimes farmers
themselves unknowingly participate in causing the accident.
They may work when they're already dead tired, and want a
break in the routine.
When an accident does happen, it not only brings a little
adventure into their lives, attention from family and neighbours,
and perhaps more importantly, a much needed rest. For a while
at least, the pressure is off and the farmer can take things at a
Changes often emotionally distasteful, Hadwen found
Professor Ted Hadwen, of the University of Guelph sociology
department, is one man who knows a good deal about stress in
rural communities.
In the past decade, the professor has spent a good deal of time
researching some of the developments that create stress for rural
residents, particularly those living on the farm.
From 1970 to 1974, Prof. Hadwen and a team of interviewers,
who were Huron County residents themselves, talked to
members of the county council board of education, half the
township councils in the county, all the Grade 12 high school
students, as well as a number of county residents.
The conclusion of the study was that one of the major reasons
for stress in rural communities was that developments were
taking place in the communities which the residents felt they
must accept rationally although emotionally they often found
these developments distasteful.
Certainly one of the major examples of this.... was the school
consolidation issue.
Parents could see centralized schools offered greater
educational opportunities for their children, but at the same time
they missed the local school with its roots in the community.
They also missed their own active involvement in school
activities. Finally, school busing, particularly for younger
children, was another drawback to the centralization issue.
While the school centralization question is the most obvious
example of a development which left residents of the community
in a double bind, it certainly wasn't the only one.
Ted Hadwen told Rural Voice that another conflict was created
as smaller churches across the county were closed.
The rural congregations didn't want to be swallowed up by a
town congregation, but at the same time they realized financially
they couldn't support the upkeep of a building or pay a
minister's salary. On economic grounds, Prof. Hadwen said, the
people couldn't justify keeping a smaller church open, but they
missed the old emotional ties of the community church.
VILLAGE STORE
The same kind of conflict centers around another rural
tradition - the village store. People feel they should patronize
their local businessmen but they also felt they could buy their
food for less at the supermarket in town.
Ted Hadwen, a summer resident of Huron, said these conflicts
add up to a rural society becoming a more complex, impersonal
sort of environment - and "this in conflict with what we like to
think of as the rural wav of life."
The one place where residents of Huron County were able to
preserve some sense of the rural community was "in their
resistance to regional government," Prof. Hadwen said. The
residents have preserved their township councils and seem to
have won the battle to stop regionalization.
The sociologist and his interviewers also discovered a number
of conflicts which may create stress for the individual farmer.
LARGE SCALE
One pressure is the move to "viable agriculture" - large scale,
intensive, heavy debt farming.even though the individual farmer
may want to continue running a small, family operation.
Ted Hadwen said farmers are being advised to "transfer
myself to something I don't want to be with a crushing load of
debt."
In other words, they're being told "stop being who you are,
and be somebody else," Prof. Hadwen said.
Another conflict for the rural family is that the families are
closer and more interdependent than most.
This means it makes it more difficult to adjust when someone
leaves the family.
HAD TO LEAVE
From interviews with Grade 12 students across the county,
Prof. Hadwen found few students wanted to leave the area, but
most felt they had to either continue their education or find
employment. He said on family farms, often all the children but
one son are forced to leave the farm.
Since rural residents are facing stress, the problem becomes
hew to handle the pressure.
Prof. Hadwen said one of the strengths of rural Ontario has
always been peoples pride, self-reliance and their independence.
Unfortunately, this same independence can become a drawback,
when farmers suffering from stress are "unwilling and
sometimes unable to ask for help."
When he talked to doctors in the county, Ted Hadwen found
tranquilizers were rarely prescribed. However, the same drugs
were prescribed to residents, only the doctors called them
muscle relaxers.
THE RURAL VOICE/FEBRUARY 1979 PG. 5