Are you all depressed ?

[ajd132]

Hate to be a party pooper on the jolly japes thread, but for the average size farmer ( 200 acres according to Google ) there ain't that much to be happy about ?

Straining hard...... but we do live in pleasant spots in the country though..

Are you a tenant or do you own it?

 

[Clive]

How about you Clive? Do you still find joy in the job?

Yes and no if honest

I've lost touch with a lot of the simple things about farming as I rarely get to spend a day in a tractor or combine cab and that's a shame but I get a great sense of achievement from what we achieve and enjoy the challenge of making money out of growing good crops. I'm increasingly more conscious of the environment and feel a much greater responsibility for it than I used to, I'm much more appreciative of working in such wonderful environments and having the opportunity to even improve them. I have lost the ambition I once had to farm more however and it has been replaced with an ambition to just farm better

The industry depresses me, I hate negativity and feel surrounded by it in farming, you have to work hard to not let it bring you down IMO, it dint used to feel, like that 20 years ago I'm sure ? - IF UK farming was a mate I would give him a good shake and tell him to sort himself out or get some psychological help !

I'm very lucky that I have other business interests, farming alone would no sustain the lifestyle I want for myself or my family, I have a very happy and healthy young family, a wonderful home, some great hobbies, good health, and fittness and can afford the time to enjoy them all, I have very little to be unhappy about but anyone who claims to be 100% goof 100% of the time is not being honest !

 

[Werzle]

Tbh during lockdown i have realised how lucky i am to live in the open spaces of the countryside . I would have jumped out the window had i been suffering lockdown in a tower block. Prices have improved too but as said above its the outside interference that puts the pressure/stress levels up, the day to day farming is the enjoyable bit.

 

[Clive]

That’s the answer. Delete your account! I recently watched a football match with some people who were also following it on Twitter, utterly bizarre experience!! Social media just isn’t a reflection of real life. One of the real problems with TFF is that you cannot delete your account.

you can delete your account - there is just a strict process that has to be followed to make sure the request is from the owner of the account


deleting accounts is kind of pointless however unless you want to make a statement - the choice is whether to logon or not and that's doe to no one other than ourselves

 

[Bald Rick]

It’s high stakes nowadays particularly if you are small.

Interesting viewpoint

Being small possibly means that you suffer isolation as you are likely to be working mainly on your own so no one to bounce ideas off

Conversely, being bigger means more things tend to go wrong or, shall we say, more problems get thrown up that fall on to the boss to sort or delegate (which usually means having to check it’s been done )

 

[7610 super q]

Are you a tenant or do you own it?

Own it. I suppose you're going to suggest selling up and buying a bungalow in Woking ?
Listening to the likes of you, reading barley that was £180 2 weeks ago is now £138 on the tracker thread, and that barsteward straw tracker thread is enough to drive anyone to depression.

 

[richard hammond]

There is just so many positive things about what we do, however, the focus seems hugely on the negative

why ?

Face to Face I find most farmers happy with their lot sort of people, but when they get talking together things do soon get depressing to listen too, it cannot all be bad as I look forward to going to work and i am still looking forward to going to work tomorrow!!

 

[Kevtherev]

The angry farmer thread showed a big difference of opinion quite sad to see some of the negative replies.
On the up side myself and @Cab-over Pete are doing a new line in paddling pools
Concrete cattle troughs guaranteed to test your decking out.

 

[Clive]

Own it. I suppose you're going to suggest selling up and buying a bungalow in Woking ?
Listening to the likes of you, reading barley that was £180 2 weeks ago is now £138 on the tracker thread, and that barsteward straw tracker thread is enough to drive anyone to depression.

a depressed multimillionaire ................. the worst type of depression !

 

[Jimdog1]

Yes and no if honest

I've lost touch with a lot of the simple things about farming as I rarely get to spend a day in a tractor or combine cab and that's a shame but I get a great sense of achievement from what we achieve and enjoy the challenge of making money out of growing good crops. I'm increasingly more conscious of the environment and feel a much greater responsibility for it than I used to, I'm much more appreciative of working in such wonderful environments and having the opportunity to even improve it. I have lost the ambition I once had to farm more however and it has been replaced with an ambition to just farm better

The industry depresses me, I hate negativity and feel surrounded by it in farming, you have to work hard to not let it bring you down IMO - IF UK farming was a mate I would give him a good shake and tell him to sort himself out or get some psychological help !

I'm very lucky that I have other business interests, a very happy and healthy young family, a wonderful home, some great hobbies, good health, and fittness and can afford the time to enjoy them all, I have very little to be unhappy about but anyone who claims to be 100% goof 100% of the time is not being honest !

Although doing things on a much smaller scale to you I identify in all the above . No longer bothered by scale but a desire to do things better and farm with the countryside rather than trying to bend it to my will. Enjoy my family,friends and neighbours. An evening trip to the beach after a hard day and watch the sun set.simple things.

 

[Kevtherev]

Trouble with farming is a lot never switch off from it.
Difficult to do I know
Take an evening off go to the seaside go swimming go cycling with Timmy mallets shoes it all helps.

 

[Kidds]

Oh aye, it is 30 degrees plus for too long now, the sun is scorching my apples so they'll be buggered (last year it was the frost!), too hot to apply calcium so they'll all have bitterpit too (it means they'll be buggered), jackdaws pecking my apples (means they will be buggered) only thing growing well is weeds, no breeze so it stays too hot and if there was a breeze it only blows more seeds from nextdoor anyway, my boots are rubbing my toes, one of my geese has gone off it's legs and I have a flat tyre on my tractor (back one of course).


Living the feckin dream!

 

[melted welly]

I've been lucky enough to have a bit of a family holiday recently with lockdown restrictions ending and I've also spent a lot more time with none farming friends and reduced my time talking farming online a fair bit. After a period where that has been hard to do it's easy to forget just how important such breaks and time away are for mental health and wellbeing. Time to rest and reflect and enjoy life rather than simpy "get through" it

What has REALLY struck me in that time is that pretty much all farmers are utterly miserable, down / negative on pretty much everything, anything and everyone

This despite being one of the groups least affected by covid 19 and its restrictions, living in the relative freedom of the beautiful British countryside and enjoying some of the best prices we have seen in quite some time, even the weather hasn't been so terrible recently!


It's like when individuals are suffering from proper clinical depression, there is just nothing you can say or do that they will not find the problem with. This forum and Twitter overflow with negativity. I swear if every farmer in the UK was offered a £100k bonus tomorrow the news would be met with skepticism and many would find a way to say it was probably a bad thing !


I really think things have been so bad, for so long, for so many that most of this industry is damaged and has forgotten how to smile ?


Does UK ag need some collective counseling to snap us out of this spiral of depression ? how does an entire industry drag itself out of negativity ?

Maybe it all starts individually ? maybe ask yourself if you could benefit from some help ? Suicide rates in Farmings are shocking, is this why ? Is the problem maybe not everyone and everything else but maybe us ?

There’s a Scots word that sums it up I think:

Scunnered.

not depressed, not a victim, it’s a mixture of feelings, including being pee'd off, fed up and slight disbelief with the situation.

turn on the telly and it’s not long till some goon comes on talking about something like “90% of wild flower meadows lost” whilst conveniently omitting the fact it happened predominantly between 1914 -18 and again 1940-early 60’s and there was 2 significant reasons for this.

what can the individual do? It depends on the individual. I occasionally go on Twitter, and argue with vegans and environmentalists.

 

[Werzle]

The most unhappy farmers i know are usually the ones who have taken alot of debt on . Lifes alot less stressfull if your happy with your lot and not someone who wants to compete with the neighbours.

 

[Scholsey]

I think as farmers (like a lot of other people in society) its easy to feel victimised by supermarkets, public, enviromentalists, animal welfare activists and worse of all other farmers and can be very difficult to ignore stuff in the press/social media, personally i have learnt to ignore pretty much everything and carry on doing what i want to do and feel a lot happier than i did when I cared about peoples irrelevant opinion.

 

[Kevtherev]

The most unhappy farmers i know are usually the ones who have taken alot of debt on . Lifes alot less stressfull if your happy with your lot and not someone who wants to compete with the neighbours.

Less is sometimes more I learned that when I gave up silage
(And bad payers)

 

[Kidds]

ps. looking forward to the break in the weather at the weekend which will no doubt bring hail storms just to bugger my apples.

 

[Gordy1]

I’ve always regarded myself as a happy chap get on with most people in life love what I do etc …but after reading some of these posts I’m now feeling bloody depressed!!!

 

[GeorgeK]

As farmers we get the choice of either depression or madness!

 

[Werzle]

Trouble with farming is a lot never switch off from it.
Difficult to do I know
Take an evening off go to the seaside go swimming go cycling with Timmy mallets shoes it all helps.

A change is as good as a rest as they say