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kleinbl00  ·  4099 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The lonely life of the farmer too often leads to suicide

TIME

My wife's cousin is a dairy farmer. She's 39. She's got three kids, 800 head of cattle, 150 acres and $1.5m in debt. Shit is rugged, no doubt.

But "Idaho, New Mexico, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Nevada" is my turf, yo, and Fuckin' A there ain't no fuckin' farmers in Nevada... at least when you compare it to farming states like Kansas, Oklahoma, California, Wisconsin, etc.

There is, however, shit tons of Meth. And before there was meth, there was heroin, or coke, or alcoholism. Big Sky Disease. Just because you don't live elbow-to-elbow with your neighbors doesn't mean you're growing things under the sun. I know several towns around my home town where the primary industry is welfare checks.

So while I agree with the plight of the farmer, and I agree shit's rugged, yo, I disagree that you can say "there are farmers" and "there is suicide" and leap to "farming causes suicide." 'cuz I know lotsa mutherfuckers that committed suicide. We had our first when I was in 5th grade and peaked at 3 in my class Junior Year and when I came back a year after my 10-year I found out about nine people that had offed themselves in the decade betwixt and lemme tell ya -

not a one of 'em was a farmer.

My grandpa was a farmer. Lots of his friends were farmers. And if I were to play Deadpool on my grandpa and his buddies or my tweaker trenchcoat mafia overpass kids, I'm going with my tweaker trenchcoat mafia overpass friends.