Seeds Of Wellbeing - SOW

Ep 57. Jeff Corle's "Empty Barn"

• Jim Crum / Jeff Corle, Abby Wiedmeyer, Julie Zajac, Denny Hutchison • Season 3 • Episode 6

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We listen to and discuss dairy farmer Jeff Corle’s song “Empty Barn” and speak with him about this song he wrote when he was "at the bottom." We find out how it helped his mental health, and what happened when it went somewhat viral and the reactions from others started to pour in. We also speak with some agriculture producers that heard Jeff’s song and they share what this song has meant to them. 

Brought to you by University of Hawaii College of Tropical Ag. and Human Resilience (CTAHR), and the Seeds of Well-being (SOW) Project. This podcast is supported by the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

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Jim:

The views, information or opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the individuals involved, and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, our funders or any of the organizations affiliated with this project

Jeff Corle singing:

I can get used to not working every day, and I can get used to not needing to bail hay. And I can get used to a job off the farm, but I will never get used to this empty barn.

Jim:

Welcome to a Seeds of Wellbeing "Experts in the Field" podcast featuring Hawaii agriculture producers and affiliates working in field of expertise to support agriculture in Hawaii, in the United States and in some cases around the world. These podcasts are made possible by a grant from the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, also known as CTAHR and the Seeds of Wellbeing or SOW project, and is supported by a grant from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

Jeff Corle singing:

I should have known right from the start. Dreams will only take you so far, but letting go is so damn hard. Empty barn.

Jim:

If you are a regular listener to this podcast, you will probably notice two things about this episode, one, that we didn't use our usual ukulele theme song to start it, and two, that the agriculture producer we are featuring is not from Hawaii. We just heard some of Jeff Corle's song "Empty Barn," and we're speaking with Jeff about this song that he wrote and was surprised to see go somewhat viral. We're speaking with other ag producers too, that heard Jeff's song, and they share what this song has meant to them.

Jeff Corle singing:

I can't believe it's over after all these years.

Jeff Corle:

So we produced organic milk with a herd of between 40 and 50 cows.

Abby Wiedmeyer:

My husband and I are first generation dairy farmers, I guess recovering dairy farmers, because we're no longer milking. So at the time that I heard the song, we had sold our cows, took a two year break and started milking again.

Julie’s Zajac:

I grew up on a dairy farm in Northwest Pennsylvania, and for the day, this was back in the 60s, 70s into the 80s and beyond, we were pretty successful dairy.

Denny Hutchison:

...put together a brochure entitled, "You can't pour from an empty cup," and had went over some of the general information about mental health problems and then specific to the ag community.

Jim:

So give us a little background, Jeff, just kind of a brief history. You're, I think fourth generation dairyman raised on I'm just, I'm going to paraphrase. You can tell me where I'm wrong, but I think fourth generation dairyman Pennsylvania area decided you had the songwriting, the music bug when you're fairly young. Went to Nashville. Yeah. Dad called and said, Hey, we need you back at the farm. And then was it 2008 maybe?

Jeff Corle:

Yeah, 2000 and yeah, 2008 is, is about when frame, yep, yep, yeah.

Jim:

And let us know what happened you, you came back, you came back to the family farm in 2008 and then tell us what happened and got you to to writing the song. What happened during that time frame?

Jeff Corle:

Yeah. Well, yeah, when dad made that call and wanted me to come home, I came home on kind of one condition is, and that that is that we could transition the farm to organic milk production. So we produced organic milk with a herd of between 40 and 50 cows from 2008 until right around 2000 I guess it was the end of 19, going into 20. My dad passed away in 2019, and I decided that it was time for me to take a break. And I decided at that point to exit the dairy industry. And that was difficult in and of itself, but I was really ready for that. That is not what caused the song, "Empty Barn." When dad passed, and the next year, I decided to, you know, shut down the commercial dairy I always say it as a joke and say that at that point in time, I was ready for that, and I thought I was cured of the cow milking disease. But it turns out, it was only in remission, and it came back, and I wasn't without cows for one full year, until I got a bug to say, you know, the one thing I have not done in farming is bottle my own milk. My great grandparents had bottled milk on this farm from 1901 until they retired in 1956 and it was just kind of always in the back of my head that I wanted to try that, and so I jumped through all the hoops to set up, get the license, and set up a small creamery here on the farm, and started with four Guernsey cows we had always milked Holsteins and a few Jerseys, but I my great grandparents had always had Guernseys, and here again, I was just kind of in this mode. So I started with four Guernseys, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could sell all the milk from those four Guernseys. So I doubled to eight, and was pleasantly surprised that I could sell all the milk from those eight Guernseys. So then I went to 12 and found that I never sold any more milk than the eight could make. So what happened? We're in a very rural area, and the biggest city close to us is kind of a declining old steel mill town, and we just didn't have a big enough customer base to keep growing that business to where it would support me as a full time income, plus it's a lot of work to milk cows, do the field work, and bottle the milk. Had some wonderful young people who helped on the farm and but we just couldn't grow it big enough. So after two years, I realized I was going to have to pull the plug on that business, which meant having to sell those Guernseys. And that is what absolutely broke my heart. Because I think the first time that I went out, I kind of thought there was always going to be another act. But when that bottling operation came to an end and I had to sell those Guernseys. I knew that that was the end, you know, of my dairy farming career for sure. Plus, I never loved animals as much as I loved those Guernsey cows. Something about that milk going straight from the cow down the pipeline into our creamery, bottling it the same day and having it available for our customers, you know, either that same day or the next day. Meeting those customers face to face, having them tell me how much they love the milk, having many, many of them wanting to come down and visit with the cows. It was, it was a fantastic business. And I wish you know we could have grown it big enough so when it came time to shut it down and say goodbye to those cows, it was just a very heartbreaking experience,

Jim:

and that's where the song came from?

Jeff Corle:

Yes. So when, when I sold the cows and shut down the business, I was literally heartbroken, and I almost immediately declined into a kind of a depression. And in the midst of that, now, I had always, you alluded to the fact that I had always messed around with writing songs and playing guitar. So in the midst of that, a friend suggested that I should write a song about, you know, what I was feeling, and I thought it was just too, too close and too personal. And he even said to me, you know, I don't know. This guy doesn't know anything about farming. And he said, "I don't know anything about farming. I don't know anything about cows, but hearing you describe how you feel" He said, "I can't imagine what it feels like to go into that empty barn." And I said, Wow. Uh, yeah. Okay, so I sat on it for a couple of days, went down to the barn for the first time since the sale of the cows, sat down on a five gallon bucket with my guitar and just stared at that empty space. You know, it was a space where so much of my life had been lived from childhood up. And any small dairy farmer will tell you this, you're in the barn from the time you can toddle around, you know, maybe even earlier. And that space where so much of my life had been lived and where so much life had been, you know, just a few weeks before, and I had dreamed some lines after my friend and I talked, and he said, You should write a song called "Empty Barn" I had dreamed some lines to the song, and so I took out the guitar and started fooling around with those lines, and it just started to fall into place, and I probably wrote empty barn in less than an hour. And any songwriter will tell you, the ones that just kind of come fast and furious, they are usually the best ones. You know, the ones that you labor over and labor over and labor over, they usually sound that way. But man,"Empty Barn." And I say when I when I do my keynote concerts and have opportunity to speak, I often say that I don't think I so much wrote the song "Empty Barn" as reached up and pulled it from the ether, from all of those heartaches and emotions that have been put up there in the last while here, 10-15, years, from farmers who went through, you know, the same thing that I did, and I really believe that that it just kind of flowed through me.

Jim:

And I've also heard you comment on your Nashville experience and what that meant to you related to writing the song. Do you want to you want to share that a little bit?

Jeff Corle:

Yeah, well, when I first went to Nashville, I was very young. I was about 22 years old, and I really threw myself into learning the craft of songwriting. I wanted to be a professional songwriter, and that involved going to numerous workshops and songwriter nights and learning experiences and learning from other songwriters, and, you know, for probably the first year, always being told, and it's okay, but it's not great. Then eventually, finally getting through to the point where, hey, people are recognizing that you're writing pretty good songs. So I like to say Nashville taught me how to write songs, but the farm, you know, gave me something to write about

Jim:

Your YouTube video, which, of course, we'll share all the usual links, but your YouTube videos now at over 160 160,000 views, over 250 comments on it, and it's it's moved people in meaningful ways. I think when you and I talked, I think what we hit upon is, as as we were reviewing things, is there's a certain vulnerability that you're bringing that seems to evoke that and make it okay for folks that hear that song to to feel, themselves, and allow that to be seen. So maybe if we could kind of focus on on that aspect, some of the reactions that you've you've heard and seen from folks when you've spoken at some of these different venues, I think that would be

Jeff Corle:

After "Empty Barn" went viral, I recorded an album, interesting. and I was able to tour. And in the midst of that, I started to get asked to speak about farmer mental health. And actually the first person who ever asked me to speak was a major hospital system. And when the lady talked to me on the phone, she wanted me to come speak for their staff mental health awareness day, and I honestly thought she had the wrong person. So I honestly said to this woman, "You have the wrong guy. I'm not a speaker and I don't have anything to do with mental health." And she laughed. Laughed, and she said, "I've been following your story from the beginning, and your story has everything to do with mental health. Just come tell your story." And I thought about it for a minute, and I thought, well, I asked her, I said,"Okay, I will do that under one condition, and that is that I can have my guitar with me so I can perform 'Empty Barn.'" And she thought that was a great idea. I went the talk was even though my knees were shaking, the talk was a big success, and it gave birth to this thing that I do now, which is called a keynote concert. So I will do a keynote length address, tell my story, and I incorporate three songs into the story that helped tell the story, of course,"Empty Barn" being one of them. So I was doing a keynote concert for the national farmers organization out in Coralville, Iowa, and I was speaking from stage, telling my story. And I noticed there was this guy up front. Most of the people were dressed pretty nicely. I was there closing whatever. You call that a closing pentium, or what do you call it, whatever, anyway. So most of the people were dressed pretty nice. The guys out on jackets and you know, but this guy close to the front was a big guy, and he had on bib overalls, a t-shirt and a baseball hat. And I noticed that, and he was a younger guy, probably in his 30s, and I noticed that as I was telling the story that leads up to"Empty Barn," it looked like he was really starting to get emotional. And as I started to play "Empty Barn," he really did get emotional, to the point that, you know, he was brushing away tears. Well after I did my thing and went out to my table to meet people, I noticed this big guy was in line, and when it came his turn to come to the table, I wanted to stand up and shake his hand. So I did. Stood up from behind my table to shake his hand, and when I reached my hand out to shake his hand, instead of shaking my hand, he took my hand and he pulled me into a bear hug. Now you can't tell, because I'm sitting here, but I'm six two. This guy was towering over me. He pulls me into this bear hug and literally lifted me up off my feet to the extent I had a cowboy hat on, and my cowboy hat flew off, he set me back down, and then he lifted me up again. And as he was doing that, he was saying,"That's the greatest song ever! That's the greatest song ever!" And I think that people in line thought I was being murdered or something, because I also couldn't breathe. I was like argh. So anyway, after about three of those, he sat me back, he put me back on my feet. Somebody got my hat and handed my hat back to me. And I looked at this guy, and I said, "Man, what's going on?" And he didn't know me before this event. He had never heard the song "Empty Barn," so it totally took him by surprise. And what he related to me was that when he was in high school, his parents decided to go, they were dairy farmers, and they decided to go out of business. And the whole dream of his life was that he was going to take over the farm after he graduated high school. The economics just weren't there, so they decided to go out. And in his case, his dad was really tore up about this, and he decided that he was going to be the strong one in the family. And he told me that it even fell on him to handle a lot of the details of the sale, the sale of the cattle. And he decided he would be strong for his dad, and wouldn't let on how much it affected him, and if I'm not careful, I'll get emotional when I tell this story. So what he told me was that when he heard my story and heard the song and started to get emotional, that that was the first time since that day when the cows were sold, that he had allowed himself to grieve. And that's when I realized I'm speaking to guys that look like me, you know, literally, figuratively. Guys who don't realize that it's okay to tell people when they're hurting. I always say, guys that look like me, we're never the ones to raise our hands and say, excuse me, I'd like to tell you how I'm feeling today, and that's the biggest part of my message is to say, you know, the worst thing in the world you can do is keep all that stuff inside. And just to finish that story, that guy told me that ever since high school, when his parents went out of business and sold the cows, he had walked around with a chip on his shoulder, and he said he was certain that it even created a barrier with his wife, because he had never even told his wife. He met her later, he had never even told her about much about the farm or how much it meant to him, and he concluded that day by telling me he'd be going home and talking to his wife.

Abby Wiedmeyer:

When I heard the song, I remembered the heartbreak of selling our cows, but was feeling a little bit healed because we were milking again so, but I just knew that people were going to resonate with it, and they did. So the song, the lyrics are, like I said, accurate, and then the music with it is just kind of, it's a little bit haunting, I guess, in the in a good way. I mean, you can't listen to it and not cry. If you've ever had cows, if you grew up on a farm, or if you, if you were a farmer yourself, you just can't. There's, there's lines in there about like, "wish I didn't have to be the one." And I know that for a lot of generational farmers that had to sell their cows, that's besides losing their cows and their lifestyle and now they their whole life is changing. They need to go get a job. Another line that resonates, you know, "I can get used to getting a job off the farm" and all. There's a lot of things we can get used to.

Julie’s Zajac:

With my brothers having a stroke, he did not have a family. Had been single all his life, and so there are three remaining siblings rallied around him, but the lesson of his life is the fact that he, you know, was the strong man. He never would admit being weak, having any vulnerabilities, even when he was showing signs of a stroke, and the neighbors were kind of saying, "John, you need to do something." He denied it. He denied it to the point where he suffered a massive brainstem stroke. So, you know, the you know, farm life is challenging, of course, in every way, shape and form. One point it was a 500 acre, nearly 500 acre dairy farm. We did hay, corn for the cows. I remember doing oats, that was always a fun time as a family and. But, you know, but long story short, because of his stroke, because of the way that farmers, for better or worse, he did, he had insurance, but insurance cut him off. So guess what we had to do? We had to sell land. We had to sell his equipment.

Denny Hutchison:

You know, I've never had anybody disagree, any farmer disagree, when I say we're very stubborn. We don't trust anybody. We're not going to go to the doctor till the leg falls off, you know? And this is something that, and it's not a right or a wrong, but it's a situation where I'm not sure the general public has a grasp on what that is. And one of the biggest things in agriculture is the legacy. I mean, in Somerset County, Shawn Saylor, who's our vice president, is fifth generation dairy farmer, and he has said, If I'm the one that has to say, "We can't make a living out of this anymore, and we have to sell everything" he said to his wife, "we have to move out of the area. I can't be the one to drive by this land knowing that I was the one that sold it."

Jeff Corle:

I would say, writing"Empty Barn" changed my life. But I realized, especially after I came upon the work of a lady named Brene Brown, who speaks eloquently and writes eloquently about vulnerability, I realized there was a step before the writing process, and that was allowing myself to be vulnerable enough to put what I was feeling into the words of a song. After, and that, in and of itself, was a very cathartic experience. I would encourage anybody who's going through something to write about it. You know, you don't have to write a song, but journaling is a, you know, similar thing. It's just something about that physical act of writing this stuff down, you know, it's coming out and you're getting it onto a page. So writing the song, being vulnerable, was a cathartic experience in and of itself. But then I made the mistake of playing the song for one person, which was a female friend, and she loved it, and insisted that I put it up on my farm's Facebook page, I didn't even have a music page or anything, and make it available for download. And she showed me how to do it, and we put it up there, and I never gave it a second thought. And I came back to the computer about four hours later, and was shocked to see that this song had been downloaded like 300 times. And I said to this friend of mine, well, great. Now 300 some people know what an emotional sap I really am. And it only went downhill from there, Jim, because in the coming days, it started to get shared in farm groups, and it it started being downloaded 1000s of times. That was the first little taste of virality. But I'm telling you that, to tell you this, what came along with all those downloads were the most wonderful comments of love, support and encouragement, you know, from people who were relating to the song. And that was kind of the next step in this healing process was that I saw that other people are going through similar things, that other people do, in fact, care about me, and that there are people out there who are willing to help me and support me. And when I do my talk, this is another joke that I make, I'll say, "Hey guys, come here. I gotta tell you something. It turns out, if you tell people how you're feeling, they can help you. Who knew I sure didn't." But at any rate, that was the next phase of my healing process. For me, was seeing all those wonderful comments of love and encouragement, and then people telling me, "Hey, you got to do something with your music." When one door closes, another one opens, and through the bizarre series of events, I think it was about within six weeks of having written "Empty Barn," I was in an in a recording studio in Nashville, recording it professionally with some of the greatest musicians on the planet.

Jim:

Successful career, are you making that? What, what's tell me what, what next moves are was, Are you a musician now? Are you a farmer? What's what's happened to the farm? What's going on Jeff?

Jeff Corle:

Yeah, I used to say that I'm a farmer who sings and writes songs, and now I think I'm more of a singer and a songwriter who also farms. Yeah, I got busy, you know, I just realized it was going to be impossible for me to be doing this music thing and also farm. So we didn't have any animal after the sale of the cows, we didn't have any animals on the farm. And I was approached by a young guy who wanted to rent the land. So actually, our home farm is 100 acres, so I actually rented the ground to this young guy who's farming, and which, that's a whole nother thing. You know when, when I was at the height of my farming, milking 50 cows with my dad, we farmed our home farm, and we farmed the four farms around us. So we farmed about between five and 600 acres to obviously grow feed to feed the cows. And this kid that's farming my ground, he picked up all those farms that I farmed, and I wanted to ride in his big combine with him when he combined his corn last fall. And so we're in the combine, and I'm amazed at all this. You know, I never had anything like that, and it actually had a passenger seat. And I said to him, "How much ground are you farming now?" Yeah. And he said, "Well, you know, Jeff, we're awfully small." He said, "We're just about too small to survive." He said, "At this point, since we picked up your farm and the farms around you, all we got is about 2000 acres."

Jim:

Hawaii, the 75% of the farms are 10 acres or less, so just for a little little perspective on scale. But what are you seeing as far as farms, and what's going on with farms, farm closures? I mean, a lot of people are reaching out to you about it. I think have you seen an increase? Do you think things like that there is an increase in farm closures? What is the mainland farming situation from your perspective and the people that share with you?

Jeff Corle:

Yeah, well, there's definitely a huge decline in small and mid sized farms. You know, if you just take my own area for an example here, when I was growing up and I graduated high school in 1985 so when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, our little town had 27 licensed bulk tanks. So 27 licensed dairy farms. I happen to have been the last one to quit. So now there are zero dairy farms in my little area here. So and when I was growing up, people made a solid, you know, middle class income, milking those 30-40 cows and farming, even sometimes as small as 50-60 acres, and then buying in some feed, whatever. That all has pretty much totally gone by the wayside. And as I've gotten out and talked to people about this, it's happening everywhere, all all across. Everybody has the same story that I just told. When I was growing up all of our neighbors were dairy farmers, now there are none. Or one big farm, or two big farms buy up all the ground and they milk, you know, multiple hundreds of cows now, sometimes multiple 1000s of cows. And something I've started saying is that nobody really in the general public is where is really aware of this, because our previous farm crisis, so in the late 70s, early 80s, a lot of those farms got super laden with debt, and when the commodity prices collapsed, those farms had no way to pay their mortgages, and they started to get foreclosed on. And that was national news, all these farm auctions, all these foreclosures, that was national news. Now it's not so much farm foreclosures as it is just closures. You know, the the farms just going out of business, like in my case, I kept my farm, but I had to shut down my enterprise because I just couldn't even barely break even on it. So I don't think people are aware of this massive decline. And I think the average American, if they drive out in the country and they see a barn with those silos, they think that farm is still in operation in farming, but in reality, like in my area, all those with this breaks my heart too. All there are lots of nice facilities. I have a neighbor down the road that built a new facility in the mid 80s, about the time I was graduating high school, and it was designed for 80 cows. It was a, it was a tie stall barn with 80 cows. It had a big loafing shed, two huge, so what we considered huge silos at the time. And you know, whatever it is, 20-30, years later, that sits empty. He went out of business about 10 years ago, and a facility like that designed to milk 80 to 100 cows is really pretty much obsolete now. So it just boggles my mind that you're not we're not talking about little podunk operations that, okay, time moves on, and, you know, we're talking about people who invested their lives and lots of money and capital into building facilities that are now completely obsolete. So that's, you know, to me, it's just mind boggling and and heartbreaking

Jim:

And probably a little concerning as far as you know, food quality and ability to be locally sustainable, but I think that's something that's, that's a big initiative here in Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific, right? That's, that's certainly a focus for folks here.

Jeff Corle:

Well, you know, one thing to add to that is when a certain when you kind of meet, reach a tipping point to where, when so many of these farms go out of business, then the whole rest of the ecosystem collapses. So the feed mills collapse, you know, the feed mills go out of business, the equipment dealers go out of business, you know, the milking machine maintenance people all go out of business, and where you had this vibrant, thriving ecosystem, now you basically have nothing. So it's, it's, it's hard to get your mind around how fast it has changed, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Jim:

I think as we we start to wrap, I want people to, I would like you to share with people where they can find out or follow what you're doing and find out more about your music. Maybe you're if you're coming out with a new album, or if you're going on tour related to even some of the speaking engagements. Is there a spot that you like to, so I know you have Instagram, Facebook. Any suggestions on where people should find and follow you?

Jeff Corle:

Yeah, well, my main hub is my website, which is www.JeffCorleMusic.com. You can find all things Jeff Corle there. I have a heavy, heavy presence on YouTube. Just look for Jeff Corle on YouTube. Not so much, I am on Instagram. You can find me there, but my other big one is Tiktok so you can find my tiktoks. And I have a pretty good following there.

Jim:

Sounds good. I think what we like to do is, because our focus for the Seeds of Wellbeing project is ag producer mental health and ways to cope, any words of wisdom that you want to share for our ag producers out there?

Jeff Corle:

Yeah, well, just what I said before. My core message is, especially to guys, I know you were raised to grin and bear it. We were talking about this earlier. Your dad drilled that into you. Your grandpap drilled that into you. That's the nature of farming. You know, if you have a bad year, you're going to have it, you know, there's always next year you have a bad spring, things will turn around. But with your mental health, especially if you're going through a farm closure, or a farm transition, or facing the prospect of that, you got to talk about it. You even you know one family member, one, your best friend, if you can go to them and say, "I really got to tell you, I'm going through something." I know guys, your instinct is to keep that inside, but I will guarantee you that's the absolute worst thing you can do. And you know, just, just to add on to that, something we didn't mention earlier, there's a statistic out now that farmers are three and a half times more likely to die by suicide than the general public. So why is that? I think it's two things, financial stress that so many farmers are experiencing, coupled with this idea that I can get through this, I'm going to keep it inside and worst thing you can do,

Jim:

We thank Jeff for sharing the song and his story with us. We're also grateful to Abby, Julie and Denny for talking with us about their reaction to and connection with "Empty Barn" and Jeff. It is worth noting that Jeff wanted to have a few more people share their perspectives, especially guys that look like him, as he puts it. And although we reached out to a few of those guys, they declined to be on the podcast. Jeff imagines it's because of the stigma of showing vulnerability and asking for help as a male farmer in America, and it's such a strong force. Hopefully to help address growing mental health issues among that population, that force can be overcome, especially when they need help, and perhaps we can see vulnerability go viral. Let's hear some final words from these folks, and if you listen to the end of the podcast, we will play the song "Empty Barn" in its entirety. Mahalo.

Abby Wiedmeyer:

I think probably a lot of farmers struggle with this, and they don't even realize it, but a lot of times we we equate our productivity to our value and our worthiness, and they're not the same thing. You know, the more productive you are is not the more valuable that you are, that every human is valuable and worthy just because they exist and just exactly as they exist, and even if you do nothing but sit on the couch for a whole day, you're still valuable and worth everything that you are if you work 100 hours a week.

Julie’s Zajac:

My plea to people is to recognize that there are people around you that are willing to listen. And I mean, it doesn't have to be pouring your heart out. It's just actually having a human connection and just making the time to you know whether, and I realized farmers are remote, so it's difficult to say, "Hey, I'm just going to drop by." But you know, I prefer in person, because it's, to me, it's more meaningful, right? It's, it's that authentic experience. But you know, of course, this day and age, here we are. You're in Hawaii, I'm in Georgia. We're having this conversation. So the technology does allow for people to engage. And so just, you know, I would beg people to allow themselves. It's okay to reach out, just to chat. And, you know, there are a number of help lines that I've seen that are designated for farmers, and I would encourage reaching out there.

Denny Hutchison:

I think that the biggest thing in my mind it's it's simple and it's complicated and it's difficult, and that's to go to somebody and say, "Are you doing okay with your mental health?" But to be able to ask that question, and the flip side of that is when somebody asks you that question, to be brutally honest, and to say, if you're having problems, to be able to say, "You know, no, I'm not. I'm not doing okay. I need some help somewhere."

Jim:

I'll actually use that as a way to put in a plug for some of the things the Seeds of Wellbeing is doing on the Hawaii Islands, which is finding formally setting up peer support options for ag producers, so there are people that get it, and are there to help and are there to listen. So please check out our website and the links that you see there to try to get help and find folks that at least just have the sympathy and empathy, right, that is important when you're going through some tough times, which anyone in ag goes through regularly.

Jeff Corle:

Yeah, absolutely, really, it's really important what you're doing, because it's really important for farmers to talk to other farmers, because very few people in the general public understand this. If I tell you, like I told you and got emotional earlier, how much I loved those cows and how much it broke my heart to say goodbye to them, you know, the average person on the street is going to look at you like, are you crazy? And they were just cows, you know. Or even, you know, a multi generation crop farm, whatever. You know that dad worked this ground, grandpap worked this ground, and here I am the one who's going to bring it to an end. It's really important to talk to other farmers.

Jim:

Thank you, Jeff. I really appreciate your time and and I'll be and I'll be listening to your music. I just some of them I just get such a kick out of. And what I suggest to folks is just, even if you just plug, plug Jeff's song into your Spotify, or your music player, I you know, and the AIs kind of come up and try to find songs that are similar, that can be fun too.

Jeff Corle:

Well, yeah. I mean, if I can leave, leave you on this note too, right? So "Empty Barn" was the bottom of the story. You know, that was the trough. After things started happening, and I was able to get out there and write some more music and record my album then I was able to take a little bit of a lighter approach and write about some of the more fun aspects of farming. All my songs are farm related, but, yeah, I'm not going to leave you down in that drop. You'll find some music that will put a smile on your face.

Jim:

Absolutely. Thanks again, Jeff. Um, take care and keep writing those songs.

Jeff Corle:

Okay? Thank you.

Thao:

The intention of these podcast series is to create a safe space for a respectful and inclusive dialog with people from across a broad and diverse spectrum involved in growing and making accessible the food we share together. A diversity of voices, perspectives and experiences can serve to deepen mutual understanding, to spark creative problem solving, and provide insight into the complexities of our agriculture system. If you, our listeners, have experiences with Hawaii agriculture ecosystem from indigenous methods, permaculture, smallholder farmers to large including multinational agricultural industrial companies, and everywhere in between, and you would like to share your story, please contact us. We welcome your voices and perspectives.

Jeff Corle singing:

I can get used to not working every day, and I can get used to not needing to bail hay, and and I can get used to not needing to bail hay. I can get used to a job off the farm, but I will never get used to this empty barn. No, I will will never get used to this empty barn.