FOURTH CREEK, Alta. – It’s been just over two years since Bonnie Zeyha’s husband was killed in an accident.
While she still isn’t able to talk about her husband Ron without wiping away a tear, she feels it’s time to get on with her life.
That’s the problem.
Zeyha doesn’t want to leave her cozy farm home she and her husband established with their two sons 56 kilometres from Spirit River, in northern Alberta.
She doesn’t want to move to a city, or even the nearest town to find a job. She feels there must be something she can do to stay on the farm.
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“I’m almost at the point of getting offended when people say I should move to town because I don’t have a husband here,” she said.
Cattle, equipment sold
Last year Zeyha sold the cattle. This year she sold a quarter of land and rented the rest to a neighbor. She also had an auction sale in June and sold all her equipment except a tractor.
While her husband was alive she enjoyed the livestock and grain farming, but she doesn’t think she has the mechanical skills to operate the farm by herself. She found herself relying more on the neighbors to fix the machinery or weld a gate.
“I thought I was independent, but Ron was always here on the weekend to fix things.”
Her sons, both in their early twenties, work in the area; one is a mechanic, the other a plumber. But Zeyha wanted to allow them to experience lives of their own rather than making them feel obligated to helping her farm.
After her husband died, she began to sell cosmetics and drove a school bus to keep busy, making sure she didn’t hibernate in her home.
While it nudges her out of the house, Zeyha still feels urges to start a business, or grow something, or look after something, or build something, while staying on the farm.
“There’s got to be something I can do besides selling Mary Kay cosmetics and driving the school bus to make a living.”
Exploring ginseng
Zeyha took in a farm women’s conference in Peace River recently to see if she could get a few on-farm business ideas. She’s also planning to look into ginseng, a crop that caught her eye when she was in British Columbia last summer.
Luckily, Zeyha is able to take her time to find the perfect job. All the loans on the farm were life insured and were paid off when her husband was killed in a vehicle accident.
While it gives her time to think, it also forced her to reflect and she realized having the bills paid off is not the dream she once thought it would be. Since the couple moved to the farm 13 years ago, they both dreamed of having the loans paid off so they could start a project together.
“I found I had the dream. Everything was paid for, but there was no one to share the dream, so it was a worthless dream,” she said.
