Adrienne Sidlowski and Carman Langevin are neighbours, but this summer the farm women from Weyburn, Sask., grew even closer.
The two, who were both widowed in the past 18 months, teamed up this fall to bring in the harvest.
“We walked that road together. We had a lot in common,” said Sidlowski, who lost her husband Dan in an accident in the spring of 2004. Alvin Langevin died this past June after a 10-month-long illness.
The Sidlowskis had planned to expand their farm, buying a section of land and a new combine before Dan suddenly died. Adrienne said she kept the land but the Case dealer agreed to take the machine back.
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“I had all kinds of help from in-laws, friends and neighbours,” Sidlowski said.
She and Dan had figured out what crops and inputs to buy on their 2,200 acre grain farm, but had not done any of the work. Sidlowski decided to put their plan into action and with help, she achieved good crops of canaryseed, durum, mustard and peas last year. She said she had been an active partner on the farm so she found she could operate like a farm manager with no one assuming she couldn’t do it.
But when 2005 rolled around, Sidlowski had a decision to make.
“This year I simplified the plan massively. I had to decide the priority between family and the farm.”
Sidlowski has four children aged eight, 10, 13 and 14.
“The kids were not equipment drivers and I was not about to do a crash course with them. The way to keep our life normal was to rent out the land, sell the machinery. Does someone in our family want to farm? Not for the next five, 10 years.”
So Sidlowski rented her land and was not planning to actively farm. Then, when Langevin’s husband died four months ago, she saw an opportunity to help.
Langevin is a veterinarian and with three children under the age of 10, had not taken as active a role in the farm as Sidlowski. When Alvin died, the farm was already seeded.
Sidlowski said she was impressed with how Langevin stepped up this summer to take charge of the farm, scouting fields, finding bins and measuring what was in them, hiring help and making spraying and other decisions.
“To me, Carman has done an exceptional job.”
When Sidlowski heard Langevin planned to hire harvesting help, she paid her a visit.
“I drove a combine for 20 years and she had never. She did 80-90 percent of the combining. I did the trucking for her.”
Sidlowski said it was a good harvest experience. The two talked a lot and laughed about what their husbands would have said about their farming ability.
Sidlowski said they also found confidence in expanding their role from farmer’s wife to farmer.
“How much latent ability do we as women suppress because someone has to make the decision? And the way our world tends to work, the male still has quite a bit of that final power.
“After my husband’s death, I found I wasn’t afraid to make a decision. But when he was alive, I tended to side with his decisions even if I didn’t always agree.”
Sidlowski said other rural women would greet them with a smile and say they were happy the two widows were doing the harvest together.
“It gave them, I don’t know, energy, too. Everybody runs through the (death) scenario in their head.”
Sharon Schultz, who works with the two women as customers at the Weyburn Inland Terminal, was amazed at what they accomplished.
“Carman got it all off. There are still guys out there harvesting. And it turned out good.”
Schultz said she was also impressed with how quickly Langevin picked up farming.
“If I had to do that, it wouldn’t be pretty.”
Langevin disagrees that she is special and said any woman could do what she did. She also praised her friend Sidlowski for being able to carry on.
“My husband wasn’t ripped out of my life like hers was.”
Langevin said because her husband’s illness came on slowly, she was able to take over more of the farm tasks. As a vet she already knew how to handle their herd of about 100 cows when calving this spring. She was less familiar with the machinery and cropping part.
The community also rallied around and helped out as Alvin got sicker.
“After last fall I didn’t want my neighbours to do all the work again. I decided I had to do it. For me, I’ve made a career out of living in ignorant bliss (of farming).”
When Langevin took on all the chores, she said it was no big deal. She just took out the manual, figured it out and made things work.
Langevin said Sidlowski, her hired hand and a great babysitter made this year’s harvest possible. And like Sidlowski, she also urged other women to take on a bigger role in the farm.
“Don’t waste time worrying. Everyone is certainly capable of doing this. Put your two cents in now. It’ll eliminate a lot of anxiety for farm women to know about these things now.”
Whether the two women will farm together again is still up in the air.
“If Carman wants to, I’m game,” Sidlowski said. “But I have a feeling she needs to simplify life, too.”
