The Manitoba Women’s Institute has something of the feel of a time capsule, a carefully nurtured vessel containing a distillation of the typical and exemplary characteristics of a former age.
It’s a nature the organization both treasures and is saddened by, as it balances the joy of longtime traditions and doing good works with the regret that younger generations of rural women don’t seem to have the time to belong to service organizations like theirs.
And as the organization’s membership ages, it finds its members facing a rural society that offers less support for independent living every year.
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Across the country, a hard conversation is unfolding. Many producers are starting to ask a tougher question: can we keep doing this the way we always have?
“There are a lot of widows here now, and some still live on their farms,” said Manitoba Women’s Institute president Valerie Watt in an interview during the organization’s annual convention in Winnipeg.
She said living alone on a farm is difficult today, because most small towns and villages in rural Manitoba have shrunk to the point at which they offer no services. That leaves older women having to travel far to fill their needs, to find others to do it for them, or to leave their farms and communities and move to larger centres.
“A lot of the older ladies don’t drive, or don’t like to go out onto the highway,” said Watt.
“It’s getting harder and harder to stay in local communities.”
Watt said older farm women are probably suffering less stress and less financial pressure than young farm women because they are either retired or in a more secure situation than a young family that is just starting out farming.
But low crop prices and the severely depressed cull cow market are seriously hurting some older families and individuals as well, Watt said.
“We hear about the problems and the stress,” she said.
During the organization’s convention, the membership tackled many issues, including problems with access to medical treatment for rural women and the difficulty of organizing volunteer efforts in communities where families live farther apart.
With so many problems confronting farm families today, longer-term strategic planning can often be ignored or put off, but farm adviser Liz Robertson warned them against too much delay. Not organizing the direction of the farm can leave families unprepared when decisions have to be made.
“A lot of times weather crises can provide an excuse not to get around to it,” said Robertson, a member of the Canadian Association of Farm Advisers.
Families need to consider the long-term future of every family member.
“It’s not an event, it’s a process. The best time to start is right after tax season,” said Robertson.
But she acknowledged that farm families are uniquely disadvantaged by the timing of the tax filing deadline, because farmers have to turn their attention to preparing equipment, fields and themselves for seeding.
Tackling long-term planning at seeding time isn’t likely to be too popular with most farm families.
Robertson said farm women may have to take the lead in organizing planning, because even though they may not spend most of the time in the tractor, they often deal directly with the farm’s finances.
“It’s the women who are taking the phone calls from the creditors, from the banks, who see the people who come to the door,” said Robertson.
Farm women may have to take the lead in getting the family to talk about issues like intergenerational transfer.
“Just start it,” said Robertson.
“Start it by sitting the whole family down at the table and finding out what everybody wants.”
Farm families and older farm women may face a lot of stress today, but good strategic planning can ensure that farm people come through the problems as well as possible.
