Letters on Agrarian Burnout

You’re working ten to twelve hours a day. Five to six days a week, but sometimes seven, meaning that from time to time you’re working 12 or 13 days straight. And it’s been going on since the planting season. This is the fourteenth week in a row you’ve been dealing with this kind of schedule.

Yet for all the work, you can’t get ahead. The daily chores, work backlog, and emergencies are more than you can get in front of. Your to-do list is a triage chart, critical items you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole with in order to keep the wheels on the bus, while the unaddressed items on that list fester into the next round of emergencies waiting to percolate up to the top.

You’re not just tired all the time, but you’re becoming physically ill on occasion. Fevers, chills, headaches, GI issues, insomnia, irritability; burnout affects everybody differently. A big part of the problem is that you’re understaffed, but you feel trapped. You’re understaffed because money is tight, so you can’t afford experienced help, but you also don’t have the time or energy to train up inexperienced help. Or, even if you did have the time or the money, living at the top of your triage list means that your operations have gone to hell in a handbasket. Things take longer than they should, the logistics of the farm are wildly inefficient, you have poorly functioning equipment and vehicles, etc., and…