Posted on 12/13/2009 7:40:52 PM PST by Lorianne
Norma Clark, 80, slipped on the ice out by the horse corral one afternoon and broke her hip in four places. Alone, it took her three hours to drag herself the 40 yards back to the house through snow and mud, after she had tied her legs together with rope to stabilize the injury.
A dutiful farm wife, Ms. Clark somehow even got to her feet to latch the gate. And her first call when she got to the house was not to 911, but to a daughter 30 miles away.
“I told her she’d better come feed the horses,” said Ms. Clark, telling the story from her living room overlooking her 900-acre wheat farm.
Growing old has never been easy. But in isolated, rural spots like this, it is harder still, especially as the battering ram of recession and budget cuts to programs for the elderly sweep through many local and state governments.
Ms. Clark has been able to get help since her fall two winters ago because Wyoming, thanks to its energy boom, continues to finance programs for the elderly. But at least 24 states have cut back on such programs, according to a recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group, and hundreds of millions of dollars in further cuts are on the table next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A “rural area” to a NYTimer = Newark.
Not to worry. Obamacare will solve the problem.
IF she has a 900 ac wheat farm, why should she be on the dole?
I hate these “old = helpless” articles.
It Will Be Real Sad when it starts to Hit the General Public that ‘Shovel Ready’ had always meant ‘Seniors’.
It’s this way in small towns all over America. WalMart, good highways and good riding cars put them out of business. Back in the day a 60 mile trip was made no more than twice a year. Now that’s done every day by a lot of people.
In my hometown in Arkansas in the 60’s the streets were full on Saturdays. Now that same street sits with no businesses on it. In fact, as the “life” went away the traffic lights went away, too. When I was growing up there were 4. Now there are 2.
This is impossible due to Global Warming.
Not only that, but it’s always been this way.
Anecdotal articles such as this one from the New York Times read as fiction. Not that a farm such as this does not exist or a elderly woman didn’t endure such suffering but it smells like a Columbia School of Journalism graduate made it up sitting in his NYC apartment or got it from a liberal think tank/non-profit.
No economy out here. Many people made it with seasonal employment & living off what the land/river provides. Wife and I have our teaching degrees; can get positions anywhere actually. I look around and see some folks not so lucky just the same. High prices takes a bigger chunk nowadays; hate to think about a year or so.
The Indians are well taken care of by feds, but they don't ask for much anyway, kinda just want left alone. The older rural Whites really are getting hit hard. They can't afford bush flights at the drop of a hat. Have seen several die after not being able to afford plane trips to doctors; kinda a problem when you see it repeated. I have one neighbor, been here since early 60's; now losin his mind; gets lost in the woods alot; matter of time till he freezes.
We had an old goldminer many years ago who got hurt 30 miles from town on trail. Back then, they hiked in and out. He knew that he was a goner, so wrote a note saying goodby, attached to tree, layed down in creek and froze in the ice so the animals wouldn't eat his body. They found him froze in ice couple months later when he never made it back in at freezeup. Guess we're heading back to those times.
I don't have any answers, just see the elderly having a tougher time than ever before. I guess we'll all get to experience it down the road though, the way OB is screwing the dollar up.
Ever run the numbers on a dryland wheat farm?
The net:net is that a 900 acre outfit is big enough to be a big job, small enough so you’re not making enough to live off it.
A profitable wheat farm will be up in the thousands of acres. Some of the more profitable wheat farms in Montana will be 10,000 to 20,000 acres. This is because many wheat farms run on a plant/fallow divide, so you’re really only farming half the ground in any one year.
Just as a educated SWAG, I’d say that a dryland wheat farm in Wyoming probably returns about $35 to $50/acre, depending on fuel, fertilizer and labor costs as well as the price of wheat. So on 450 acres harvested, you’re talking $40 (eg) * 450 acres, or about $18K in net profit. Maybe. If everything goes right.
If wheat had kept pace with the CPI since the 1970’s, when farmers could make a living without a job in town, then wheat wouldn’t be at $5/bu today - because it was $5/bu in ‘73. Using the BLS CPI calculator, we’d see wheat at over $20/bu.
Now, given her age, I’ll wager that some renter is running the crops on the land - so she gets an even lower return than she would farming it herself.
Here’s a real estate brochure for a similar farm in the area:
http://www.buyaranch.com/Yoder%20Wheat%20Farm.pdf
See the green areas? This was taken in the spring, and those areas were planted (probably the prior fall). The tan areas off either side are the fallow.
Unless it involves Farrah Fawcett in her late twenties...I’m not going.
She coulda done that herself before she crawled back to the house but nooooooo, she had to get her daughter to do it.
People nowadays are just plain lazy.
The 900 ac should sell for what - 500 1000 USD an ac?
I have lots of relatives running wheat farms in KS. WHere they make thier money is being paid to not grow wheat.
Crazy, huh?
Even as a kid I could see Social Security was a scam, and in the 60s when the Dems pushed Medicare thru, I knew I going to get screwed big time when I got older.
The wife and I have tried to live providently - worked to pay off the house in 13 years, for example. Now we see our saving killed off (loss of value of dollar) by the FedGov handing it out to those that have (IMO) really never paid into the system. Add in welfare cheats, illegally pulling it down and it's not hard to see why some folks are getting a real case of the a$$ over the FedGov.
I see a lot of chat on prepping for the end of the world - I got news for them, it's here now, and the decline really hit the big time under Bush, now Bammy is throwing gas on the bonfire.
Not much longer before we see a currecy reset, with no SS, No welfare and maybe even fighting in the streets....
I suspect you will be thnakful to be out there when it hits the fan back here....
For the land, yes, prices are running about $500/ac.
And if you have to get a loan to buy it, it won’t pencil.
You don’t farm, do you?
We share crop our land. The only ‘payment’ we ask is for steer manure be spread on the land, which we get paid for - there are some large feed lots in the area.
And we only take manure from the ops that feed w/o ‘additives’.
We are not ready to live on it full time as yet.
Thanks for asking.
And yes again, most of my Uncles and many cousins farm full time, but not wheat.
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