“They Called Me Greedy..” by Eugene Wyatt

Sunrise in September.

December 2005

Small farming is risky business; bad business, banks say if you go to them for money. Oh they’ll lend you money if you can put up collateral worth many times what you borrow. The FSA of the USDA is an exemplary lender; for a loan in the low 10’s of 1000’s of dollars they took assets for collateral that were valued at 100’s of 1000’s of dollars: a second on my property and everything that wasn’t nailed down, the sheep, farm equipment, wool, yarn, frozen lamb, seed, crops, hay, etc. and the way the loan was written they would have gotten my truck, my guns and my dog too; my wife was lucky, having divorced me beforehand, she escaped white slavery; had I defaulted, I might have had to pay them to see her.

A local bank calls itself, “The Everybody Bank”. I wondered if they were interested in body parts as collateral or as payment; how much of a credit line for a farmer’s kidney, what’s a good heart worth, certainly a lot more than the brain of a farmer s been dealing with them; when I got behind in payments, the loan officer threatened to “pull the plug on me”.

Then there are the land trusts who will purchase the development rights to your property, and perhaps offer financing. Before one trust refused to work with me (I was informed of their refusal 3rd hand, followed up by a phone call a week later), I was casually asked if my divorce coincided with financial difficulty. Am I to think they were amortizing my marital status to evaluate their risk? Without a meeting to explain the financial reasoning of their decision to deny my application which included tax returns, financial statements and a business plan, I was left to think many things. And I do. It appears they were more interested in land to feel good about their altruistic commitment to preserve it as open. And in certain cases, it appears that a farmer and his livestock may be mere chattel of the trust’s land rights; the deeded easements may prohibit grazing the land as it has been grazed for a hundred years; use restrictions are not clearly explained before a farmer takes their temporal money for a promise of perpetuity.

Working with the earth graciously humbles. But the humiliation that financiers levy on the small farmer will make you piss your pants laughing. I’m not angry, more amused and I share that with you to amuse me more. I’m a lucky man; I got to choose this life of Zen days and odd pay; it’s healthy and farm life has so many enjoyable moments: helping a newborn lamb to the teat, tasting a fragrant, gritty carrot just pulled from the earth and these are the things that make the whole thing worthwhile. If there’s enough money before them they will be on their knees, but not to pray.

Eugene Wyatt