Everyone has a breaking point, says Larry Woolliams, a Rocky View County grain and hay farmer.
For Woolliams, it was the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, when a particularly wet and snowy season forced him to leave his crop in the field over winter, leading to a roughly 70 per cent loss of his harvest.
"I'm trying to keep all my employees, and my whole living is laying out in the field, and I've got no income coming in - talk about financial stress," Woolliams says.
Despite his best efforts to keep his struggles to himself, friends and family noticed. A close friend finally said something.
"He's just like, 'You know what? I've been through it. I know where you're at right now.' And then I just crumbled."
Still, it was over a year before a different friend finally persuaded Woolliams to speak with a mental health expert.
Woolliams had resisted the idea. He wondered how much a therapist could really understand about farm life, and what his friends would think if they saw his truck parked outside a therapist's office.
But when he connected with the right person, someone who understood the pressures of farming, "It was huge," Woolliams says. "I really realized that one session didn't even scratch the surface … by the third or fourth one, you're finally kind of starting to build that trust. And I'm so thankful that I did it."
The experience left such an impact that Woolliams wanted to help other farmers, which is why he is now the major financial supporter of a new pilot project called the AgWell Farmer Wellness Network.
Launched early last month by AgWell, a University of Alberta initiative based at the Augustana Campus that focuses on farmer mental health, the pilot connects farmers, farm families and those working in agriculture with therapists who understand farm life.
The project is accepting participants from Rocky View County, who can access up to five free counselling sessions.
"Our goal is to make support easier to access in a way that fits real farm life," says project lead and Augustana psychology professor Rebecca Purc-Stephenson.
