Farming + Survival‏

Hi Ferfal, I have enjoyed reading your posts for a couple of years now. I justwanted to quickly share some of my family's experience with farming andsurvival to support your point about how risky it is. My father's familycame to Canada from Italy in 1955. They lived in the mountains, a veryrural area, but only 1.5 hours from Rome with today's highway. The postWWII decade was very difficult, a real struggle to survive in ruralItaly. Any farming activity required money and at this time there wasnone. For example, you want to raise chickens? How will you pay fortheir food? They could grow plenty of vegetables, but not enough to keepeveryone fed. There were absolutely no jobs either to supplement income.Many families were literally starving. My grandmother told me stories ofhow they would eat anything they could get there hands on: cats, dogs,owls. (Even when they came to Canada, it was hard to shake this mindset.One time they picked up a dead rabbit killed on the road.) By around1960 or so the Italian economy was booming again, and there was plentyof work and the government could afford to spend money helping farmers.But during the decade before many thousands of families had alreadyleft. What choice did they have if their children were starving? Now inCanada the Italians of rural origin are one of the richest communitiesbecause they abandoned farm life. Instead they focused on using theirother rural skills to start businesses like stone work, construction,paving, building development. Those types of business you can build andgrow every year, whereas a farm is unpredictable. Thank you for your great blog. I wish you all the best.
Marc

Thanks for your email Marc. My family's story is somewhat similar, but taking place in Franco's Spain. Hard times indeed.

FerFAL