This year has been particularly tough for farmers. President Trump’s antagonistic trade policies saw family farm bankruptcies reach their highest level since 2011, catastrophic weather events caused by climate change battered large parts of the country and the coronavirus pandemic has frozen the restaurant industry around the world, disrupting the supply chains that U.S. farmers rely on.
Meanwhile, much has been written about Pennsylvania s significance to this election, the “farmer s vote”, and its projected outcome. In response to this, Caroline Tompkins documented the farming community in rural western Pennsylvania, and spoke to real people about their motivations and goals at this moment in time.
“I’m for Trump,” a farmer friend said to me at the Farmer’s Market. “Are you?”
“No,” I said.
Still, we greet each other in a friendly manner every Saturday morning. I buy his produce, and he shows me photographs of his grandson.
The divide is so sad, he said.
The divide is so sad.
Life is stressful for those of us on both sides who reside in the southwestern part of this “key battleground state,” and “crucial swing state,” words we hear over and over. We live near the Johnstown and Latrobe airports, where Trump recently held two large rallies, and close to the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks where Biden stopped on his whistle stop tour. And we feel the pressure. The T.V. ads. The phone calls. The mailbox bursting with political flyers. The conversations we try to keep civil. My most eye-opening conversation took place before the last election, when I stood in front of my barn speaking to a friend whose daughters used to ride horses with mine. Our chat was courteous, but we were on opposite sides. Finally, I said that she, being a religious woman, couldn’t possibly condone Trump’s behavior on that bus with Billy Bush. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “He’s not running for Pope.”
For four years, I’ve whispered with like-minded friends in the YMCA locker room. I was on a rowing machine there in 2016 listening to Clinton’s concession speech when someone came up behind me, grumbled, and changed the channel. I used my home phone to make calls for Obama and a man called back and screamed at me. When I canvassed door to door, I feared a gun would greet me on a front stoop. Last June, after sixty of us kneeled silently in the Town Square for 8:46 minutes in support of Black Lives, a car drove by and a man yelled vicious words through a car window.
I live on a farm here, raise chickens and bees, have a large vegetable and flower garden, and over thirty years have had horses, cows, goats, ducks, geese, rabbits, sheep, and a turkey. But I’m not a real farmer, not one of the many hard-working women and men from this rural part of the state who make a living tilling the soil or raising livestock. Across the rolling hills of Westmoreland County, we have 1099 farms on 44,278 acres, 98% of which are family owned, and during this election season, the political dialogue has changed somewhat--from candidates to masks, an easy and visible way to judge one’s political leanings without saying a word. When we greet each other at Agway or Tractor Supply, we now know immediately who’s on which side of the political divide. At least it’s easier to avoid those difficult conversations.
During the last election, when we still verbalized our preferences, I conducted my own small survey: a stonemason, our furnace repairman, my haircutter, among others. I asked each for whom his or her clients were voting, and the answer was almost always, “Trump.” (Only the local painter is a Democrat.) I got extra worried on election day 2016 when, at our polling place in a defunct elementary school, I saw lines much longer than usual.. On election night, my daughter felt the schism firsthand. She watched the results with her college classmates in Boston—a group of young women themselves shattered instead of Clinton’s shattered glass ceiling—while her social media lit up with cheers from her western Pennsylvania grade school classmates.
I will never trust a poll again. When I drive around, talk to people, count the lawn signs, and stay more than six feet away from the maskless, the race here doesn’t even feel close (especially because I know that since the last election Republican voter registration here has risen by 13.9%, and Democrats have lost 9.2%.) And yet once again, I sense the pundits lulling me into believing a Democrat will be victorious. I hope that is correct, but I will not be fooled this time.
On this farm, I have watched a hen brood for 21 days, witnessed peeps writhe and scream their way out of eggshells. I have seen them lie peacefully on a nest of wood shavings looking perfectly healthy, gathering strength to stand, only to die a short time afterward. I have lost more chickens than I have gained, tried in vain to save one that perished, burying it in a tiny grave. I will never again count my chickens until they are fully hatched, healthy, eating and drinking, and scooting quickly across the barn floor.
