Hello,
Over the past week, my husband and I have spent six hours watching a PBS documentary made in the mid-late 90's called "The Farmer's Wife." We found it for loan in a library. Did anyone see this show when it aired on PBS?
Well, it's all there. The breakdown of a relationship due to poverty and debt, but also to lack of support from in-laws. I saw the perspective of Juanita Buschkoetter, the DIL, as she struggled to be a good wife, mother, and DIL to her husband's family. His family lived just two miles away; both families farmed in mid-Nebraska near Hastings.
The father-in-law (Darrel's father) was unremittingly rather cold to her. And even to his son, Darrel, whom he expected to help on the FOO's farm despite the fact that Juanita and Darrel were struggling horribly, living on $11,000 per year with three kids and increasingly in serious debt. At one point Darrel even had to take a job in a factory moving huge steal beams from one location to the next all day, then go home and farm at night. The father-in-law was an extremely selfish, self-centered man. And the next layer of struggle in the marriage was that Darrel could not separate from his parents. This was especially difficult on Juanita as they lived so close.
Next, enter Juanita's mother. Having failed to keep her own marriage together, she was nonetheless full of negative advice for Juanita, and openly held Darrel in contempt by explaining, every time she showed up, how well Juanita's other siblings were doing (financially, especially.) Juanita pointed this out to her in a good conversation that illustrated just how articulate Juanita was, and her skill at explaining it without damning her mother. Despite the way Darrel was treating Juanita, I had to feel badly for him because of her family's continual putdowns of him. It must have been hard to take.
Back to Darrel's family: the father (in-law) decided to retire, so a mediator had to be called in to see how to divide the farm. Darrel's other siblings were long gone and since he left his dad's farm, Darrel had continued his unpaid support of the father's land land and the machines. Nonetheless, the siblings all still felt they were entitled to an equal share of the farm when the father died.
You can see everything building to the inevitable climax in this pressure cooker. It's like looking at a family in a laboratory and there are so many lessons here. My husband watched it once with me, but I watched the entire six hours again, trying to absorb it fully. I saw how hard Juanita tried with her mother and her in-laws, and how she was seemingly met at every turn with rejection. I really related to her.
Juanita and Darrel totally believe that once they can show a profit on their grains, their problems getting along will begin to recede. Drought, recession, lowered farm prices, and just general bad luck, they believed, caused Darrel's abuse. Of course this was not the case. Even after their best harvest, Darrel continues his serious verbal abuse of her. She is frequently shown in the film hanging her head, speechless, trying to hold back tears.
The three kids are growing up in dire poverty. There is never a new garment, everything comes from garage sales or Goodwill. Most dinners, at least shown on the film, consist of some kind of sandwich in a white bun and mac/cheese. You rarely see a piece of fruit on the table. Eventually in desperation, Juanita gets food stamps for which she is put down by Darrel and his father. She cannot, as my husband said, WIN.
THE ONE SAVING GRACE FOR THE KIDS IS GRANDMA!!!!!! Yes, can I say this enough?? She is the one who will pay for the doctor's visit when little Whitney has an ear infection. Grandma has the kids over to her house and gives them basic crafts. She alone offers an analysis that is cogent and correct when little Abby doesn't want to stay over at Grandmas the night Juanita is gone, because Abby believes her dad will be too lonely. Grandma is a sweet lady in the background. But she comes very much to the foreground when you watch the film and realize just who cares about those kids. I really don't know how those three little girls would have survived all this without their grandmother. From that standpoint, they were lucky they lived so close to her.
The film has a kind of Hollywood "Happy Ending," but the facts belie this. Two years after the completion of the film, Juanita moved to town and left Darrel. Both are now remarried to other people. There is little information after this because the Buschkoetters found out the price of fame and getting letters and media attention that became unwanted. The real ending especially drives home just how bad the situation is, because Juanita was raised a devout Catholic, and raised her children that way, and divorce was "not an option," particularly in her small town community in Nebraska.
I highly recommend this film to any of you who can find it. Perhaps you can ask your library to order it on an inter-library loan. It is such a teachable six hours. It is so well done. This family could have stayed together, if dad-in-law and mom-in-law had settled on support instead of coldness and criticism; if Juanita and Darrel had more education on marriage and family life and running a farm as a business; and if Grandma Buschkoetter had had more power to keep her grandchildren longer and better. One reviewer said this was the "best documentary ever made." I'm not sure I agree with that, given that there are other, weightier subjects, but surely it is on my short list. If you watch it, please let me know what you think.
Few films offer such an opportunity to study family relationships as this one does. I highly recommend it.
Kathleen
