I can't say that I'm still over the death of my friend.

He's always on my mind.

Always.

Farming is not very forgiving.

I've had a few really, really bad seasons.

The pump over here on the ground, it normally pumps it out of here into the picker;.

It just start pumping.

I wish I knew why, but I don't.

Let's try it up to the fuel pump, grease to that tank, and then we grease the picture from that tank to the heads.

But now that the pump quit, we got to figure out how to manually get this grease in that tank.

Unfortunately, the first days are always the worst.

The pictures, the combines, they've been sitting all year.

And, you know, you only use these things once a year.

There's usually always something.

You know, we had to work on them a little bit, get them tuned up and ready to go.

I tell people all the time, farming is not something that you just wake up in the morning and say, I want to be a farmer.

It kind of has to be in your blood.

My name is Deron Davis.

I'm owner of Lake View Farm Lake View being where we live.

That's where the name derives from.

You're in Lake View, Arkansas.

And I'm also the mayor of this town.

I've been mayor for eight years going into my third term.

Yeah.

One of my friends say, Well, it's pretty out here, but it ain't worth a penny out in the field.

You got to get it to the gene.

You have to be a man.

You have to have a strong man.

And you really have to love farming.

I don't think an ordinary person would have any idea the amount of work and the amount of time.

More so than anything that you put in this profession is very much time consuming and it's like everything else is not for you.

Yeah, we're in farming.

Weather is probably the most challenging thing.

Something obviously we don't have any control over.

Prices and things is a challenge sometimes.

Grain prices are way up this year, so as grain prices go, so does expenses.

I've never seen grain prices increase and expenses stayed the same.

The chemical fertilizers fuel always rise with it.

I talk to a lot of farmers and they're able to talk to me.

We talk about a lot of ways of of recovering from debt and people you can go to and programs you can go to and don't live above your means, I guess would be the short way of saying it.

Farming is it's not very forgiving.

Not a lot of family time, missed kids, ball games and activities in school.

It was always kind of mom that had to do that.

We were always out working because you got to make your own demand decisions.

What to do here, what to do there.

So it's hard to be gone.

And do that.

When you come in from a long day of work, eight, 9:00 from six that morning to nine that evening.

And now you all worked up and you got to try to find something to eat, you got to shower, you got to do everything.

So you just kind of have to wind down.

So it's normally after midnight before I go to bed every night and normally we are 536 at the latest.

So we don't do very much in the winter months.

So.

December, January or February.

So that's when I try to get rested and get ready for the next season.

I don't know of any farmer that hadn't had at least one disastrous year.

Dear friend of mine.

And he committed suicide a few years back.

And it was one of the hardest things I've had to deal with because he was a friend of mine and I always had all the time, Oh, so it got a little more than he wanted to deal with.

And we and I thought he was okay with it.

I thought we had got it situated in Seattle.

And then I got the horrible phone call about 5:30 a.m.

I can't say that I'm still over the death of my friend, but he's always on my mind and stuff, always.

And and I hear stuff that he's saying, and it kind of makes me laugh because he was a funny person.

So this business will cause some tragedy and and everything and and I know people say, well, why did you do it?

You just do it because you love it.

That's the only way I can explain it.

When you start a new year, you're like, Thank God, made it through this one.

Let's start another one.

Now, you probably would think, who wants a job like that?

But most of my friends, we've been doing it for a long time and most of my friends come from farming backgrounds and if one of us could be gone at any given year.

So it's just the nature of the beast is part of the business.

I've heard a lot of people think about suicide saying, hey, it crossed my mind.

I've had to help people.

I've had to let people use tractors because they didn't have one or lost theirs, whatever the case may have been.

Hey Ma, mind, dude, you got to do and bring it back when you get through and whatever you can to help them and help them get through a challenging time.

I'm willing I'm willing to do.

This program is funded through a Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network grant provided by the United States Department of Agriculture and administered by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture.