Man: A hundred years of climate change, logging, and no forest management and drought, I knew enough to be really scared.

Woman: I definitely thought that we were gonna lose our home.

Man: I had many of my friends and peers call me and text me and say, "John, you need help moving your animals?"

There would be nowhere to go with that many animals.

Different man: Yeah.

Copy that.

Man: [Sighs] Different man: Climate change.

You have to feel it.

You have to see it.

You have to smell it.

You have to live it.

You have to touch it.

Woman: I belong here.

It releases all my stress and my pain, and it makes me stronger again.

[Thunder] Man: We're constantly battling the weather.

We were so dry, and we wanted rain, and now it won't quit raining.

Woman: I'm hoping that we can help people find their joy and realize that, "Hey, maybe it isn't so bad.

I can get through this."

It's a hard life, but yet it is a wonderful life.

Don't give up.

Keep going.

[Camera clicking] Male announcer: "Earth Focus" is made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation--a Margaret A. Cargill philanthropy and the Orange County Community Foundation.

Female Announcer: Hasa is a proud sponsor of "Earth Focus."

[Cattle lowing] Man: We're awoken by a lightning storm, and we rarely get that here.

[Thunder] We saw these vein lightning bolts all through the sky, and it was-- I'd actually never seen anything like that before.

The ones that landed actually started fires within a visual distance of our ranch.

[Rumbling] Woman: The fire almost seemed like it was almost like a tennis match or something because it would kind of bounce back down the valley and then it would go back up again, and this is over a series of days.

It's like I just didn't want to go to sleep because I didn't know what was going to be happening when I woke up.

My parents house burned down when I was in high school.

We came home to a burning house.

I definitely thought that we were gonna lose our home.

John: I came up to the house, and she was packing the car, you know, all your important papers, everything.

She goes, "OK, John.

Ready?

We're ready to go."

I said, "Diane, I'm not leaving."

She looked at me like I had, you know, two heads.

[Insects buzzing] Diane: My husband John and I live here in Healdsburg.

John manages our family dairy farm and vineyard, and I run our family wine business.

Another winemaker with a vest.

John: We're an agriculture-based community.

We're part of Sonoma County.

We're about an hour, hour and a half north of San Francisco.

Our economy really, really is primarily an agricultural tourism area--wine tasting, vineyards, hospitality.

My parents started this farm in the late Fifties.

My mom would joke that she had to track me down the first day of kindergarten because I was holding tools for my dad fixing fences.

Ha ha!

Diane: He bounces out of bed every morning so excited to go down to the farm.

He loves it, so that's a very good thing, but I don't think I could do it.

I think at some point, I would probably say, "Enough."

John: This has been my whole life, living on this farm.

The ranch itself is 360 acres.

We have 40 acres planted in pinot noir and chardonnay grape vines, and then the rest is in the farm buildings and organic pasture for our dairy animals.

Diane: Agriculture is not easy.

Animal agriculture is even harder.

It's a 24/7 thing... Diane: and at times, it can be a little bit overwhelming because it just never turns off.

John: Yeah.

Yeah.

Diane: We're in another drought here in the Western United States, so there's pressures for literally finding enough feed for the animals.

There are so many stressors on him right now.

John: You can do the best job, be the smartest person out there, but Mother Nature really has the final say, and that's a little bit--that's what happened with these fires, too, that we really didn't have-- You can't control that.

All you can do is work at controlling what you can control.

[Cattle lowing] We saw a lot of changes in the California dairy business, and that's when we decided as a family to diversify into wine grapes.

You know, the grapes helped pull us through, which is one of the reasons why you look at diversifying your business operation.

Here we are in August of 2020 in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and we have this fire.

Diane: The first fire that we had, large fire, was in 2017.

It was quite shocking.

It was a major fire.

I believe over 8,000 structures were burned, 5,000 homes here in Sonoma County, so everyone was impacted by it.

We've had more fires since then.

In 2018, there was a fire, the Camp Fire up in Paradise, California.

That was farther away from us, but the smoke and everything, it was, you know, all through Sonoma County, all the way down to the Bay Area.

Then it kind of became unsettling because it had happened two years in a row, then with more fires, and, obviously, our fire last year in 2020 was very close to us.

John: There was different levels of stress and anxiety as these fires evolved over the last few years.

The Waldridge Fire was literally burning on the property behind our ranch.

That time of the year--in August, September, October--is when we have all of our livestock here on this property.

All the grasses are dried, and we are feeding everybody here.

We have 600 cows to milk twice a day, another 800 animals, the younger animals, that need to be fed.

I had many of my friends and peers call me and text me and say, "John, you need help moving your animals?"

There would be nowhere to go with that many animals, even if we could move them.

It just was impossible.

Diane: As a farmer, your first inclination is to protect your animals, protect your employees, protect your buildings or facility, your land.

John: With the mandatory evacuation, we actually become an island, so we're supposed to be gone.

Everything's blockaded.

Our biggest challenge was getting things in.

We have deliveries, you know, every day of the week.

It was like fish swimming upstream.

We're fighting a situation that's completely opposite of what everyone else is doing.

When you're in the middle of it, it's almost like you're on autopilot.

Diane: I was on the patio, and I was watching East Side Road, which is, obviously, east of us--we're on West Side Road here; it's on the other side of the valley floor--and there, it was just full of cars, and I kept thinking, "Oh, there must be an accident or something.

Why are there so many cars?"

and I turned around and saw this huge plume of smoke and flames behind us and realized all those cars were looking at us.

They were looking at our house.

The stress of the smoke everywhere and then not seeing the sun and the fire so close and the noise, it's kind of overwhelming.

John: And so the stress for me, I think it manifested itself later for me.

Maybe it's part of my DNA or just part of what I do as a farmer because you just-- [Sighs] Diane: It's hard at the end, and so many of our neighbors have lost so much, and then it becomes very sad because sometimes, then, we'd lose those neighbors.

They choose to leave.

John: There's a lot of folks that lost their homes, all their belongings, and having to start over.

I mean, that's a game changer.

Man: About 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, I was the last one here.

I just saw a huge, chugging smoke train of brown, orange, yellow Hades demon hell-looking skyscape that was coming right at us, and I realized, "Well, now I know where the fire is and where it's coming"... so at that point, it's a "one way in, one way out" road.

I just got out.

It's the old Iverson place.

I came back two days later to find the place still smoking and trees on fire, but our place was gone.

Psychologically, it's losing everything you own and everything that reminded you of who you were and just the arduous task of rebuilding.

It's a bit of a marathon.

It's all-consuming, and it's not so much if it burns down again.

It's kind, well when will it be?

Will it be before or after I die?

Hopefully, after.

I came here 5 years ago, just after my daughter was born, with my wife and daughter and to be closer to the grandparent and been creating defensible space and trying to prevent fires and prepare for an eventual fire for about 5 years until one finally hit.

[Rumbling] Man: Back up, you guys.

Just pulled my engines back hard.

Grout: I was and still am a wildlife biologist.

I'm a conservationist.

I taught forestry and wildlife, so I knew enough about biology and the forest ecosystem to know when we moved in here that a fire had not hit here in about 60 years, and it was probably only a matter of time before it did, so I got active in the forest pr--not prevention as much as preparedness community.

Dozens and dozens of us living in the hills on these spread-out homesteads got together and created a fire-protection plan.

A hundred years of climate change, logging, and no forest management and drought and then a two-week heatwave, you know, it was bound to hit us sooner or later, so I knew enough to be really scared.

That... is scary.

Hundred-year-old woodshed, 500-year-old tanoaks, orchard house, fire.

It was a magical place to the entire family.

All the grandkids would come up here for all the holidays over the river and through the woods and grandmother's house and always full of fruit.

This homestead went back a hundred years.

There were two-man saws and coyote traps and bear traps and old-- Everything was hand-forged here and built by her grandfather and great-grandfather, so there was a lot of historic buildings, the old 140-year-old, one-room schoolhouse that my wife's mother and sister and grandmother went to, so, like, then COVID kind of took away our community and our ability to gather, and then the fire took our community and just scattered us all over the county, all over the state, and some have left the state because of it so, all of Maslow's needs were gone in 24 hours.

We lost our home, the clean air, water, sense of community, neighbors, sense of place, you know, the connection to the land and the beauty and the hundreds of fruit trees and cherry trees and wildlife and snakes, and walking up here and just seeing all the dead birds and deer and snakes and charred trees, it was a bit of a gut-wrenching trip followed by 9 months of continual cleanup and reliving the losses.

You kick around and find an old, charred trinket reminding you of another thing.

"Oh, yeah.

We lost that, too."

[Creaking] [Birds chirping and squawking] Woman: What my grandpa used to say was, our hair represented the thunderstorm... and we were always told to never ever cut our hair, and a lot of the Navajos, Dines cut their hair.

That's why we got no rain.

What do you mean, that dirty, red one?

Girl: Oh, yeah.

Maybelle: When I was a little girl, it would rain for, like, 5 days straight, and we had to climb our way out of the mud just to get to some supplies, and the grasses were as tall as a horse's belly.

That's how tall they were.

You couldn't see me walking after the sheep when I was, like, 5 years old.

We didn't have to go to town to get water.

In the winter, we only hauled water, like, once a week.

In the summer, it's really bad.

We have to haul water, like, twice a day to our sheep camp.

Man: Everything revolves around water.

Just survival.

That's it.

People call us the forgotten people.

Girl: Yes.

Maybelle: No.

Man: [Indistinct] This community is called Cedar Ridge.

We're under the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo Nation is huge.

It's bigger than some states.

Being Navajo is very, very important to us.

We have a strong history.

I'm proud to be Dine, makes me strong on who I am and what I stand for.

People my age now, when they were young, there was really no drought.

[Engine starts] [Sheep baaing] There would be, like, about 150 sheep in one area, and people took care of them.

Girl: Grandma says, "Go home."

[Cattle lowing] Leonard: My wife here, she raised about 4 calves.

They're at that age where they're having babies now.

That was worth it... [Cattle lowing] and that makes her a little bit prouder, stronger, and the will to go ahead and care for her animals.

She wants to carry on the tradition that her mom and dad did, her grandpa, her grandma.

That's how strong of a lady she is.

Maybelle: We use it for food.

We don't profit off of it.

When we get together, we'll butcher sheep, and the cows, I take some to the market, but I don't profit off of that, either.

I have to go back and buy whatever they need--protein, salt, hay.

That's where it goes.

It's our custom that we have livestock.

Taking care of them, looking after them, to me, it's very important because it was from generation to generation like this.

We're in now.

Close the gate.

It's my responsibility now.

I love being around animals, and it helps me in so many ways because at times, I'll struggle.

Mindwise, I'll struggle, and it helps me pull through day to day.

I don't know whose land it is.

I have no idea.

It's not mine.

I'm just living on it.

My grandpa always said that to me.

"This is my ours.

It's just here for us.

It's nobody's."

He used to say that to us.

"It's nobody's."

It's the cows, the sheep, all these little creatures running around.

I think it's their land.

That's what I think.

[Ratchet clicking] Leonard: Sometimes I get up, like, about 4:00, start the truck, maybe have another cup of coffee.

Then you take off, go down to the watering point.

Don't be lazy.

Got to be up before the sun.

Well, this place is the life point.

It's the life point of our community's livestock.

It's not only for our community.

There's people that come out, like, about 30, 40 miles all directions, and I feel for those people that live way out there by the canyon.

For a whole round trip, they, they do, like, about 60 miles just to haul water to their livestock.

They have kids out there.

They have grandkids out there that herd sheep and look after the cattle and all that, and they don't have no running water, no electricity.

They have to haul water.

It's hard to see them struggle.

In my days, we used to go to earth dams to load up water in wagons pulled by mules or horses.

This is where water collects.

You can tell where it sits with all these drainage from little, little valleys or little gorges.

From way out there, they come and sit here.

It used to be full.

Maybelle: The last time we had water was back, oh, about 5, 4 years ago, just drizzle, a few drops, you know.

You get all happy getting little drops of rain, call all my deceased family and say, "Help us!"

but still no rain.

[Birds squawking] [Thunder] Woman: Everything in your cropping schedule revolves around the weather.

If you have a very wet spring, you don't get in the fields till late.

You can't get seeds planted in the ground.

The later you get it in, the later harvest is gonna be, and then you run into snow.

[Birds chirping] It's just so different from when we were kids.

The summer wasn't overly hot.

You didn't have these torrential rains.

On a farm, you know, the weather, it predicts everything for you.

Man: We're constantly battling the weather.

It's either too wet or too dry, too warm or too cold.

We were so dry and we wanted rain, and now it won't quit raining, so this is what we're dealing with, working around these windows that we have to grow the feed for our cows.

My name is Randy Roecker, and I'm a third-generation farmer from Loganville, Wisconsin.

We have about 300 people in my little community here.

[Cattle lowing] My parents are 81 and 82 years old.

They farm every day.

They start their morning at 3:30.

My mom loves to mix feed, and she drives in the tractor, and she always likes working with the cows because, she said, "Cows don't talk back to you."

It's truly a family farm, and sometimes I really wonder.

There has to be a better way of life out there someplace that you don't have these problems that you struggle with all the time.

[Cattle lowing] Statz: My name is Brenda Statz.

Well, my farming was my main thing.

It still is a lot of my life, but I do work full-time off my farm, also, so I probably milked here 30-plus years I milked in this barn, and I milked for my dad before that.

I was, like, 12 when I started milking cows at his barn, so I've milked cows a long time, so-- [Cattle lowing] and some of them, yeah, you get special cows.

You get pets, and some of them, you're just like, "No.

I don't want nothing to do with her," and you wait for her to go on the truck, you know, to sell them off, but for the most part, I mean, farming is-- Good girl.

Keep watching.

It's a good life.

It was a good life.

I see you, Carmen.

Ha ha ha!

Leon and I, we met, actually, in Reedsburg at a bowling alley.

I was not a person who went out much, and I went out with my sister to watch her bowl, and that's when we met, and he had gone to school with my sister, who she's, like, 3 years older than me, and we just started dating, and we both came from farm backgrounds, and we both come from big families, so even our wedding was big.

We did everything together.

From the time you got up in the morning till the time you went to bed, you worked together.

That's just the way farming is.

He had his chores.

I did my chores.

We never vacationed much.

If we did, it was a weekend.

Once a year, we'd go somewhere, but it really wasn't far away because, he said, "Can't go too far."

Leon would say, "You know, can't go too far but far enough that they can't call us back to do chores tonight."

It was just more memories of it than you think.

You know, you always thought of that time, it was just a lot of work, but then when you look back now, you know, it was probably some of the better times because we spent so much time together then and just working, milking cows, and raising your family.

That's what farm life is.

[Cattle lowing] Roecker: I can remember my mom always had a little book for, you know, every year that I was in school, and it always said on there, you know, "What would you like to be?"

and it always said, like, "Fireman, policeman, doctor," you know, and you were supposed to check what you wanted, and then there was a blank line, and then she would always write in, "Farmer," and I just felt that my whole life was kind of, like, laid out before me, so I developed a business plan, and I borrowed a few million dollars to expand my dairy here.

[Thrumming] You know, we wanted use technology.

We wanted to be modern, so that's what I did, so in 2006, we built the current dairy that were on now, and in 2008, that's when the worldwide recession hit.

I thought I was losing my family legacy that my grandfather had started back in the 1930s, and my world was crumbling around me.

I was in a pretty bad place, you know, feeling that everybody knew my story that I was failing.

My life was just spiralling out of control, and that's when I got depression really bad, and I went to numerous therapists and counselors and doctors trying to get treatment for this, and I mean a lot of different therapists and doctors.

I just wish I could run away because it's such a burden on you to not feel like a failure and carry on this family business, this legacy that you have.

What really changed my life is, you know, visualizing my own funeral and seeing my kids there.

That's what really was rock bottom for me, you know, what I was putting my kids through because I was such a low place in life, and that's how I turned things around, and that's how I pulled myself out of the depths that I was in.

[Birds chirping] Statz: Yeah.

Leon faced a lot of challenges with farming.

He loved farming, and when his depression became so severe where he was hospitalized, he didn't really think it was that bad.

We just kept going because like a farmer, he says, "What's the option?

You can't just not show up."

You have to show up, and you took care of what had to be done for the day, but depression is not good.

It rained, and it rained, and it rained and flooding, and just, you know, we're up on a ridge top here, but it was so wet, you couldn't get in anywhere, so by the time you planted, it was late.

We mudded in a lot of corn, so we figured, "OK.

It's gonna get better.

It's gonna get better."

Well, harvest time comes, it's still raining.

He just couldn't see a way out anymore.

We had gotten a call from our neighbors.

We had taken care of their mother, and she was in her 90s, and their estate was being settled.

His dad always told him, "Whenever adjoining land comes up, you have to buy it."

You know, it's what he always told him.

He said, "If that land ever goes for sale, you have to buy it," because you never get an opportunity to buy land that connects to your farm.

He's just like, "I think it's gonna be-- You know, I think maybe we'll talk to the bank, and we should be able to maybe get a loan to pay for that, and the boys would, you know, eventually buy it from us, and we'd work it out."

Well, that morning, it started raining again that night.

The rain had just never stopped, and he's like, "I can't."

You know, he couldn't do this anymore.

He was just like, "God, it just keeps raining," and I don't know if it's just his anxiety, but I had heard him go out that morning, and I had just headed in the house to get ready to go to work, and that's when Ethan came in that he had found him, that he had hung himself in one of our buildings, and I just couldn't believe that it actually happened.

He just-- That was his third attempt then, was when he died... and so then it's just been trying to figure everything out and keep the farm going, and I did.

With his life insurance, I bought the land, yep, so his legacy lives on.

It's what he wanted.

[Chainsaw starts] Grout: For almost 9 months now, I've been coming up here, usually by myself because my wife is working full-time.

I think the first couple months, 3 months, 4 months after the fire, I only slept 3 hours a night or so, 4 maybe, and there was just so much to do and so much to learn about insurance and the county permits and meetings and cleanup and disposal of toxic ash and all the various things you have to go through.

It's been taxing to me personally, and I know my lack of good humor and resilience at times has had its effect on my marriage and relationships, friends.

These lands were basically fire-resilient when European Americans first got here because they'd been undergoing prescribed or natural burns from the Native Americans and/or lightning for about every 5 to 6 years.

That was the fire return in this redwood forest, and a hundred years of Smokey the Bear suppressed all forest fires.

That policy went on to the point that it was just creating-- Every year they successfully put out a fire was another year that more fuel was being added to the bonfire.

We're members of a not-so-exclusive club anymore and one I would not wish to invite anyone into, but it's coming to-- You know, if it doesn't come to your house, you'll be evacuated out of it because it's coming close one of these days, so it's one of the unfortunate things you're gonna have to live with as global climate change and global warming really starts showing us what it can do.

Diane: We're very concerned about the upcoming fire season.

It also corresponds with our grape harvest.

Last year, we lost a lot of grapes to smoke.

It's hard to work all year just to have it lost to smoke in 4 or 5 days.

The stress is very high, I think, for everyone here.

I think that some people are definitely suffering some from what we would call PTSD.

You just go on Facebook, everyone's like, "I see smoke.

I smell smoke.

What is that?"

There's lots of talk about canceling Fourth of July fireworks celebrations.

People are asking, "Why is that important?"

Because it could potentially be dangerous, so everyone is on a very heightened level all the time as to how fires start and how devastating they are, so, yeah, the mental-health part is a huge part of it.

John: It's been a lot of fun learning how to grow high-end, pinot noir and chardonnay, and I'm very blessed working with some great wineries and winemakers over the last 20-plus years, but I have to say, the last few years, there are times when I wonder how much longer I can keep doing this.

These extra layers of unplanned events, it's taken its toll, so I hope I can stick it out.

I love what I do, but it does wear on you.

It's interesting when you, say, ask me how important the land is to me because...

I'm 59 years old, and I've lived in 3 places, and they've all been right here on West Side Road, so it's very much a part of my family's history, my life.

Hopefully, it'll be a part of my kid's life, too, in some form.

We're not sure yet, but a tremendous amount of meaning.

Maybelle: I try to give water to the horses that are still out here.

I try to do that, but now I don't see any.

There's just a few running here and there.

"If you have horses, that brings rain."

That's what my grandpa used to say.

Like, certain places you go, you'll see dead trees, like, in a line.

I've seen some of those, and I just think to myself, "Is that global warming?

What does that mean?"

My husband's always talking about it, but I really don't.

Leonard: I see it.

You know, you go out there, and you see it, and that's what you have to do.

You have to feel it.

You have to see it.

You have to smell it.

You have to live it.

You have to touch it.

This is very, very important, global warming.

People, they kind of don't want to believe in it just like what we dealt with with the virus.

I feel so sorry for these families that lost loved ones, you know, due to this crazy thing that's among us.

I feel so sorry for my wife.

She lost her mom, her dad, her younger sister, her oldest brother.

She is so strong as of today, she does everything, tries to keep her family's livestock intact.

I think she feels better when she goes out there and looks after her parents' livestock what they left for her.

That is very, you know, heartwarming to me, you know, how she goes out there, you know, and does what she has to do, you know.

Maybelle: I had my PPE stuff, everything when I went there to visit them, but somehow my dad caught it, and I didn't want to lose him, so when he passed, I took everything off, and I gave my dad a hug.

That's what I did to myself, but I wasn't supposed to do that.

Leonard: It's the strength that she has.

That's what keeps the the family going, and so-- Maybelle: When I'm out here, I can feel their spirit.

I can feel my sister's breath because she will always be sitting in the back of my car, and she would joke with me, and I could feel her breath on the back of me, and I really do feel their spirit, and it makes me happy and strong out here.

When I get down and start thinking about them, I come out here and then spend the whole day out here, and their house in back of me, I want to keep it up as long as it can stand up and let it fall by itself.

[Wind whistling] I belong here.

That's why this land is very important to me.

It releases all my stress and my pain, and it makes me stronger again.

[Birds squawking] [Birds chirping] Statz: Randy and I have known each other since school.

We went to school together.

We actually went to prom together.

A lot of people in the community knew of Randy because they had build a new free stall.

Everything was good, and then his depression hit.

Roecker: When I went through my struggles in 2008, I felt so alone, that there was nobody out there to help me.

Nobody understood depression.

It wasn't OK to talk about it.

It was a stigma associated with it, and you're just kind of isolated, and you suffer alone, and I always said I suffered alone in silence because it's like, nobody--I didn't know where to go.

Statz: To my husband, it was embarrassing.

He would never let me tell anyone that he was on medication or what he was going through.

He was always worried what other people thought of him, and I'm like, "Leon, it's no different than--" I said, "You would talk to everybody and tell your story if you break your arm or if something else would go wrong, but you can't tell anyone that, "Hey, I have a mental health crisis that I am trying to figure out?"

I mean, to a lot of people, it's an embarrassment, and I'm like, "No.

Stand tall and own it and say, "I'm gonna get through this."

Roecker: So then in 2018, that happened with Leon, Brenda's husband, and that set me back to where I was in my own personal struggles.

Statz: When Leon passed away, his funeral, and Randy tried to come, and he called me later, and he said, "You know, I really tried, but," he said, "I just couldn't go.

I couldn't go," and I said, "That's fine," and that's when he told me that he's gonna figure out something.

We're gonna do something.

Roecker: That's why I started this group down at church down here, and I called up Brenda, and I said, "You know, we would like to get together and do something like this," and I didn't know if it was gonna be too soon after Leon had passed away, and I didn't want to push her into something like that, but I wanted to have her involved.

Statz: I said, "I don't know if I'll talk, but I will come," and was very nervous going to the very first meeting.

We ended up with 40 people at our first meeting, and they came from everywhere.

I mean, there is a need.

Roecker: And that was the beginning of the Farmer Angel Network, so we got together, and there was a lot of tears shed at the first couple of meetings.

I got a call last week from a farmer, and he wanted to know what the next step would be to get help for his nephew.

Statz: There are so many crises lines out there, but people don't know they're there.

Roecker: Well, the thing of it is, too, I think that... Woman: I went to my first meeting just out of curiosity and just to kind of learn more.

I thought, "We have to have ourselves a..." We were struggling ourselves about making a change out of dairy farming.

It just felt so unnormal to me to not get up and go to the barn right away.

I just wanted to see what help there was available for us.

Once I found out the resources that are available to farmers, I just really felt a call like I can help other people learn about this.

Roecker: 800 suicide-prevention number, I had that magnetic sticker stuck all over the house, and when it comes right down to it, I don't think I'd ever call it.

First of all, I always thought that basically they'd come and take you away and lock you up someplace, and you have that fear deep down that they're gonna commit you if you call that number.

Statz: Because, like, with Leon when we had to call, they took him away in the car, and he just looked at me.

"I'm not a criminal.

Why do I have to be handcuffed and put in a car?"

but it's protocol to keep the officers safe if they're in the vehicle with them, and so they're changing that that now they have a crisis team that goes to the--and they don't handcuff them, and they talk them through it and get them to a safe place.

Harms: It didn't start out with the name Farmer Angel Network.

You know, it was a meeting on farm suicide and farmer stress.

After the first winter of meetings, we kind of recognized that that's really not that inviting to people to come in and to seek help.

Actually, I think I can take a little credit for developing the name Farmer Angel Network.

We just really felt, "How can we support people in a way that is unassuming, not intrusive in their lives?"

and I think if we can help save one person's life by having the information available to them, to their loved ones that are supporting them, I think we've done a very good deed.

Statz: I'm hoping that we can help people find their joy and realize, "Hey, maybe it isn't so bad.

I can get through this," and I've heard that from people that have come to those meetings, you know, "I just needed to talk to someone," and once they verbalize it and let it out, they're like, "It's gonna be OK." This is all the new land that I bought after Leon had passed away.

I do a lot of thinking after Leon passed away.

I drive out here a lot.

It's just peaceful, and it's beautiful year-round.

No matter when you come back here, it's a very calm place to come to.

I mean, I can shut the motor off, and you'll see.

It is just peaceful out here, and you just hear the wind, and it's-- This is what I love.

[Breeze blowing] John: Here in the United States, we're such a big country that sometimes you don't really understand what other local communities are faced with.

I remember reading about some of these organizations that have started up to help.

I think those are really good programs, and hopefully, they are helping those farmers get through those difficult times.

Diane: I think it would be helpful if there were more people to help out with the emotional stress and the caring for other people.

Roecker: I do enjoy producing a quality product for not only Americans, but all over the world, and, you know, my milk gets turned into cheese and butter and yogurt, so I enjoy doing that, but it's just, I still struggle every day with it.

I do.

I struggle every day with it.

Yeah.

Grout: I soldier on.

I may not smile as much as I used to, but certainly, I'm getting to the point now where the cleanup is starting to wrap up and we're starting to think about what we'll rebuild, and that part gives me hope, and it's a much more constructive and creative process to rebuild something and to rebuild a life here.

It may not be what it was, but it'll be something new and different, and in time over the next decade or two, hard work and sweat equity, it will be something we can be proud of, and we can say, "That's ours.

We rebuilt that," and hopefully, it'll be, you know, if not fireproof, at least fire-resilient.

Leonard: We, as the people, have to know what environment is and how our land should be utilized and taken care of.

Maybelle: We need to do our prayers together again.

It would be really neat to have rain and snow and all the livestocks back again.

Statz: It's a hard life, but yet it is a wonderful life, and people just need to see that we all need that little bit of outreach sometimes to make it through and that there'll be better days ahead, I always say.

Roecker: It's a human connection.

It's a family history connection.

It's a business connection, so it encompasses so much of who I am and what I've done.

Statz: Don't give up.

Keep going because in the end, it's worth it.

I mean, this is your farm.

This is your legacy, and hopefully, people realize you didn't quit.

That's what I know.

I don't quit.

Male announcer: "Earth Focus" is made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation--a Margaret A. Cargill philanthropy and the Orange County Community Foundation.

Female Announcer: Hasa is a proud sponsor of "Earth Focus."