Be aware of STRESS and take ACTION

Over the last few years there's been more of an emphasis put on the importance of monitoring your mental health and learning how to deal with and limit stress.

Life on the farm or ranch can be highly stressful Lesley Kelly understands it all to well as a farmer and a strong advocate for mental health and agriculture.

She says we think of a stressful harvest, or the stress of moving animals, etc, but sometimes stress can be more than a season.

"You know, there's the discussions of the transition of the farm, weather, economics, family dynamics, even proposed different government policies that we're unsure about. So every day can be a challenge, but from what I know is through doing a few things every day, can have really big impacts on how you can go through that stress."

It's important to recognize what you are going through and react as stress can wear you down mentally and physically.

She says it's important to find the tools to deal with it, a key component is also having open communication and be aware of what you or others are going through.

"Learning how to ask questions with empathy, how to listen to each other, and how to talk about stress on the farm can be such a key factor. You know, for us we use the tailgate check in. We ask each other what our stress number is from 1 to 10? That opens a great dialogue of support,  just knowing where you are on that stress level."

Kelly points out that we recognize when crops or animals are under stress and what tools are needed, but we also need to recognize when the stress we're under is getting to be too much