True characters

Wayne Burkhart, farmer from Western Massachusetts

The difference between youth and age. . . is that age has developed systems of coping with the absence of logic in so much of life. You can't let life beat you up; you go on from the pain of death and heartache, the might have beens.

I love poetry . . .An Irish friend cemented my knowledge of Patrick Kavanagh. His poetry's relationship to the land and countryside from which he came has resonance for me, as in Innocence when he tells about leaving the farm and country life only to return to its "briary arms". TS Eliot said the same thing – "the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

I'm right for this place, for Gould Farm . . .I do what I can do well, helping to normalise life for people who are troubled and in trauma, normalising experiences which have marginalised them in everyday life. Normalise is a favourite word of mine.

I grew up in the Mennonite tradition . . .in a Mennonite farming community in upstate Lower Michigan where the flat, variable soils were carved out of native pinewoods. My penchant for normalising things for people with emotional debilitation began with my best playmate. He had mental illness and got in real trouble.

My parents were very loving . . .my mom pretty much a saint, my dad somewhat self-absorbed but meaning to be kind to everyone. "I've two sons," he would say, "one born on St Patrick's Day, one on New Year's Day." My brother Arnold's birthday is on St Patrick's Day.

As a young man in the 1960s I was a true pacifist . . .I took the old Jesus stuff and my tradition seriously and as I went through my intellectual growth, I understood how significant it was to be a pacifist. I wasn't always as proud and fierce about my pacifism as I am now.

I studied at Eastern Mennonite College, went there in 1962 and got a student deferment in lieu of being called up . . .I was serious about duty to country, wanted to be of alternative service. My brother went to Michigan State University so all the cows were mine to milk. I had divided loyalties about not being on the family farm full-time. In 1969 I married Donna, from Delaware and from a similar Mennonite background. The draft ended in 1973 so I was free of that as a worry.

Donna and I studied in Brussels in 1976 and afterwards went to Zaire where I ran an Agricultural Development Service . . .I considered myself an avid world citizen, I wasn't a swashbuckling participant like some of my Peace Corps friends. Some of 'em were eating worms but I said "No, thanks" – though I did eat a boa constrictor. The flesh was white, like pork.

I saw the similarities in human nature everywhere in Africa . . .I tried to find a normalising way of being with people; the wonderful, amazing thing was how hospitable everyone was in a situation where I was the privileged one. I got a MSc in Resource Development in 1984 and in July that year we came to Gould Farm. Our sons, Christopher and Shaylan, were nine and five years old.

In l997, on St Patrick's Day . . .I was working in my upstairs study at our home at Gould Farm. Donna was on the phone talking to Julie, a friend in Ireland. Christopher came out of his room. I said, "Hi, Toph". He went to the basement and came upstairs again and I said "Hi, Toph" again. He went into the closet in his room and killed himself. Donna found him, I cut him down. He was 22. He died after three days. I went down to the farm and threw some bales down for the cows and life was different. He was driven to do it. It wasn't a "goodbye cruel world" or "look what you've done to me" gesture. It was "I've got to get rid of the rattle in my head".

I don't want to be presumptuous . . .but I see a lack in the life of the mind without knowledge of the land. It's a normalising force for good. With mental or emotional illness some of the healing comes about by getting in touch with the land.

My epitaph will be . . .It's been a good ride. Be good to each other and take care of the land.

Wayne Burkhart is farm manger at Gould Farm, a residential therapeutic community in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts dedicated to helping adults with mental illness. gouldfarm.org

In conversation with Rose Doyle