A Nation Tunes In to the Struggle of a Farm Family

Only half jokingly and not without angst, the farmer’s wife had laughed and said that when the three-night, 6 1/2-hour intimate portrait about her and her family aired on PBS Sept. 21-23, they would “lock the door, turn the lights off”--and watch it together.

Just the five of them: Juanita Buschkoetter, 31, her husband, Darrel, 37, and their three daughters, ages 12 to 7, down on the farm in Lawrence, Neb.

The couple had already seen an early print of “The Farmer’s Wife,” depicting their struggle to save the 1,100-acre family farm--and their marriage--when filmmaker David Sutherland brought the documentary to Lincoln, Neb., back in June. Then in mid-September, the Buschkoetters saw an excerpted version at a special showing on Capitol Hill. But they wanted to see the actual broadcast within the cocoon of immediate family.

And so it happened that way--well, almost.

What the Buschkoetters did not expect was that their phone would be ringing off the hook--on the first night alone, they told “Frontline” officials, they got calls from 16 states and Canada from people asking what they could do to help.

Then on the final night, they got company. A minister from Minnesota dropped in--and in the days since, others have trickled in too.

“We had no clue it would ever be this big,” Juanita Buschkoetter said in an interview last week, and any concerns she previously had about letting the filmmakers capture their lives over a three-year span were wiped away. “I thought, if one family can see they’re not alone, it will have been worth it. And [this] has touched so many people. We’ve had calls from every state almost--over 200 phone calls.”

The numbers were also substantial for PBS. Nearly 3 million households watched each night, and “Frontline” drew more than 9,000 e-mails--”way beyond anything we’ve ever received,” a spokesman said.

“People said we’ve renewed their faith and dreams again,” Buschkoetter explained. “I never saw that as I was watching the film, but so many people have said that, and it’s just been amazing. We had a small-businessman--he applies siding to houses--say he could relate to it. Today a woman called. She was crying. Her father-in-law farms and her husband works for him, and she said that after watching the film, she and her husband were going into their first marriage counseling session.”

As for the minister, Buschkoetter said that he had been on the road and detoured so that he could watch the third episode in Lawrence--a decidedly rural town (population 350) in southern Nebraska where the nearest McDonald’s is more than 40 miles away.

Juanita, who works part-time during harvest season at a crop insurance agency and full time the rest of the year, noted that the minister “stopped in in the morning and talked to Darrel. Then he was going to stay in a motel 10 miles from here, where the film crew always stayed. But he called that evening and said they don’t get PBS at the motel, so he wondered if he could watch it with us. He said he just wanted to see that things were OK here.”

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It sounds somewhat surreal, and there are shades here of that 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.” But as the documentary aptly showed, the farm is the Buschkoetters’ field of dreams. Apparently, if you move people enough, they will also come.

The Saturday after the broadcast, she said, “some people from Omaha who had the day off came by to see if they could find the place, and on Sunday a guy drove from Cedar Bluffs, Neb. He came and visited for quite a while. So it’s been pretty crazy.”

Mail is pouring in too--by the hundreds, she says, “and little care packages also.” Last Monday, “the mailman brought the mail up to the door”--she giggled--”in three big tubs.”

Sometimes there are checks, ranging from $5 to $50. They have not yet totaled the contributions.

In the packages are toys, videos, books for her daughters. Clothing, too. “A lady from New York sent a box. She said she went through her daughters’ closets and sent what her daughters had outgrown. Clothes much nicer than my kids ever had.”

A woman from Illinois sent a rosary for Juanita--the family is Catholic--which had been purchased on a trip to Italy. “This woman wasn’t Catholic, so she thought I could make better use of it.”

When those who phone mention money, she tells them to donate it instead to the Farm Crisis Hotline in Walthill, Neb., or to Farm Aid, which is based in Cambridge, Mass. She also intends to divert some of the checks to those organizations--”because they helped us. Especially getting closer to Christmas--it was such an awful feeling being a mother, and not knowing whether you can afford anything. We tell people we don’t want [money]; that’s not why we did this.”

But she’s keeping checks that people designate specifically for the family--including the $25 a woman sent to “buy a bottle of champagne and toast ourselves.” And a similar amount someone else sent “for us to have one heck of a Halloween party this time.”

The Buschkoetters have also garnered speaking engagements. On Oct. 15, they’re speaking at a University of Nebraska forum in Kearney on rural and women’s issues. And the once shy Juanita, whom crisis changed, when asked if she ever sees herself going into politics, replied: “I never thought so before. It wouldn’t be bad if it could somehow get worked into our life.” Asked what she would run for, she paused: “Oh, I don’t know about that one. . . . Just the idea of being involved in some way, even in a small way, being able to make a difference.”

On a personal level, she noted that as a result of “Farmer’s Wife,” Darrel and his father “may be becoming closer.” But her family thought they “might have been portrayed a little harsh. They weren’t supportive of farming but they were always there for me.”

And the marriage? “Pretty good. . . . No, not great. There are still the regular stresses and all, but we’re realistic, and things can actually get resolved now. And that in itself is wonderful.”