|
North Central Illinois | I've been giving this some more thought. If your inlaws really do intend to transition the farm to your husband and you with the blessing of his sister you are more than halfway home. You and your husband just need to make sure that the transition does not come with strings attached by your inlaws. It should really be up to you and your husband what role you play in the operation. My guess is that with your own career you prefer to be an informed partner rather than a working partner. If they are turning the farm over to your husband you have every right to know what is going on even if you aren't toiling away day in day out by your husbands side. There will be a lot of smaller and day to day decisions made without your input but the bigger ones like land and other captial expenditures you have a right to be consulted. You and your husband's marriage is a partnership and keeping each other up to speed with what the other is doing is crucial. Just because you aren't physicaly capable of working on the farm does not mean you cannot contribute if you want to. Record keeping, running for parts or shuttling from field to field, and providing meals during busy times are potential ways of being involved day to day even with your own career. The way is sounds to me I think your mother inlaw has resented you because you didn't provide another unit of slave labor when your husband married you. Just because he stuck close to home and helped them out with not much in return does not mean he was obligated to bring home a bride who wanted to slop pigs and shovel grain. I don't know the size of the operation in question here but it is possible that it is not big enough to support two families. This would be one reason that you haven't seen a lot of reward for your husbands efforts. His folks needed him and didn't want to run him off by telling him there wasn't enough to go around. I really hope this works out but you are going to have to set some boundaries for your inlaws after the transition or it will never work. Just for the record I don't subscribe to the idea that "because we have always done it that way" is good enough. Absolutely not! When a new generation takes over if they continue to do everything the way the prior generation did it they will get left in the dust. Just some more rambling thoughts for you to ponder. | |
|
What's "normal"?
