I was raised on a post-depression wheat farm in Northern Idaho. My Great, great grandfather came west on a covered wagon and homesteaded in 1875. I was born in 1941, grew up poor, except we didn't know it. If it needed to be done, we had to learn to do it. No $$ to do anything else, + 25 miles from the closest person with the necessary skills. No local traveling handy-man available. As a consequence, I learned skills that would allow me to earn a living for my family as well as become a missionary to Haiti later in life, after the kids were gone.
As with many of You, I too left the farm, not so much because of the stigma, but because in the late 50s one could not earn a living for a family on a 1/2 section in Northern Idaho. Besides my dad was trying to earn his living off the land; not enough for 2 families.
I attended the University of Idaho, earning a degree as an Architect, only to find that that profession was a great way to starve slowly. So I got a job in industry using skills I learned on the farm.
My great sadness is today, I can't get young people's attention to pass my skills along. The system tells everyone that if You don't go to college and become an indentured servant, because of the debt, You are a failure. Now, it seems, society looks down on, not only farmers, but everyone who earns a living by their hands. I urge everyone who will listen, that we are entering a serious climatic period where, without the basic skills I learned on the farm, you will not survive.
There are those scientists, again who are like salmon swimming upstream, who say, we, the earth, is not getting hotter, but we are entering a mini-ice age. By 2020 the population will be dropping like flies because of starvation and the cold. Those of us who have the basic skills will survive, because we have the knowledge. We don't have much time.
