Close encounters cement reason for strong attention to mental health - #843 Josh Dallin

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Hello, I'm Paul Yeager. This is the MToM Show podcast, a production of Iowa PBS and the Market to Market TV show. This is the beginning of a two part discussion about mental health in the West. And really, it's mental health everywhere. Two testimonials in these two episodes are going to come from Josh Dallin. He is with Utah State Extension. But he's also with the Dallin Agricultural Center based at Utah State, we'll get into what the center does, what the mission how it's been enhanced by what Josh has learned from just a simple raise of the hand for one of his extension meetings a few years ago, and how quickly things have changed at the organization in terms of how they focus on mental health, with farmers in particular producers all across the state of Utah. So as I mentioned, two episodes are coming up, we're going to split Josh's conversation into two. The second one, which will be next week, or if you're watching these back to back just hit next once you're done, and you'll have what you need. In that one. We're going to talk about a very strong testimonial that came but in the first one, as well, from Josh, a strong testimonial, this one from very close to home, that kind of got his attention really quick. So we're going to talk about those in this installment of the podcast. Again, New episodes come out each and every Tuesday in video and audio form. Subscribe and Like wherever you get your podcasts. We cover all the topics around agriculture, not necessarily how to grow better corn, or beans or oats or whatever. But almost everything else that goes around it is what we do each and every week. But this time we're talking about mental health with Josh Dallin. Standby for this podcast. It's Utahn? Tell me what it is again, if you're from the state. 

Josh Dallin: Yeah, we call ourselves Utahn. So I'd say hey, I'm a Utahn. Or I'm from Utah.

[Yeager]  Yeah, I'm from Iowa. I'm an Iowan, Utah. I'm a Utah it makes sense. I get it. But you are right, you said several generations there. 

[Dallin]  Yeah, so I'm sixth generation in my small agricultural community. My kids, we still live in the same community. And my kids are seventh generation. And so we're really proud of that, and have a lot of heritage and a lot of tradition and a lot of things that that we were very, very proud of and, and happy to still be able to continue

[Yeager]  How many of those generations have some type of agriculture in their background or what? 

[Dallin]  They did all of them. So so the the percentage of full time agriculture has has disseminated a little bit as we've as we've moved on throughout the generations, but we we at this point, my wife and I, we run a club sheep operation, we have about 100 head of us on top of working regular full time jobs and and we kind of have a little bit of a funny farm. My wife actually raises alpacas on the side as well, I think she has eight to 10 females at any time and then we always have chickens and rabbits, and we have horses and things like that as well. So it's kind of a funny farm primarily focused on raising sheep.

[Yeager]  Do all those animals get along?

[Dallin]  For the most part? Yes, we do have a couple of honoree donkeys that tend to not want to be friendly with anybody but they're, they're friendly to us humans. So we appreciate that. 

[Yeager]  But there's a lot of unfriendly donkeys around but that means a whole different thing for another nature. Yes, yes, it does. Did you have dreams of making agriculture a full time job as living off the land? 

[Dallin]  You know, I never really did. I always wanted to be a part of agriculture though. And from the time that I, you know, started in, I guess it's sixth and seventh grade when they start to ask you, you know, what are your career goals and your aspirations and things I always wanted to have some, some role in agriculture and like most kids at age I set out to to want to be a veterinarian because I always loved to, to help animals. I love to be a part of that realm. And ended up actually going to my first few years of undergraduate school with that in mind, and at the time also worked for a vet clinic. And I really loved my time there and I loved every One thing that I learned, but what ended up happening is there was kind of a fork in the road where I started to get heavily involved with the extension service on campus through the USU collegiate 4-H program. And as I started to dive into what it is that they really did, and the impact that they made, and the reality that I could still work with livestock and teach about livestock and research livestock, as I started to understand those types of things, I figured that I realized really quickly that that was something that that really made me tick, I was always I was a 10 year for a teacher heavily involved in the forage program as a youth. And it just never occurred to me until that point that that would be an opportunity for me to actually do that as a career for the rest of my life. And so as I started to look into those things, I I made a shift and, and ended up graduating with my undergraduate degrees started working as an assistant in the state four h office for Utah State University and completed my graduate work and then went on from there to advance to a position in the in the office there where I was the overseer, the specialist for livestock and equine for the state. And from that point, after 28 years, the extension faculty that was in my home county, after 28 years, he retired and I took a long hard look at that and thought, you know, it would be really cool after I've, you know, done about five years and had that experience, it would be really cool if I was able to go home and serve the people in my in my own county and I did that for five years and, and loved it loved both positions. And we had a really unique opportunity that arose in the beginning of 2022, where we had an agricultural family that was wanting to preserve agricultural heritage and literacy. And they made the single largest donation in the history of Utah State University, it was a $42 million donation to establish an agricultural center in a very urban setting. It's 120 acre facility. And that at the time I was asked if I would be willing to be the director and oversee the project development, the programmatic activities and those types of things for the center. And it was something way too neat and too excitingly challenging to turn down. And so I I really, it was a difficult decision because again, I was in my home county I was where I thought I wanted to be until I was able to retire and we made that shift.

[Yeager]  But make your own 28 year career is what you thought you would do. 

[Dallin]  That's exactly right. And I just kind of figured that's where I would land and be done. But over the past two years, it's been an incredible opportunity to really start to inspire our urban population about what agriculture really is, why it's important, what a difference it makes. And oftentimes the things that we take for granted because of the ease that it is to pull up to the fast food restaurant or go to the grocery store or the supermarket or whatever it may be. And everything's just there, you know, we forget about how it gets there and who it is that gets it there for us. And so, you know, here at the center, we see 1000s of inner city youth that come in through field trips and ag field day opportunities and experiences and we hope that that we're making a difference for our for our farm and ranch communities to really you know, inspire that that next generation of of not only farmer but consumer.

[Yeager]  Well, let's go to the people of Salt Lake City, just use your backyard then. If you go 20 miles out in the country from the city, what type of agriculture could they see? Sure.

[Dallin]  So it just depends on which direction you go. If you go to the west 20 miles, you're going to be in a lot more sheep and cattle range land production. If you go to the east, you're going to find you're in the heavy mountainous regions but still very farm and ranch focused. If you go to the north, you're getting into a lot more crop production. If you go way far north and west, you're then into serious heavy ranch production. And then if you go down to the south, you're seeing a lot of again more crop production. A lot of fertile fertile ground and things down there, lots of fertile ground, of course, and I think we see this in every state, but here in the Salt Lake region and the county, that, you know, very, very, very good farm ground. That's now you know, in housing developments with urban sprawl. And that's, that's just what we're seeing. And so that's why it was so important to this family that there be a preserve and an educational point, so that people, you know, wouldn't lose that completely.

[Yeager]  At what point did the job either when you were starting lineup this extension career, and you're going to take over, you think you have your eyes on a county, to now here at the Ag Center? At what point did the education on agriculture change to a component that maybe not the physical health of an animal, but the mental health of those raising the animals, at what point did those two come together? 

[Dallin]  So it was actually the winter of 2019. So I was still an extension faculty in my home county, let's call Box Elder County. And we were actually out at a conservation district meeting. And for those listeners that might not know what that is, it's generally a compilation of producers and both state and federal agency folks that sit together and make decisions on funding grants and, and decisions on some budgets that they're given to be able to help producers or help move things forward. Oftentimes, they go in as a cooperative, and they'll buy equipment that a lot of the people in that district can use, like fencing equipment, or whatever it may be to, to better the livelihood of the farm and ranch and also promote conservation. And we were out at that meeting, as I had attended many times, most of the time, it was a monthly meeting and gave a report about the things that were happening in extension, some of the research that we were doing some of the upcoming events that we had. And as always, at the end, I would say, hey, is there anything else that we can do for you? And up until that point, generally, it was a thumbs up, and you're doing great, and, and we're fine. But this night was different. This night was different. One of the members of that committee, who happens to be the largest cattle producer in the state of Utah, cow calf operation, he rose his hand and he says, Josh, what do you have for resources regarding mental illness? And boy, I'll tell you what, for somebody that has degrees in animal science and animal genetics, and and, you know, have focused on that my whole life, I kind of said, well, gosh, Jay, I don't know, what what are your concerns, and he very solemnly said, I'm, I'm worried about my friends. He said, I'm worried that some of my friends, that over the next couple of months may not be here. And boy, you can imagine, you know, as that those words were delivered, there was a large mantle of responsibility that I felt placed upon my shoulders to start to figure some things out. And so I promised him that I would start to network through my extension network and my university network to figure out the answers to his questions to figure out what we might have available.

[Yeager]  This isn't a critical question or statement on Utah State at all. But how vast, how easy was that process for you? Had that been something anybody else had thought about?

[Dallin]  So so the reality is, and no, we don't take it critically? Because it wasn't just Utah State alone. It was all right freeware, right, exactly. Nobody, nobody hardly had anything is the right is the answer. And it was very frustrating at first for me, as I was digging and searching, and ultimately, the way that our extension system is comprised, we have three pillars. We have an agricultural and natural resource pillar. And so we have faculty that fall under that, that realm, and then we have what we call our home and community pillar. And so we have faculty that fall under that pillar, and then we have our extension four H youth pillar. And so I reached out across the across the table to our other pillar to our home and community is where I reached out initially and I said, Hey, what do we have? And the answer was about the only thing that we have right now that any of us are trained on to use is it was called the Mental Health First Aid training. And so we had a couple of our faculty members that were actually trained to be facilitators of the Mental Health First Aid training. And so I said, Well, you know, let's do something. Let's get this started. And so it was actually February of 2020. By the time we made it through December and the holidays and the New Year and got everybody geared up we ended up hosting a Mental Health First Aid training And we really advertise the heck out of it, we tried to get everybody involved. We tried to, you know, we sent it out to our ag businesses, we sent it out to our producers. And we held that training. And it was really interesting, because we probably had one producer show up. And we had a ton of our ag agency folks show up. So these are like, agronomy cooperatives, or ag lending companies, or, you know, these types of people that interact with our producers, right people that after we started talking at these trainings, were there because they recognize the need for this type of service, and really didn't have any opportunity, up until that point, to know what to look for what to do, or how to help. We learned a lot from that training. We learned that it was way too long, we learned that there is nothing sexy about a mental health training for any producers in agriculture. We learned that there is a need for trainings and resources, right. And then we learned that as we surveyed the group that showed up. And as we started to talk to people and say, hey, you know, you're you said that you needed this stuff. But you didn't come why. And as we started to compile all that stuff together, we quickly realized that we needed to be pioneers in the effort. That really, there wasn't another state that had really been able to, to invent a wheel that had worked quite yet. And that's one of the cool things about extension, right? As we all work together across the country. We come together at conferences, and we share ideas, and we actually encourage people to adopt stuff if it's working, right. And so as we searched, we really couldn't find anything that really, that really had made sense at that point. And if I may, I'm gonna dive in just a little bit of a personal personal story, I guess that has to do with this, if you if you're okay.

[Yeager]  I'm gonna let you get into that a minute. But when you said pioneers, it's like your family six and seven generations ago, you're picking up what when you came to Utah as pioneers, because that's not that far off of when you came. So it's in your DNA to do it. Josh, what's your story there? Right?

[Dallin]  So no, you're fine. So as an extension faculty member, especially feeling like this mental health idea, I thought, you know, this is completely out of my wheelhouse. My job is to figure out what the needs are of the members of my community, and then to figure out how to serve them, right. And so in, in this sense, I had reached out to my colleagues, they were coming to do training. And I kind of sat in the back and thought to myself, well, you know, this is great, but I'm never going to use this stuff. And, and what was silly about that is that I couldn't have been more wrong. Because actually, I was going to be able to use that stuff. And it was two weeks later. And the reason I share this story is because I hope the listeners will understand if you're as dumb as I was, and think that in 2024, you're not going to cross paths with somebody or heaven forbid, even yourself that's going to have to deal with some of this stuff, you're lying to yourself. And so I ended up passively going through this training, except for a certain part where those that were facilitating said, Okay, we need everybody to get up, we're going to do an interactive activity, and it actually focused on suicide. And it focused on how you interact with somebody that expresses that they have had suicidal thoughts are coming to you for last ditch effort of help, the questions that you should ask the things that you should do. And they made us get up and they made us say things out loud that at that time for me, we're extremely uncomfortable. Like something such as are you thinking of killing yourself? direct questions like that, right, that none of us want to have to say? Or have you thought about how you're going to do it? Or do you have a plan? All these questions that they made us ask? And I thought to myself, Okay, well, I'm going to do this to be supportive. I'm facilitating this thing. And again, I won't ever need it. Well, two weeks from that day. I was at my parents home. We run some of our sheep. They're behind their house. And so I was down doing chores and I have a little brother that's 10 years younger than me. And my little brother has been extremely successful. He's an entrepreneur. He has a beautiful wife has a nicer truck than I'll ever be able to afford. And from the outside looking in, but he's really hasn't made. But it turns out that for a few years had been really struggling. And internally struggling with mental illness that actually reached out for some help various different directions. And it kept it very quiet, right, because that's a sometimes in our ag communities, that's a that's a stigma, it's a sign of weakness, it's a sign of all these, you know, your, your, you've got problems, your, your, you know, whatever it may be, but it had gotten to the point two weeks after I'd received this training, I'd went into the house and he happened had stopped by and I went in to just say hi to mom and dad was going to be on my way. And he stopped me and he said, Hey, I need to, I need to talk to you about something I said, Okay. And we sat there in the front room of my parents house, and my little brother looked across the room and he says, Josh, you know, as tears welled up in his eyes, he says, I need your help, because I don't want to live anymore. And I'll tell you what, all of a sudden, all of that passive listening, and all this doesn't apply to me, and all these types of things, just all of a sudden left really quickly. And I was able to take the things that I had learned in that training, and that I had been more or less forced to do, and put them immediately into action to help save my brother. And so all of a sudden, this animal scientist, animal geneticist extension guy, realized very quickly what that producer was talking about, in December of 2019, when he said, I'm worried about my friends, and I'm worried about my family members, and what resources do you have so that I can help them? And so from that moment on, it became not only that, that feeling of weight of responsibility for all of my friends and family members and producers, right, but it became a weight of responsibility to tell the story that if it can be my brother, it can be yours, too. But knowing that is not enough, what resources and what stumbling blocks can we overcome? And what things can we make more readily available, and at that time, that's really when the Ag wellness program for Utah State University Extension was born.

[Yeager]  When you have stories like that, and you talk about this new center, that I'm guessing, is still trying to figure out what direction it's going to go. When are you going to the benefactors? Did you happen to have a conversation with them? Or did they hear we're going to start doing this? And they're like, that's fantastic. Was there any conversation like that?

[Dallin]  So naturally, this program had kind of already begun before we came here, okay. But, but they are 100% on board with it, and they completely understand the need. And in fact, they, they have 100% back to us and said, you know, where we're located is, is as close to central of the state as possibly can be. And they said, these messages need to be carrying forth from the Bastian center, they need to be you know, we need to be the banner of, of good mental health. For agricultural producers, we need to make sure that we're providing those resources and taking care of them. So yes, the family, the family's representatives, they are 100% backing this because they understand, right? I mean, when people say well, why, you know, they get to be outside all day, and they get a drive tractors, and they get to do all this stuff. Right. And so we do hear that, right? We hear that from the urban population asking, Well, why is it that I've heard that a farmer or rancher or producers or families would struggle with mental illness? And as we explained to them, why, you know, everything is really against a farmer, rancher producer, everything's against them. They can't control the weather. They can't control commodity prices. They can't control water, right. I mean, we had a drought year, a couple years ago, and you paid the same amount to the irrigation company, as you do every year. And yet, they only allotted us 75% of our water usage that a lot of these producers are either counting on irrigating pasture land so that they can feed their livestock or irrigating crops so that they can make you know enough to make a goal for the next year. They can't control diesel prices, right. I mean, they're they've settled down a little bit. But when you have a budget and you're planning on a certain amount that you're hoping that you're going to hopefully get for your commodities right but then all of a sudden you're getting two to three extra dollars. As a gallon added on top of that, for the diesel, you need to be able to run your operation. I mean, you can imagine and the picture that I like to paint is that these people are humans, right? Like they're there. They're not only farmers, but like their, their moms. And they're dads. And I look at one of my really close friends that is close to my age that does farm and ranch 100%. And he has kids that are my kids his age, he still has to pay for piano lessons and BiPAC packs, and make sure that there's food on the table for them and provide in that manner. Right. So he's got all those extra stresses that I have. But yet, I get to the fortunate opportunity to come to a job where I know at the end of every month and I get paid, I know what that dollar amount is going to be. So I have at least some of that security to know that that's going to happen. Where are farmers and ranchers right now? And, and they're also dealing with, you know, we talked about earlier on in this conversation about that urban sprawl that's happening everywhere. It's happening in Utah. It's happening in Iowa, it's happening everywhere. And it's really hard. It's a hard thing, because the more encroachment happens, the less understanding folks are about Yep. cows and sheep do smell a little bit. And yep, we bale our hay in the early morning at two in the morning, as it were a desert here in Utah. And we've got to have to do it to be able to put those bales up. Right. And yes, the baler makes a noise and yes, there's shines. Yep. Yeah. Diesel makes noise. Yeah, that's the part of living in the country. I'm sorry. But that is that is process. I agree. But so Utah has a lot of folks that don't want that, right. They want everything but that. And so you're battling that constantly. And then also, if you can imagine my friend as an example, he is seventh generation. He his his pioneer ancestors established our community, and that weight on his back alone, to continue that on and not be the person that lost that legacy and heritage on top of all the other difficulties that he's facing, right? That is the type of stress that is constantly on the shoulders of our producers. And yet, we all still go to the fast food joint, we all still go to the grocery store, we get all of the wonderful commodities that are being produced at that expense, by that individual. Right. And oftentimes, we don't think anything about it.

[Yeager]  So hold it right there. Josh and I will continue our discussion, and we're going to get into another testimonial about why his work has become so important. That'll be in the next episode, which comes out each Tuesday, specifically next Tuesday is when that podcast comes out. But if you're watching these two weeks in a row, they should be right next to each other. My thanks to David Feingold as our audio mixer. Our executive producer is David Miller. I'm Paul Yeager. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Bye bye