Digging Deep
by Lisa Catterall
For Trina Moyles, life on a farm has always had a certain appeal. Growing up in Peace River, she was inspired by the grit and determination of her great-grandmother Eleanor, who became a farmer out of necessity when her husband and sons left to fight in the Second World War. Although she only heard stories of Eleanor second-hand from her grandfather, they planted a seed deep in her consciousness—a connection to the land where her family had first laid down roots.
These stories of strength and hardship also created a passion for social and environmental justice. As a young adult, her interest in food security, sustainable agriculture, human rights and gender equality led her around the world to work and volunteer with grassroots organizations.
Her passion led her to Uganda in 2013, where debate around the country’s marriage and divorce bill was heating up. Although Moyles had witnessed adversity in many of the places she’d worked, word of a local woman’s tragic death in the wake of this debate left an indelible mark on her heart and mind. The young woman had simply requested her name be placed on her husband’s land title. For this, she was murdered.
“I was working at a healthcare organization at the time, and as a visitor it was a slap across the face, like, ‘oh my god, this is the reality the women that I’ve been interacting with are facing,’” she says. That night, Moyles was impelled to speak out against the wrongs she had indirectly witnessed. She returned to her dark, humid room and furiously penned the foundation of what would one day become her first book, Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism and the Fight to Feed the World.
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The spark of injustice had ignited a flame in Moyles. She regarded the women she encountered with a renewed sense of compassion and encouragement, knowing that each one of them had a story of their own. A story she hoped to understand and share.
Armed with a tape recorder and notebook, Moyles set out down gravel and dirt roads, riding in the backs of pickup trucks or on motorcycles to agricultural communities around the world, interviewing nearly 150 female farmers along the way. She was determined to hear their stories and encourage conversations about the challenges they faced. “I was so hungry to talk to women,” she says. “As I spoke to more of them, I started to see similarities in a lot of what was being said.”
Funded by grants, family and Kickstarter boosters, Moyles spent more than three years traversing four continents to connect with women in agriculture and gather stories for Women Who Dig. She returned home to Alberta periodically, taking time to reflect on the narratives she’d heard while taking on odd jobs to finance this labour of love. Whether washing duck eggs on a farm outside Edmonton or spending long, lonely hours in a remote northern Alberta fire tower, the women she’d met—the women who dig—were always on her mind.
Among stories of empowerment and strength, she learned of overwhelming obstacles like patriarchal land ownership, financial inequality, colonialism and domestic violence. She experienced flashes of anxiety when husbands carefully scrutinized her interviews with their wives, feelings of devastation when women spoke about farmers burning rainforests in Nicaragua, and moments of heartbreak when they said they wouldn’t wish life on a farm for their children.
“I had to share these stories, even if they were hard to discuss, because that is the reality for so many women,” she says. “It’s hard to be a farmer today, and I wanted to take a realistic approach to telling that story.”
As the book began to take shape, Moyles was compelled to return to her own roots and share the stories of women like Dawn Boileau, owner of Sunrise Gardens and other Alberta farmers. Much like her great-grandmother Eleanor, they were trailblazers on the Canadian prairies.
“Women like Dawn are breaking into the field in unique ways because the cost of farmland and farm equipment to do larger-scale agriculture is so prohibitive,” she says. “It’s exciting. Today there are young, single female farmers who are able to access loans from Farm Credit Canada to get started. You no longer have to be in a partnership with someone—you don’t have to be the farmer’s wife anymore. You can just be the farmer.”
Moyles’ doesn’t plan to stop here. Her next book will be about her fire tower experiences along with a larger commentary on conservation of the boreal forest, climate change and wildfire.
“It’s been an amazing opportunity to reconnect with my northern Albertan roots, and learn about the boreal forest and fire ecology, even if it meant 130 days straight of isolation.”
More information on this upcoming book, or Women Who Dig, is available at trinamoyles.com.