We sure as hell didn't. When I was married, there was no medicare and old age pensions were at 70 years of age. We spent 50 years paying off the farm. I worked 8 hours a day in the local hospital and worked in a large vegetable garden or baling and putting hay in the barn afterwards. My husband worked the land and looked after the cows, which required 2 hours morning and evening. He had to work in the fields to well into the nights in the spring and fall, as well. I grew a huge garden, canned everything from vegetables to fish and meat. Oh and I made most of our clothes from diapers, snowsuits, work pants and dress shirts to curtains and bedspreads!!
I remember getting flak from smart guys who spent an 8 hour day at work and had evenings and weekends off because we had free milk!! I kept chickens and turkeys and raised 3 children. That included making their clothes from diapers to snowsuits and shirts and pants for my husband as well as my clothes for work. On top of which most of those early years, what we got for the produce was always less that it cost to grow them. My earliest nasty memory was getting the first milk cheque for the milk and it was for $56.00 and the feed bill for those cows was $79.00. So, don't even go there. Canada's food supply has always been subsidized, because most people could not afford the cost to feed themselves otherwise. It is still the same, only the subsidies are better or you would be starving!!
Oh and there was NO medicare back then, we paid for the delivery of all children as well as the RH twins that spent a month in the Montreal Children's hospital, for the anesthesiology, and the family doctor and the all the formula the hospital prepared for a week at home!!
So, I sure as hell did not get anything for free. If you think farmers borrowed against our children's future........forget it. We got just enough to pay the bills period. Since the government set the price of our product and gave us just enough to survive on I don't feel a bit guilty about getting a mint for the land.