Last month saw long-time Mulgimaa (made up of the historical parishes of Halliste, Helme, Karksi, Tarvastu and Paistu mainly in Viljandi and Valga counties – ed.) organic producer Pajumäe Farm announce it will be closing its doors. The reasons for the decision include people's modest purchasing power, price pressure by larger competitors and lack of sufficient investment capacity. While being humanly exhausted is at least as much to blame and haunts many small companies in Estonia.

Pajumäe Farm is not a major producer by any stretch of the imagination, while the trademark is well-known and important in other ways.

The family farm was restored to Arvo Veidenberg in 1989 where he started a dairy herd even before Estonia regained its independence. In 2001, when a part of Estonia was still exhibiting Mehukatti withdrawal symptoms, Pajumäe started producing organic food. The farm has been voted Estonia's Farm of the Year and Producer of the Year and its cattle shed and dairy have probably been visited by every single Estonian president.

All of it will end on the last day of May. Not because the bank is about to foreclose on the property. Current owner Viljar Veidenberg, who took over running the farm from his father 15 years ago, wants to wrap up the business in a way that allows him to keep the family home and settle all financial obligations. All bills and wages have been paid to date. It would be possible to keep trying, maybe even weather the rough patch. But it is difficult to do when worrying about the future keeps you up at night and induces panic attacks, as Veidenberg told the Maa Elu newspaper mid-February.

Pajumäe is somewhat special. For example, its production facilities are located at the heart of the ancestral family farm and cannot be sold separately unless you want strangers coming and going in your backyard. The farm has already moved from one generation to the next.

Many small and medium businesses are plagued by the question of what to do if the owner has run out of steam, while there is no one to take over the business. The deeper in the periphery the business, the harder it is to come up with an answer.

This mostly concerns the so-called winners generation who started their businesses from scratch or turned socialist production units into modern capitalist ventures in the 1990s. They have or are about to hit retirement age now.

Some have succeeded in handing over to the next generation. And if the new generation has enough vision, tenacity and local patriotism in the best sense of the term, such companies may still keep rural areas alive for a long time to come. But, as evidenced by the case of the Pajumäe Farm, this is no walk in the park even for experienced players, not to mention micro-industries that work as subcontractors or subcontractors' subcontractors. An activity that used to pay well in the days of cheap labor, while it barely helps keep food on the table now.

Others have found a larger competitor and sold their life's work to them. One of two things usually happens in such cases. The competitor can either acquire valuable employees and a production base to develop, which helps local life, or they can buy the company's trademark, customer base and equipment, which can all be utilized in another, bigger place.

Yet others find nothing, keep working until they are exhausted and then close shop. A few dozen unemployed hardly affect county-level statistics, while another village may have been delivered a blow it will never recover from. While it is also possible something better will come and take its place, things usually move in the opposite direction.

While remote working possibilities have expanded the range of jobs people can have living in the countryside, such jobs are few and not a good fit for many people. Rural enterprise isn't as field and forest-centered as it was a couple of decades ago, but a lot of businesses in other sectors only have enough for the owner and a few employees to do. The more enterprising a young person is at heart, the more likely they are to move their business into a larger city, even if they will stay in their parents' field.

All of it is happening not just to small businesses in small villages. Founders of companies employing a few hundred people and located in county centers may just as easily discover one day that their traditional production is of no interest to their children or grandchildren. But it is easier to find new owners for such companies and their size makes it possible to hire an executive manager and step out of the daily grind.

The saying that no one is irreplaceable is perhaps true in major corporations and cities. The smaller the place, business or nonprofit, the more it depends on the people running it. And if they run out of steam, local life may slow to a crawl and end altogether.

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