HARRISBURG — A fourth-generation dairy farmer told a legislative panel at the Pennsylvania Farm Show on Wednesday that he felt backed into two choices after he lost his family farm in Somerset County — strum a guitar or pick up a shotgun leaning next to it against his bedroom wall.

Jeff Corle chose the guitar; wrote a song about his painful experience, “Empty Barn”; and found a new connectivity to the people who drive Pennsylvania’s agricultural industry and who share the same daily stressors that led Corle to his life-or-death decision.

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