End of the day. First cow heads out to pasture for the night.

  May 11, 2009 – There are three more days to go for the Clark Farm. The cows (hopefully) leave Thursday morning and the waiting has been excruciating for John, his family and grandsons, and his friends and workers. Today, when I came by, Mark, a friend of John’s,  taught me how to milk one of the cows, using the sucking tubes that pull the milk up via an aerator into a metal tube that runs along the barn ceiling. I did pretty well. The cow was genial, even indifferent.
  Farming is a close community, and I will never get inside that circle, but I feel both welcome and comfortable in the big dairy barn, where everyone works quietly and works hard. There is a sense of dread, sadness, and sometimes, relief. I learn something new every day, most of it relating to how difficult farming is, how attached farmers get to their life and animals. People lose their jobs and businesses all the time in the United States, and yet I feel as if I am witnessing a particularly American tragedy, the passing of an individualistic, community-driven life that is simply no longer possible in so complex, market-drive, corporate and callous a culture. Everyone I talk to about John Clark says exactly the same thing, Republican or Democratic, left or right: How can we bail out banks and Wall Street investment firms, but ignore the plight of small farmers like John, who have been working hard to feed us their whole lives? I think for most of us, the truth is we care, but don’t really know how to care. Our economic world seems insane, and well beyond my comprehension. I also see that life is become so complex and inexpensive and corporate in scope that it is nearly impossible for individuals to survive.
  I’m going back to do more milking this week. I will not suffer John’s loss, but I will miss the farm a lot.