We stopped by to buy a chicken from our friends Ed and Carol Gulley, dairy farmers from White Creek, N.Y. They wouldn’t let us pay of course. Ed was sporting a flashy braid in his bear (the braid is to keep the beard away from the milk while he’s milking cows, sometimes has two of them). Ed is building an addition on his farmhouse, he is doing the whole thing entirely by himself.

Ed has been a farmer his whole life, but in recent years, has become what he calls a “junk artist,” making sculptures and other creations out of discarded tractor and engine parts and other farm detritus. Ed wants me to do a video on the lost culture of rural life, he says he’ll be Executive Producer. It could just work.

Ed is an artist, it is boiling up right out of him. We are pushing him to have an art show in the Spring. He could do a cow-milking demo at the same time. Ed was astonished when I told him I spent hundreds of dollars having risers installed on my septic tank (so it can be pumped without digging it up.) He says he makes his own risers out of old bricks. I believe it.

We love visiting the Gulleys, they are full of life and love. Ed and Carol are also among the greatest animal lovers I have ever known.