Ed and Carol Gulley had to put down their 15-year-old spaniel, Ms Uggie this week. I was fortunate to take a photograph of Ed holding his old dog a week or so ago. Looking back at it this morning, I was shocked by its power.

In many ways, a farm is the greatest teacher about life and death, farmers live with both every day. The Gulleys are one week into their new blog the Bejosh Farm Journal, and they both say it has changed their lives and made them happy. Something inside both of them needed to come out, and it is.

I admire Ed for many reasons, one is his focus. They went out and bought a computer, a new Iphone and learned to use both. Our friend Deb Foster went to their farm and helped them set up their blog in just a few minutes.

Carol and Ed are both writing up a storm. They are doing everything good bloggers do, write well, write often, write honestly.

I told them when we first discussed a blog – neither of them knew what a blog was – that blogs are about many things, but one of the most important is the idea of giving voice. For the first time in the history of the world, anyone can raise their voice to the world, free their inner spirits and find their voice.

Voice is, I believe, essential to identity. In our modern world, media and messages are all in the hands of giant and greedy corporations, they are vampires in many ways, they feed off the conflict, hatred and misery of the world and profit from it. The more divided the world, the greater the arguments, the bigger the profits.

People like Ed Gulley – he has a lifetime of wisdom, thought and experience to share – had no way of doing it. Only the media was supposed to do it, and they have too often squandered away our trust and faith in them as they became corporatized profit centers. Farmers like Ed Gulley became voiceless, forgotten by the very society they feed.

Now, we have new tools, new ways of finding our voice, affirming our identity. We don’t need gatekeepers and big media. Tthe Gulleys have already shown a genius for telling their stories and writing in their own distinctive voices.

Carol Gulley imagined a conversation between her beloved goat Sadie and two young calves who will grow up to be oxen. it was creative and inventive and funny. Ed shares the shape and feel of his days on the farm, the chores, surprises, the animals, the weather, the dates on the calendar, his passion for passing gas, in words and deed.

Their blog is real, touching, funny. You can see it for yourself. It is the authentic voice of an American farm family, they are supposed to be extinct, but the Gulleys are very much alive. They have not yet written about the death of Ms Uggie, I imagine they are still learning how to share grief and reality and life and death, it is so common to them they don’t always see the value of it to others.

They will. They already have many loyal followers.