If you live anywhere around Cambridge, N.Y., put June 30 in your calendar. And go see this man and his remarkable farm.

His name is Ed Gulley and when he is gone, if that ever happens, you will not see the like of him again. Writers are a dime a dozen, but rugged individualists with small dairy farms are getting rare.

I could take portraits of Ed Gulley all day every day, his face is a living and moving kaleidoscope, one day clean-shaven, the next with a Santa Claus beard, sometimes looks mean, sometimes sweet, but as he likes to joke (ok, i do) always old and ugly. And don’t be standing around if he’s angry, he castrates and slaughters his own animals.

As you can tell, I love Ed, we are unlikely brothers, but brothers still, sometimes a troubling thought for both of us. Actually, Ed is five or six years younger than I am, but life on a dairy farm brings character to one’s face, and Ed often looks like a grumpy Father Time with a wicked sense of humor. No two photos of him are the same.

One day I might just publish a book of Ed Gulley photographs and portraits, I’d make it into the National Gallery. Ed is an artist, a philosopher, the Wendell Berry of our country, squawking day and night to anyone who will listen about the unfairness of milk pricing and the plight of the small farmer, a vanishing breed.

Ed loves animals in the way someone who lives with them 24 hours a day does, yesterday I saw him on his knees soothing a frostbitten possum he rescued from a bitter cold winter night. Ed is an animal whisperer, he strokes and pets his possum, even while the wary little thing hisses at him. Ed will release him soon into the forest.

Ed is an Edosaurus, the last of a breed, and he is not going quietly. (He said he dressed up for me because he knew I would bring my camera, he put on his Superman Sweatshirt.) Ed and Carol Gulley are planning an event I personally would not dream of missing, a June 30, 2018 Bejosh Farm Open House. You can see cows, goats, pheasants, chickens, calves and cows.

And the wonderful folk art he has made out of industrial farm parts. You can follow the Open House on the remarkable Bejosh Farm Journal, now read all over the world. Ed is now a gasbag with a blog (yes, I know…), a dangerous thing.

Maybe that’ s why we are brothers.

By June, I imagine Carol will have persuaded him to chuck the beard, and Ed will look just like any other old mountain man. (Whatever you do, don’t tell him you drink skim milk.)

But I would want to kid  you, the main event will be Ed himself, if you twist his arm (or even breathe, ) you will hear jokes, folk tales, farm wisdom, wonderful stories about animals and Ed’s exciting new farm and folk art.

He really is a genius, if you can get past that face.

I have, and I love the man. And nobody has ever asked to take my portrait.