Whenever I see any of Ed’s  grandsons or granddaughters, I think of the family farm, and how much it will be missed, and how much it has shaped the character of so many Americans. Jaiboy is one of Ed’s grandsons, but his quiet and courteous manner seems  to come from another time.

I’ve never seen him on Facebook or his cell phone, he is eager to work to be outside, and he is open and easy about his love for his family and for the farm.

I asked if he wanted to pose with a portrait with his grandfather, and he nodded quietly. He has no unease or awkwardness about his love of Ed, his grandkids are all over him now, another testament to the love inside of him.

In the Gully farmhouse, I always think of the writings of Wendell Berry, who writes so beautifully about the devastating loss to communities at the hands of the country-to-city migration that has taken farmland from the hands of people like Ed and Jaiboy and left it in the hands of only five per cent of the people.

The movement of people from the farm to the city was- is –  a devastating earthquake, it shattered culture and character.

“A competent farmer,” write Berry, ” is his own boss. He has learned the disciplines necessary to go ahead on his own, as required by economic obligation, loyalty to his place, pride in his work. His workdays require the use of long experience and practiced judgment, for the failures of which he knows that he will suffer. His days do not begin and end by rule, but in response to necessity, interest, and obligation. They are not measured by the clock, but by the task and his endurance; they last as long as necessary or as long as he can work. he has mastered intricate formal patterns in ordering in his work within the overlapping cycles – human and natural, controllable and uncontrollable – of the life of a farm.”

Ed would love nothing more than for Jaiboy to be a farmer, but in our world, that becomes  less and less likely to happen every day. Still, it is heartening to see him at Bejosh Farm working so hard on behalf of his grandfather. It’s what farm kids do.