The Crazy Act of Returning

From the outside looking in there is an unmistakable element of craziness to the enterprise.  In our second visit this week to the dairy farm -- my third sense spending an afternoon there in August -- we were struck afresh by the confining physicality of the relentless work, and were sobered again by the financial sacrifices chewed up by the "business."  But, of course, Lisa would chafe at the label.  This isn't, she would argue, a business; it is...

...actually, I'm not yet sure what she would call it.  Watching her, listening to her, following her around while she chatters and works and rants and raves about the constraints of government policy and the willful ignorance of the public and the soulless, extractive profit-taking of corporate agribusiness, words like "passion" and "crusade" and "vocation" spring quickly to mind.  But she tends not to talk that self-reflectively.  She prefers to talk about the cows -- their particular behavior patterns, their unique and individual personalities -- the milk, the science, laments about the deleterious effects of "nourishment" as moderns now try to satisfy it, and the importance of knowing your farmer.  Her website trumpets almost nothing about herself and her operation; using the space instead to provide links, in almost shouting font sizes and styles, to a petition advocating "Food Democracy Now", an article detailing the reasons not to drink pasteurized milk, along with the various support and advocacy associations of which she is a member.  This is, in other words, more of a Cause than a Career; a lifestyle and calling than a way to pay the bills -- several common necessities of which, because of the tight economics involved, she simply chooses to do without.  She is more concerned with her cows' comfort than her own.

It is easy to see why her mother thinks she is working too hard.  Any reasonable assessment would agree.  Except, Lisa would argue, when the reasons are as compelling as these 20 or so Jersey cows and their insatiably cavernous stomachs and swelling udders that get her out of bed in the mornings and fill her hours each day with energy, devotion, passion and purpose. 

And pure, precious milk.

It is, I suppose, crazy; but probably not as crazy as me being less intrigued by it all as moved;  and being drawn back to it time and again.

Not so much envious, as deeply appreciative...

...and awed; as though I haven't so much been tromping through the muck of a farm, as bowing in a very precious sanctuary.