slow food nations 161hundred gallons of Jersey milk throbbing and flowing upward through the
maze of clear, flexible pipes like a creamy circulatory system. A generator-
powered pump drew the milk from the cows’ udders into a refrigerated
stainless steel tank. The truck from an organic cooperative comes to fetch
it to the plant where it is pasteurized and packed into green- and-white
cartons. Where it may go from there is anyone’s guess. Our own super-
market back home stocks the brand, so over the years our family may
have purchased milk that came from this barn, or at least some molecules
of it mixed in with milk from countless other farms. As long as it meets
the company’s standards, with a consistent cream percentage and nomi-
nal bacterial counts, milk from this farm becomes just another part of the
blend, an anonymous commodity. This loss of identity seemed a shame,
given its origin. The soil minerals and sweetness of this county’s grass
must impart their own flavor to the milk, just as the regions of France fl a-
vor their named denominations of wine.
David came in from the cornfield shortly after milking time. He
laughed at himself for having lost track of time—as Elsie predicted—
while communing with his corn. We stood for a minute, retracting the
distances between our lives. Both David and Elsie are possessed of an
ageless, handsome grace. Elsie is the soul of unconditional kindness,
while David sustains a deadpan irony about the world and its inhabitants,
including his colleagues who wear the free caps with Cargill or Monsanto
logos: “At least they let you know who’s controlling their frontal lobes.”
David and Elsie live and work in exactly the place they were born, in his
case the same house and farm. It’s a condition lamented in a thousand
country music ballads, but seems to have worked out well for this couple.
We carried dishes of food from the kitchen to a picnic table under the
cherry trees. Hersh joined us, settling Noah into a high chair while Emily
brought a pitcher of milk from the tank in the barn. Obviously this family
had the genes to drink it. For the first time in awhile, I had C/T13910-
gene envy. Dinner conversation roamed from what we’d seen growing in
Canada to what’s new for U.S. farmers. David was concerned about the
National Animal Identification System, through which the USDA now
plans to attach an ID number and global positioning coordinates to every
domestic animal in the country. Anyone who owns even one horse,