I started getting milk from Karen and Ed's farm eight years ago. They were the ones who told us about ACRES and got us started on farming the way we are. Right after we were married, we farm-sat for them for a weekend and got to milk the cows. They have been so helpful and inspiring to us. Generally, when I have a problem with the goats or cows I first look it up in Pat Coleby, then I'll Google it, and then I call Karen and Ed. The only reason I don't call them first is because I don't want to bother them for something that would be easily looked up. Just a few months ago, Ed came out and showed us how to castrate Meat-head, something that we really needed to see done to do it right. The gift of this skill will be useful the whole time we are involved in farming.
Their farm and their cows are beautiful. So many babies and families in the community have been nourished by their hard work. At his service this past Saturday, I was honored with the privilege to read a poem by Wendell Berry. It speaks to me so much of Ed and of the farm and the life that he and Karen built, that I am repeating it here, in honor of Ed Sherwood:
The Man Born to Farming
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark?
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