AMY ZARANEK

TO THE FARMER ON THE DAIRY OUTSIDE OF FORT WAYNE WHOSE FLOODLIGHTS TURNED ON AT DUSK:

I hope you saw the start of a sunset through your milkhouse windows, or the slats in the five-generation-weathered barn, or above the kitchen sink as you hand washed the supper dishes, and I hope you hurried through chores to claim your favorite spot on the porch to just watch. As you sat, curled under a blanket with your wife, the porch swing creaking, I hope the sky turned all the colors of autumn leaves for you, reminding you why you farm. Why you do it. Why you worry about market prices and the rising cost of diesel and farmer suicides and Walmart’s monopoly on dairy.

I hope the sunset makes you remember how well your daughter’s steer did at the Indiana state fair in 2019, and I hope her new one does just as well this year. I hope your son made you proud in his final year of FFA, and I hope he decides to come back to the farm after college. I hope there’s a farm for him to come back to. Your daughter, well, it’s been her dream since the beginning but I know now you’re hoping that some 4H boy won’t catch her eye with the flashy new pickup he bought on his town family’s dime.

I hope the fresh heifers don’t give you too much trouble in the morning, and I hope you’re not tempted to check your watch and head inside because 3 a.m. comes awfully early these days. But I should know you know after fifty years the exact time those floodlights come on, the exact time of sunrise and sunset every day of the year. (You’ve seen them all from this porch, from your childhood to tonight.) You know when the first snow flurries fall—this far south, you’ve probably got at least another month—and when the thaw will muddy your cows’ legs and threaten to pull off your muck boots when you go find the escaped calf in the woods. When the flies hatch, and the mosquitoes shortly after. And, this time of year, your favorite, when the air is sweet with the scent of corn put up in silos, harvest-crisp in the mornings and evenings and all the more reason to snuggle close to the woman who keeps it running right alongside you.

I hope you know how much your crew loves when you bring them waffles in the morning or sneak them slices of pizza through the free stalls while they work. You have treated them with respect, whether they filled the barns with laughter or cuss words or rap or country, and they appreciate that. That you don’t discount the women based on gender or the high schoolers based on age. That you haven’t replaced any of them with robots, like the farm down the road. That you make them all feel like family, not in that toxic corporate way but genuinely welcomed into a life that demands their lives. You can’t do agriculture part time.

I hope tonight, as you watch the sky blazing and see a small dot of blinking light flying high above you, that someone up there recognizes the life you’ve made. But even more so, I hope you recognize it yourself: that you have given your animals a good life, and in doing so, have built a good one for your family and the community around you. I hope you know that you are not the villain, that you carry on a centuries-long tradition and you carry it well, and that all you can ask as a reward is the sunset on a front porch as the floodlights come on, and in the morning another sunrise and the chance to do it again.

Sincerely,

The former dairy worker thirty-thousand feet above you.

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AMY ZARANEK IS A WRITING BY WRITERS FELLOW WITH PUBLICATIONS IN HAD, ABOUT PLACE JOURNAL, AND ELSEWHERE. HER ESSAYS HAVE BEEN ANTHOLOGIZED IN OUR BEST WAR STORIES AND TALES FROM SIX FEET APART. SHE HOLDS AN MFA FROM ASHLAND UNIVERSITY, WHERE SHE SERVED AS THE MANAGING EDITOR OF THE BLACK FORK REVIEW. AMY NOW LIVES AND WRITES IN METRO DETROIT WITH HER HUSBAND AND DOG. VISIT HER WEBSITE AT WWW.AMYZARANEK.COM.