EVIDENCE
C ORA TOOK OVER THE FINANCIAL AFFAIRS OF THE FARM AND AT once became alarmed when she examined the records, which Grahm kept in shoeboxes in the bedroom closet.
“We’re going broke!” she exclaimed.
“Farming isn’t easy,” said Grahm, trying to coax her back to the bed and away from the ocean of papers spreading over the bare wooden floor like great sheets of sea foam.
“Grahm, stop. We aren’t being paid for our work. For crying out loud, who sets the price of our milk?”
“It’s complicated,” said Grahm.
Over the next several months Cora decided to find out how complicated it was, and she began pouring over receipts and canceled checks and consulting with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the local chapter of the National Farmers Union. The answers seemed clear enough: a century of government policies directed at favoring industry at the expense of the rural economy was still achieving its goal, reducing farmers from 70 percent of the population to 2 percent. And what the government did not accomplish through laws and regulatory boards was completed by giant agribusiness.
She confronted Grahm in the barn as he went from cow to cow attaching the milking machine to the animals’ soft, leathery udders.
“It’s all wrong,” she said, balancing her daughter—an uneasy child—between her right arm and hip. “Our milk prices are set by the people buying it, with government help.”
“It’s always been like that,” he said.
“It’s unfair,” said Cora. “Every year the price of milk in the stores goes up while the farm price doesn’t change. The people selling to us and buying from us are making money. We aren’t.”
Grahm looked at his hands. He tried to keep his life manageable by limiting his attention to things he could control. Open discussions of government agricultural policies caused him great discomfort. His otherwise reasonable and beloved grandfather had been so sure that the big chemical and seed companies were single-mindedly undermining his livelihood and his health that he occasionally exploded in apoplectic fits of red-faced fist waving at the dinner table. In his declining years his grandfather imagined corporations taping his telephone conversations, filming his trips into town, and discussing his farming methods behind mahogany desks in St. Louis.
Cora returned to the house to make supper. The next day she began looking for work, and babysitters. The following week she took a part-time job as a waitress. Two weeks later she found full-time employment at the American Milk Cooperative, a nationwide farmer-owned organization that marketed milk from more than 40,000 dairy farms, including theirs. Within the first year, she was awarded two pay increases at the branch office in Grange and the following year became an assistant bookkeeper.
Their situation improved. Though much of the money Cora earned went toward the farm operation, they now had a fairly reliable automobile, a roof that did not leak, and a refrigerator with a self-defrosting freezer compartment.
At the same time, their lives became more hectic, a frantic race from one workstation to another. The children were alone, they feared, too much. Cora often found reason to believe that Seth and Grace had grown bigger—grown up—during the space of a single day away from her.
In an effort to lower debt, Grahm added five more cows to his herd. He began leaving the house at 4:30 a.m. and did not return until after 8:00 p.m. They no longer kept a garden and had little time on the weekends for anything other than chores they neglected during the week. And for Grahm, weekends merged seamlessly with weekdays, as indistinguishable as links in a chain. Like most of their neighbors, they came to accept a state of perpetuating fatigue.
In April, Cora returned from work and found Grahm in the
machine shed kneeling beside a grain drill. He set down the grease gun, with
C ORA TOOK OVER THE FINANCIAL AFFAIRS OF THE FARM AND AT once became alarmed when she examined the records, which Grahm kept in shoeboxes in the bedroom closet.
“We’re going broke!” she exclaimed.
“Farming isn’t easy,” said Grahm, trying to coax her back to the bed and away from the ocean of papers spreading over the bare wooden floor like great sheets of sea foam.
“Grahm, stop. We aren’t being paid for our work. For crying out loud, who sets the price of our milk?”
“It’s complicated,” said Grahm.
Over the next several months Cora decided to find out how complicated it was, and she began pouring over receipts and canceled checks and consulting with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the local chapter of the National Farmers Union. The answers seemed clear enough: a century of government policies directed at favoring industry at the expense of the rural economy was still achieving its goal, reducing farmers from 70 percent of the population to 2 percent. And what the government did not accomplish through laws and regulatory boards was completed by giant agribusiness.
She confronted Grahm in the barn as he went from cow to cow attaching the milking machine to the animals’ soft, leathery udders.
“It’s all wrong,” she said, balancing her daughter—an uneasy child—between her right arm and hip. “Our milk prices are set by the people buying it, with government help.”
“It’s always been like that,” he said.
“It’s unfair,” said Cora. “Every year the price of milk in the stores goes up while the farm price doesn’t change. The people selling to us and buying from us are making money. We aren’t.”
Grahm looked at his hands. He tried to keep his life manageable by limiting his attention to things he could control. Open discussions of government agricultural policies caused him great discomfort. His otherwise reasonable and beloved grandfather had been so sure that the big chemical and seed companies were single-mindedly undermining his livelihood and his health that he occasionally exploded in apoplectic fits of red-faced fist waving at the dinner table. In his declining years his grandfather imagined corporations taping his telephone conversations, filming his trips into town, and discussing his farming methods behind mahogany desks in St. Louis.
Cora returned to the house to make supper. The next day she began looking for work, and babysitters. The following week she took a part-time job as a waitress. Two weeks later she found full-time employment at the American Milk Cooperative, a nationwide farmer-owned organization that marketed milk from more than 40,000 dairy farms, including theirs. Within the first year, she was awarded two pay increases at the branch office in Grange and the following year became an assistant bookkeeper.
Their situation improved. Though much of the money Cora earned went toward the farm operation, they now had a fairly reliable automobile, a roof that did not leak, and a refrigerator with a self-defrosting freezer compartment.
At the same time, their lives became more hectic, a frantic race from one workstation to another. The children were alone, they feared, too much. Cora often found reason to believe that Seth and Grace had grown bigger—grown up—during the space of a single day away from her.
In an effort to lower debt, Grahm added five more cows to his herd. He began leaving the house at 4:30 a.m. and did not return until after 8:00 p.m. They no longer kept a garden and had little time on the weekends for anything other than chores they neglected during the week. And for Grahm, weekends merged seamlessly with weekdays, as indistinguishable as links in a chain. Like most of their neighbors, they came to accept a state of perpetuating fatigue.
In April, Cora returned from work and found Grahm in the
machine shed kneeling beside a grain drill. He set down the grease gun, with
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