Veterinary Farm

I walked past Amethyst farm and up the hill of North East street that coasts along the back edges of town and towards North Amherst. On my right up ahead was another farm, a red one that tucked away behind the road, and was accessible through a dirt driveway that fell from the paved road. Things looked pretty busy in the driveway, a man stepping out of a U.P.S. truck with a box in hand. There are many trucks angled across its light brown dirt, parked. I walked up to the first people I saw, hoping that my presence wouldn't be too much of an imposition on their workload. There was a wiry woman standing in the doorway of a little white building that has a door with credit card stickers on its windows: VISA, Mastercard, and other accepted credit forms. The woman's s hair was red, she was short, and wore wide framed glasses that closed in tightly around her alert eyes. Her energy was bright past her years and she looked curiously at me as I stood at the stoop with my camera in hand. A postman was at my side, delivering boxes in and out of the door.

I asked the woman if it was okay if I take pictures. She asked what they were for and I said that I was compiling photographs for class. She said that it was fine as long as it was for school. I told her I went to Umass and laughing, she said that her name was Sarah and that her daughter was a freshman at Umass now.

"She's part of the writing department. The shortest and smallest little one...that's my daughter."
"Maybe you can take my picture too," joked the U.P.S. man as he stepped back outside, framing his face between his hands.
"So...is the man who owns this farm around?" I asked the old woman with the bright red hair.
"Shame. You just missed him. He's out on the road now. He'll be out on the road all day."
"Is the purpose of this farm for developing eggs or creating beef?" I asked somewhat dumbly.
"Oh no. This is a veterinary farm."

I glanced outside and at the wall above an entrance to the main indoor area where animals were kept and saw a painting of a cow grazing on a green field, and the title of the farm said "Holstein Farm" in big blue letters. The woman was scurrying around the office, picking up papers for the packages that had been delivered and putting them away in filing cabinets. She was a secretary of sorts, a bundle of laid back authority.

"His name is Dr. Hess," she said.
"Who's that?"
"He's the veterinarian that works here."

A man walked in from outside with a shovel in his hand, wearing a Carhartt jacket. His boots were caked in mud and he looked to be in his mid thirties. He introduced himself as Larry and commented on the weather and how it wasn't too bad, considering he had to be outside all day. WIth excitement he asked Sarah if the calf had been born yet. Sarah answered no, unfortunately not. These people's lives revolve around the cycles of animals and each animal is treated with such close attention that they are like nephews, visited every so often but generally left to their own devices.

Thanking her for allowing me to take photos I walked under the pass and into the main barn. It was dimly lit, golden around the edges and filled with the fine dust of dirt that pixelated the area of light that shone in from the windows. The rows of windows that lay across the right wall splashed sunshine across the brown floor. The ceiling was old, split apart in places, and filled at parts with hay, jammed between the crevices between beams and ceiling, jagged ends of nature protruding, tentacles from the room's head. Straight ahead was a sad calf in his own little metal cage, standing in the center still young, mainly black with white on its heels and in a splotch on its forehead. Behind him was a larger trapping of wooden banisters that contained two cows who stood next to one another with tags on their ears, and leaning their heads over the top of the fence as I walked by. These animals aren't the sick ones, I had been told, they were Dr. Hess's animals, raised as replacements for when cows at other farms became too old and stopped producing as high quality milk.

In a clumsy effort the male cow kept on trying to mount the female, rearing up and hoisting its heavy front legs onto the female. The female brushed him away and spun around. The male tried again. For a second, I thought that the male was trying to boost himself out of the cage so that he could escape the confines of his area and come after me; for some reason I have a sneaking suspicion of animals revolting against me, the man with the camera who does not appear familiar to them. The twitter and cackle of black birds filled the inside of the barn as they swooped from the ceiling and replanted themselves in different spots. The atmosphere of the room was that of aged composure, remarkable for its the ability to remain standing even against the weather of nature and time, the unpainted walls white and stained with water in places, the floors coated in hay, and various containers for the upkeep of the place standing next to the cages. Working my way towards the back I saw the pregnant cow, a massive brown creature whose sides near its utters appeared to be worn away by dirt, the raw looking flesh scabbed over with brown fleshy areas that combed over the otherwise austere black coat of its fur. Its stomach hung low towards the floor and you could tell that it would be giving birth very soon.
These animals have limited language, composed of grunts, the rounding sounds of mooing, and yet their eyes carry a world of integrity, a steadfast determination to remain simple, a dying sense of anger or attitude as if to express a dislike for being looked at.
Leaving the barn, the sun struck across the land, and showed the shadowy divots of the earthen driveway where trucks had worn their way through. And back beyond that barn were other red buildings, rooster red, and outside them was a tractor, its detached spindly arms. Big black tubes lay across the ground awaiting use. Further down the road, smoke was rising from a large mountain of what looked like wood chips and dirt and big metal plows were hauling their weight back and forth across the mess like determined ants of a newer age.

-Ezra Prior-