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I don’t doubt it is the Oxy abuse capital, which is sad.

However, it isn’t all darn hippies...as described below. My wife and I stayed for a week at a working dairy farm which was a cross between a dairy dude ranch and a bed and breakfast...it was great. They could have around 15 guests at a time...no Internet...no television...:) While we were there, there were two families, one had three kids, the other had six!

A young, good looking clean cut guy came each day at around 3:30 PM and began working the cows. I walked around with him, asking him questions. He looked to be a senior in high school. He said he loved the work. I asked him if he grew up on a dairy farm, and he said no, but his sister dated one of the farmer’s sons, and they asked him once if he wanted some work, and...now that is his livelihood. It is what he wants to do for work. He seemed like a real American kid, and not a leftist snowflake. Just a guy maybe a senior her perhaps a year or two out, no tattoos, nose rings, long hair and weird clothes. Short, clean haircut, blue jeans and polo shirt. And he just went to work and did the job.

While I was at that farm, they had several calves birthed each day, and they would stick the calf in the front of a front loader with one of the employees, and take it up to the row of calf pens. (I think they had one working bull and several hundred cows...a busy male indeed!)

It was odd and new to me, but it all seemed quite businesslike.

Later in the day, as I sat on the porch watching, one of the employees went to clean the pens, looked in, and waved to the farmer who was perhaps 100 yards away, and when she got his attention, she drew her finger across her throat.

They just got the front loader, put the calf in it, and took it down to a ditch they dug and buried it. That was it. Very businesslike.

But they completely did not have to use any force at all that I saw the entire time they were there. They pretty much just steered the cows where they wanted them to go, and when they were done, steered them somewhere else.

At some point, a number of the cows broke out and went up to the pens that had the calves. They just walked up to the cows, and led the all back to the cow shed.

They seemed like contented cows, and the staff seemed very unstressed. Even when a couple of pigs got out, the farmer just matter of factly got them back into their pen.

The whole workflow seemed extremely structured, predictable and a bit quiet and sedate. 4 AM to 10 AM, milking #1. 4 PM to 10 PM, milking #2. All kinds of steady work and cleaning in between.

Very different pace of work. It didn’t appear to be back breaking work, but it was 100% steady and paced.

I think I could understand how someone could love that work. My work is hair on fire work. I didn’t see a lot of things to make your hair catch on fire there.

But seeing that young man, talking to him...it gave me hope. It made me think America can still produce real Americans.