Keeping Up Appearances

Summers on the farm were spent taking care of all the chores that slip through the cracks of shorter, colder days with school—fixing fences, dehorning cattle, deep-cleaning the stalls, stacking bales, always stacking bales. I joined 4-H when I was 10, when my mother left my dad and moved my sisters and I to live with her parents. Before that, my time, outside of school, was spent mainly at the store, our family bar, with my YiaYia, cousins and bartenders tasked with keeping track of us. The smart bartenders just gave us quarters for Frogger, Donkey Kong and Space Shuttle pinball. That would shut us up. We’d clean rocks glasses, maybe help in the kitchen, hang with regulars and get judged by family members. Often we climbed the 8 foot tall taxidermied bear by the door, originally a polar bear turned brown after years of exposure to nicotine and tar.

With hobbies like that, maybe it comes as no surprise that when given the chance to spend time outside, I jumped, even if it involved a lot of cow shit and manual labor. The age of ten was my first personal year of demarcation from one life to another, and I’m going to say that the life of a child barfly and then farmer is a strange negotiation, possibly still being dealt with decades later. I took to the animals and I took to the work. I yearned, an uncomfortably dramatic word and completely appropriate, to prove myself to my older cousins, Kellie and Stacey, who knew so much more than I did, cursed liberally and fought violently. They thought I was soft, an opinion shared one day as one of them touch my palm. “Your hands are soft” scoffed in disgust.

Why so much contempt, you wonder? Have you never been blood-related to a person, I ask? Sure, the body keeps score, but have you ever noticed how family does too? I needed to prove myself, that I wasn’t some useless kid who spent her time drinking Shirley Temples in a bar, learning to light matches with one hand and play foosball with the other.

We joined 4-H, that gave us an outlet, something to do. Everyone on farms was in 4-H, or FFA-Future Farmers of America, a far nerdier group. We were newcomers, and my mom was divorced, we stood out a bit. Pay it no mind, just plug ahead. 4-H was organized by the projects you chose, I picked dairy, dairy judging and marksmanship. Dairy meant that I showed cows, heifers and steers at fairs, dairy judging meant I learned about different breed’s traits and marksmanship meant I went to a gun range with a .22 bolt action rifle.

Dairy judging is the ability to evaluate a cow as an investment, to see if she’s a good milker, if her legs will be able to carry her throughout the years, if her udder is strong enough to readily produce and deliver milk during her hopefully long lifetime. It’s not just a beauty contest, although a pretty cow is a pretty cow. Dairy judging is an assessment of a cow, and ultimately for a farmer to understand, when breeding a cow, the characteristics of the sire that will be best suited. It serves as foundational knowledge of livestock to strengthen and maintain a farm.

Throughout the summer, we travelled to small Maryland farms for dairy judging practice. The Baltimore County Judging team was comprised of me, the Erhardht brothers, first Brian and Bucky then their younger brother Kevin and Keith, and Jimmy Swift. My cousins were a part of it, but eventually aged out, becoming our defacto coaches along with Aunt Dar and my Uncle Kenny. Everyone would meet at the house after morning chores to travel to the farm hospitable enough to organize a practice, which involved a series of classes, each class comprised of four animals, heifers or cows, classes organized by age, just like the fair. We ranked the animals on scorecards. We were required to give reasons for two classes, an oral defense of rankings that required memorization.

The practices prepared us for Maryland State Fair competition at the end of summer. Placing well could mean a trip to the Wold Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, and possibly a path to a college scholarship. Most farmers don’t have money. If you know a rich farmer, you probably just know a rich person with a farm. If you’re good at it, if you can see cows, that’s the kind of untouchable thing that makes a great dairy farmer. Placing well told farmers you were someone to look out for, someone to respect.

We always looked forward to these practices, to leave the farm and see other kids. Farm life is not terribly social. 4-H kids from every county in Maryland went to these practices, it was a preamble to the state fair. Once a summer, we went over the Chesapeake Bay to Queen Anne’s County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a long, hot trip two hours each way. We visited two farms in Queen Anne’s County to make the trip worth it.

The first stop was Pintail Point, a fancy Holstein farm with shutters and ceiling fans in the milking parlour we wished we had in our house. Everything was always nicely painted. Pintail Point looked like a farm that belonged in a catalog called “America, the Dream.” Sure, everybody cleans up when people visit, but this was different. The farm spent money on things that don’t really matter when you’re milking cows, especially when everything costs a lot—tractors, medical bills, hay, except for the milk you’re selling.

Most farms milk twice a day, bringing the cows inside from the fields, especially when it’s nice out, then releasing them back out, twice a day. While being milked the cows are kept in a head gate that keeps them in the same place. That’s how most small family farms work. Pintail Point kept their cows in the milking barn for half the day, I noticed it because it was the first time I had seen that. A head gate isn’t inherently cruel, it’s a device helpful for milking, grooming, and vet visits. She can eat and lie down. But this decision was one made for time management reasons, made out of efficiency. That meant the cows stood on concrete for hours, increasing their stress.

The second farm that hosted us was Dorcas Bonafield’s. Dorcas¹ was in her early 60s those summers, she was short and wiry with a graying buzzcut, always in a white t-shirt with a soft pack of Lucky Strikes tucked into the pocket and blue work pants. Classic butch. Dorcas raised Jerseys, those sweet little brown cows. The reciprocal affection between her and her animals was palpable. Practice took place on what seemed to be her front lawn, which also served as a free range area for animals, dogs, cats, chickens, a heifer or two. They just roamed. I remember a cow that came up and nuzzled her muzzle right on Dorcas’ neck while she spoke. Dorcas didn’t have children, but the local kids in 4-H who didn’t live on farms showed her animals at the fair. I almost wrote “cattle”, but that word isn’t appropriate, it’s too detached.

Dorcas met her partner CJ (Clarabelle Jane) Klinger while they both served in the Air Force. After twenty years, they retired and moved to the Eastern Shore to farm. Dorcas passed in 2011, CJ in 2020. I never heard anyone speak ill of them or gossip about them. The 1980s were a particularly cruel period of time for gay people, almost a nonsensical statement given our current state of affairs, and still, the statement stands. Farmers are generally conservative people. I knew Dorcas was in the Armed Forces because my uncle told me, I knew about CJ from their individual obituaries which referred to one another as partners. Both Dorcas and CJ are interned at Arlington National Cemetery.

My Uncle Kenny respected Dorcas, so impressed by how she farmed and worked, how she kept her animals and what her care, knowledge and attention created. They were cut from the same clothe, quiet, smart, studious, generous. Her farm was the only one he took off work to visit each summer, this man who worked every day of his life.

Every single year, Dorcas’ cows outshone Pintail Point’s herd, the fanciest farm we visited, the farm that checked all the boxes for Classic American Farm, the one with all the resources, including decorative, completely un-needed white picket fences along already enclosed calves’ hutches. Pintail Point looked a dream, a perfect specimen for Life magazine, but it just lacked Dorcas’ heart.

I took note, probably not the first time and definitely not the last—just because something looks good doesn’t mean it is. The looking good part, keeping up appearances, that drains us. The scrappy places are usually the best, we only have so much energy and money, put it where it counts. And this is not an allegory. This is completely an allegory. The tiring part, always, is how much benefit of doubt we automatically grant those white picket fences, giving them power they shouldn’t have. But we’re all grown-ups here, we know how this goes down. Pretty hate machine for the win.

The phrase ‘labor of love’ exhausts me. It probably exhausts most of you too. People are compelled, people are bound, by their integrity, by doing what they think is right. We do the things we care about because we must, especially in this brutal world. I keep seeking Dorcas Bonafield online, searching through different agriculture reports by decade, looking for her in the cracks. I’ve emailed the Queen Anne’s County 4-H Extension office², hoping some earnest administrator will regale me with stories about her until the cows come home, as the saying goes. Alas, no response. Just her obituary and my memories. I want more, if those brief memories are so incredible, if I took so much away from those visits, imagine how much more more will be?

Honestly though, I don’t need more. What I learned from Dorcas has stuck with me, becoming a part of me, and that’s enough. Example set. And while that is such a cheesy thing to write, there’s nothing cheesy about Dorcas Bonafield. Another important takeaway.

1. Let’s give it up for the country names! Birdie Mae, Flossie, Doris, Wilbur, Elmer, Waylon…

2. But give me a holler if you want to go to the Queen Anne’s County Fair, August 8-16th.