Here is some unusually exciting farm news from Dimmitt, Texas. Dimmitt is a small town of just over 4000 people in the Panhandle. It has substantially more cows than humans, but as of last Monday, it has 18,000 fewer cows. The cows died when an explosion tore through the holding pens of the dairy farm where they lived. According to the Houston Chronicle,
“This would be the most deadly fire involving cattle in the past decade, since we started tracking that in 2013,” spokeswoman Marjorie Fishman said Thursday.
The article says this is about 3% of Texas’s milk cows.
I don’t have an opinion about this or anything clever to say. Even my joke in the subtitle of this post feels in bad taste as I write this. 18,000 cows dead in an explosion—it’s a mind-bogglingly weird catastrophe.
I wanted there to be a little bit of art in this post. This painting by Fragonard (on view at the MFAH) depicts a nostalgic, rose-colored scene of 18th century farm life. Imagine this cow, muliplied by 18,000, exploding. Wow.
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Wow, Robert, your story is truly heart-wrenching. It's incredibly thoughtful of you to bring Jean-Honoré Fragonard's painting, Boy Attempting to Restrain a Cow by a Rope, to our attention. It's a powerful reminder that a facility housing 18,000 cows can hardly be called a farm. A true farm involves land and buildings used for the purpose of rearing animals and growing crops, all under the care of a single owner or manager. The industrial milk factory you described was anything but a farm. This painting shows a young boy working with a single, individual cow, highlighting the special relationship caretakers have with the animals they raise. It's a much-needed counterpoint to the idea that healthy food comes pre-packaged in boxes. Thank you for sharing your perspective with us.