My wife sometimes asks why I keep ordering wings where we live, even if I know they won’t be good. In the end, I believe it’s a way to explain to myself where I come from and how that place has shaped me.

Part of being on a farm in the last three or four decades, I would argue, is the feeling of being misunderstood – or worse, forgotten. The harder it became to make a living in the industry, the more it felt like no one cared. The sense of tribalism, at least my participation in it, was to reassure myself that there were others like me and my family and that we still mattered. 

Growing up, our garden was less a place of vegetables than a weedier portion of our lawn. Whatever enthusiasm my parents found on a warm spring day to scatter seeds had usually evaporated by the time fieldwork took off.

Even if they weren’t going to be farmers, the Gibson Brothers worked the same as any other farm kids, sent from one task to another whenever they weren’t in school. They brought that work ethic with them to the music industry, which they joked was much like farming with its uncertainties and stresses.

When it comes to agricultural policy, there are many reasons to support the viability of family farms. One of them is to recognize the ability of farms to help sustain the communities around them. Family agriculture keeps money and people in the area, improving the local economy and ultimately empowering its rural residents.

I’ve always admired barn cats for their savvy. At any one time, we’d have between 10 and 20 cats making a home of sorts in our old tiestall barn. We’d pour milk from a treated cow into a dish once a day, but otherwise, it was up to them to navigate the world. They had to keep themselves from cattle hooves, tractor tires and the attention of coyotes.

So far, most of the reaction to AI-generation in artistic pursuits has been one of repulsion, and that’s not surprising. My age group and upward grew up before cell phones, so it goes to reason that, for most of us, AI performers are a bridge too far. However, I suspect that what matters most will be what younger generations think.

Something terrible happened in the American dairy industry. No matter how certain industry figures try to redress the last two-and-a-half decades, some people paid a high price to try to sustain the life they knew. The fact that it didn’t have to happen – specifically, that family dairy farming could have remained viable under different policies – only makes it more heinous. In the very least, these people deserve to have their story written down and talked about. I hope Barn Gothic starts to do that for them.