A radio sits in the crux of two pipelines at the top of the parlor. It’s mostly tipped to its side and tentatively secured by a piece of baling twine. Dust clogs the speakers and the quality of the reception changes every time a cow walks past it on her way to the freestalls.

The Aran Islands lay off the west coast of Ireland as three small shadows in the haze of Galway Bay. Inis Oírr (pronounced “inish ear”) is not much more than a square mile.Like the other two islands, it is one of the few remaining gaeltachts where Irish (mistakenly called Gaelic by Americans) is still the primary language.

I don’t know how old I was when I realized that Santa Claus wasn’t real. A story about a fat man slipping through chimneys with toys has a lot of holes in it. If it was true, we would be dealing with a very capable man in being able to do all that he was reported to – and surely, this same man could have done our morning chores for us so we could have stayed in the house and opened presents.

When I was little, I sat on the armrest of the tractor while my father ran the TMR mixer. I asked him many things throughout the course of my childhood, but one of the questions I returned to the most was, “Why don’t farmers protest low milk prices?”

Her name was not Connie, but I’ll call her that. The company she worked for was not Cargill, but I’ll say it was. The first time I saw her was at our kitchen table, a red folder of pamphlets and fact sheets in front of her.

He walked towards me with his hand out and fingers spread as wide as they go. My hand was wet with dirt and sweat. I was going to wipe it on my jeans, but he grabbed it first. “I’m here for the day,” he said. “Just a place to come down to every once in a while, get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.”

The first few times around the field I watch the disk behind me carefully, being sure to make full use of its width and not miss any spots on the ground. I start off in a gear that is inevitably lower than the one I will finish in.

Several years ago BBC News ran a story on Ian MacDonald, a quiet man with pink cheeks that is the last known Scottish crofter to swim his cattle across the sea from the Isle of Sky. Scottish crofting is a farming tradition in the highlands and islands of Scotland that dates back to the 19th century.

My grandfather grew up in Germany during the second war. The eldest of a poor family, he was sent to work in other farmers’ fields in exchange for being fed that day.

My father, in spite of himself, scratched the back of the cat’s neck when he passed by. The cat lifted his head and looked up at him. He followed the trajectory of my father’s hand with blank eyes as it slipped back into the pocket of his jeans.