Rudy Nunez, 1956-2006

When Mom went to Cornell Law School, I answered an ad for farm help. Even though I had a grandfather who was a cattle dealer, I didn't know anything about cows. In the second grade I had seen a movie about a farm family trying to get the hay in before it rained, and I'd always been fascinated, but fearful, of Boyden's farm in Conway. I was, quite literally, afraid of cows. But here was this man, a year younger than I, an immigrant from Cuba, milking cows in a rented barn. I thought I wanted to learn about tractors and field work, but he bought all his feed from the owners of the farm, and so it was cows or nothing. I remember well walking in the barn and having him ask me to dip a cow after he milked her. Petrified, I was. But I did it and he hired me, and I got the bug.

I remember many of the cows he had. He had Vicki, the only truly vicious, unrehabilitatable cow I've ever come across. It took me a very long time before i could milk her. I had a lot of fun working for Rudy. Eating breakfast in this little camper he had, reading Hoard's Dairyman. Better yet, going out to breakfast at a nice diner in Ithaca, smelling like cowshit and not caring whom we offended.

Rudy lived life with gusto. The constraints of cows and families chafed at him, and he moved in different directions. But he was charming, lively, talented, witty, and quick. He died of pancreatic cancer on October 10th. A lot of people, me among them, were touched by his life, and will miss him.