In our lives we are confronted by shifts and pushes and pulls.  Buckminster Fuller called these “trim tabs”, a tiny rudder built into the larger rudder.  In this case this is an anti-trim tab.  We received this postcard in the mail in February and it marked an unhappy milestone–the death of a company that was over 100 years old.  They had served the midwest, they had served us for our entire career as shepherds.  They bought our wool as a cooperative for over 30 years. Now they say it is all over…with a postcard.  If that isn’t an ending with a whimper not a bang , then I don’t know what is.

I say it is an anti-trim-tab because it is a break on forward movement.  Rudders only work when there is forward movement.  This postcard puts a stop to all our wool shearing.  We had another producer nearby who was going into the wool processing business.  He built a super handy metal building with equipment, some of it of his own design. He was already starting to take in wool to turn into batts and roving. He was his own trim tab.  Then he had a stroke.  No choices forward except to throw the wool in a ditch.

Some day very soon you will all need wool, but we won’t be here for you.  We didn’t value small producers and processors.  You didn’t value us. You made other economic choices with your dollars or the dollars you wasted on the Ukraine and the wars of Empire.  The end of the postcard asserts, “If you have any questions,please give us a call.”  Some fine day there will be no one to answer that phone or fax or email.  Some day there won’t be any wool or meat from anyone but a meatpacking monopoly.  I should not blame anyone.  We will find a way.  Some way.