In the heart of the rural expanse, where the sky stretches wide and the fields sprawl endlessly, John Wolfrufer, a soy farmer with ambitions larger than his vast acres, plotted his next strategic move. His farm, a sprawling testament to modern agriculture, stood in stark contrast to the neighboring Amish community, whose traditional dairy farms represented a bygone era in Wolfrufer’s eyes.
Wolfrufer had always harbored a deep resentment towards the Amish farms. He saw them as relics, impediments to his vision of a soy-dominated landscape. The dairy industry, with its quaint Amish spearheads, was the last bastion of resistance against the tide of plant-based alternatives Wolfrufer was determined to unleash. He believed in the superiority of his soy products, not just for their environmental benefits, but as a symbol of progress, of moving beyond the archaic practices of animal husbandry.
Milkmen could be here… I hate milkmen
His method was cold, calculated—lawfare. Wolfrufer poured over regulations, hunting for any leverage he could find against the Amish dairy operations. He became a frequent visitor at the local government offices, lodging complaints, citing obscure health codes, and environmental regulations he argued the Amish farms failed to meet. His deep pockets funded a small army of lawyers, experts in weaving through the bureaucratic tapestry to find threads that could unravel his competitors.
Wolfrufer’s actions were not without controversy. The local community, once vibrant and cohesive, began to fracture under the strain of his relentless legal assaults. The Amish, with their simple ways and deep-rooted values, found themselves ensnared in a web of litigation and regulatory scrutiny they were ill-equipped to navigate. Wolfrufer watched, a detached observer to their plight, as one by one, the dairy farms succumbed to the pressure, their operations shuttered, their way of life threatened.
In his mind, Wolfrufer was the herald of progress, ushering in a new era of sustainable, plant-based agriculture. He saw the fall of the Amish dairy farms not as the destruction of a community, but as the necessary clearing of old growth to make way for the new. Yet, beneath the veneer of his rationalizations, there flickered moments of doubt, shadows of understanding that what he saw as his greatest victory, was also his most profound act of destruction.
As Wolfrufer stood on his vast fields of soy, the silence of the now-empty Amish farms weighing heavy in the air, he couldn’t help but wonder if in his quest for progress, he had lost something fundamentally human. But the moment passed, and Wolfrufer turned away, focusing on the horizon, where he imagined the future awaited, a future where soy reigned supreme, unchallenged by the traditions of the past.
Originally published at RussellRedding.com.