Charlie: My father had died in '72 of massive heart attacks, so I started thinking, There's something wrong in his lifestyle. 'Cause I was following it. I was right on the same track of work, succeed, work, succeed. Don't give anything back, or don't live, you know, with a good intake of food. My dad was successful in material ways, but dead.


With a horse, thirty cows, and a minimum of trappings of modern farming, Charlie Gaston and Sue Wunder are organic dairy farmers on eighty acres near Bloomington, Indiana.

Charlie and Sue’s story is not a nostalgic return to the “good old days.” By practicing a sustainable form of agriculture, they have much more of an eye on the future than do chemical and industrial farmers whose methods deplete the soil, consume fossil fuels, and poison water, land, and crop. The choice to work with horses is not simply a nod to the past but a desire to do their work and live their lives in the company of living beings rather than machines.