In this final segment, we talk about policies and practices that, for Tristan, need to change if small, independent farmers are to survive. Through it all, the deeper question kept rattling around: What kind of country do we become if fewer and fewer people know how to make, repair, grow, or care for the things that sustain us?

Tristan generously shares with us his approach to making a life that makes him a good neighbor, a citizen of the world, and a steward of the land.

Every August, a new cohort of students—and their parents—asks essentially the same question: "What do I need to do to succeed in college?" My perspective is unusual because it combines my own experience as a first-generation student with three decades of watching thousands of students flourish, struggle, change direction, and ultimately find their way.

In Part 1, we join Tristan Swartz during his evening milking session. You'll hear and feel the sights and sounds of his dairy barn while he explains his life as a doing-it-wrong farmer.

The question I’m interested in is this: even when the memory of a place is accompanied by sadness, why do so many stories remain happy and funny? And a larger question lies beneath that one: What makes each one worth telling?

Have we somewhere along the way traded doing things together for doing things separately? Have we traded shared work for convenience and dependence on one another for independence from one another?

We often think we care for our animals, but somewhere along the way, they end up caring for us, too. This episode is a tribute to the animals that loved us despite our flaws and changed us in return.

In this new series, Doing it Wrong, we explore how families are resisting modernization to live a rural life and sustain it economically.