As he parked his 1998 Toyota Hilux on the dirt track within the valley that had been home for the last 52 years, the sound of Maria's bell in the distance comforted him — it had been her name day over the weekend with the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. He had a special treat tucked away to commemorate their eighth year together.

The stiff northerly blowing across the dry and dusty soil slowed his progress up the slope to where the flock was waiting, a Black Sea wind that could turn to gales; but today it was a welcome respite from the southerlies that had consistently delivered 40C summers over the last few years.

But that morning, he had a sense of foreboding; it was the moment he knew was inevitable as he entered the horáfi, with the inspectors waiting to begin testing. The winds softly stroked the olive trees in the distance, and he noticed the missing livestock across the valley; foot-and-mouth had been ravaging the island since Easter and had already taken a quarter of the flocks.

The community was at war with the EU's veterinary directive, which allowed a single positive test to result in the destruction of a flock of hundreds. Roadside stops and a disinfecting program for car tyres were the visible efforts to combat its spread, but it all seemed a futile response to a disease that wouldn't be stopped.

He received the inevitable news from a nondescript man he didn't recognise: the single case found chilled the summer's day instantly; he wasn't entirely sure of the words that were spoken, but he ambled to his beat-up pickup truck and fumbled for the keys.

On reflection, he must have been in the field for the whole morning; the car was entombed in the dense, hot air, sitting for many hours, and the AC spent the first fifteen seconds blasting like a furnace as his steering wheel and handbrake were searing to the touch. The drive back to the horio was normally short, but today the tarred roads acted like quicksand, pulling him toward people.

They sat drinking in the kafeneío that afternoon; fellow farmers described the arduous journey to rebuild their flock; five years was the consensus in the stale air of smoke hanging over them. The tables grouped together like a map of the village fields, a patchwork of disorganised styles and heights that contoured like the land around them.

The words continued, but he drifted off thinking of the loss: one missed lambing season already; daily milk monies gone in an instant meant he was likely to starve by Autumn; the delayed compensation from the EU would help short-term but not next year. Farming was a miserable toil at the best of times, but 5 years of hardship didn't seem worth it.

The irony of the draconian scheme of flocks being destroyed with a single case in hundreds meant that fields across the island were overgrown, and the rolling news feed in the background showed images of wildfires spreading across the south of the island, partly due to the tinderbox land agriculture had left as fuel.

He sipped his frappe, the sweat beading on his body; the more the kafeneío filled, the more he lost himself in the cold iced coffee. A tap on the shoulder punctuated the moment, a neighbour asking for a light, and he fumbled in his pocket; instead, he found Maria's treat.

His neighbour still had a flock; others in the kafeneío were lost in a routine they no longer had, and he thought: what would become of the village? It was almost 20 years since the crash, and somehow they clung to a living; subsidies were like an artificial steroid for small-scale farming, harkening back to an ancient subsistence way of life.

The neighbours' din faded as he noticed a pamphlet strewn on the floor, advertising the petrified forest on the island. It was created by an intense explosion millions of years ago, preserving the past, and he couldn't help but see the parallels: humans were entombing themselves by burning fossil fuels, slowly cooking themselves on a low heat.

He was abruptly awoken again from his introspective moment, this time by the opening theme to the latest Turkish soap opera; it was time they forgot the misery for a minute, but his thoughts turned to Maria, and he prayed she fell asleep silently.