PERKINSTON, Miss. -- David Fazio's dairy farm rises like an oasis from the wind-shattered woods. Fields of green ryegrass, shade oak trees, and pink and red magnolias bespeak order amid the twisted, gray wilderness wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Even here, 30 miles north of Mississippi's Gulf Coast, the lives of things that grow and sprout -- and of the people who tend them -- were not spared by the hurricane.

Among Fazio's neighbors, 14 of 20 dairy farmers have abandoned their herds and homesteads. Fazio himself lost 110 of 180 cows after the Aug. 29 storm, which did $125,000