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| Iowa—A Sea of White |
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| Laurel and Hardy Pen on Napkin Jim Miles |
I met Jim Miles at the counter of Carrows Restaurant in South Pasadena California, ten years ago. For an older man from WWII, we hit it off in a way where age doesn’t matter, and we talked of many things. When he couldn’t ride the bus anymore, I picked him up at nine every Tuesday morning. He talked of farming in Iowa and the war, and of the plants at Griffith Park. His stories shifted from delightful to insightful to sad. After he died two years ago, I was one of only two at his Catholic funeral; and I alone followed the hearse to the burial site.
His Iowa relatives never understood why he left for California. After I helped them settle the estate, I said that on this trip I could stop by and try to explain. They agreed.
Alta, Iowa is a corn and soy bean town. Silos, once filled with silage, (rotting green corn plants for cattle feed), are now mostly filled with corn or soy beans for world markets. And because the silos cannot hold all the corn, areas beside them are used to pile corn outside.
When I arrived on February 1, some of the outdoor piles had been hauled to market. But great piles of slowly rotting corn were being moved by train, truck, and ship to feed people all over the world.
The only busy farmers seem to those who raise hogs and turkeys. Come spring, manure from hog barns will move to the fields in these “honey wagons,” where it fertilizes the grain that feeds the hogs. It doesn’t smell bad, but I told Dan Young, Jim’s nephew, that I didn’t want any of that honey. “It provides some of the nutrients, but chemical fertilizer is also needed to grow GMO corn.
Jim grew up on this farm with his house, silos, and barns in among those distant trees. The house is gone and this new one built in its place. The family farmed, and still farms, about seven hundred acres. Jim left because of his asthma, they say, and I think it’s partly true.
He walked or rode the bus on this road to school. I imagine him, even then, thinking beyond corn and soy, reading and wanting more of plants, selecting Griffith Park so he could work environmentally with all sorts of plants of plants—like a certain Berkeley graduate who just wanted to work with trees.
Jim’s closest relative, Dan Young, is retired from farming and lives in this house in Alta, where we talked and came to some closure on the life of Jim.
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| Some farmers harvest the strong northwest wind. |
Michael Angerman of Corvallis, Oregon, has prepared an interactive map of my trip showing daily locations.
Please click: Michael's Map
Jim from Iowa was blessed to have a friend like you, Sharon, sharing the language of trees and plants, a commitment to environmentalism, and a keen eye on the natural world. What a wonderous act when there is opportunity for old hurts to heal when people build bridges instead of walls. Love, Kathy Leonard
ReplyDeleteThanks Kathy, I love old men with kind hearts. They are almost my father returned, but not quite. They did not see me at my youthful worst, and love me anyway.
DeleteSharon,
ReplyDeleteIt was tough but good story. I enjoyed your excellent photos as always.
Keiko
My story ended in a very satisfying manner. I went to Iowa tense, and arrived here in Minnesota relieved, because Dan Young understood, and I understood. It was reconciliation posthumus for Jim Miles. Good people live on both sides of the isle.
DeleteSharon
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful loving action you took in Iowa. What a touching back story.
I recommend the following film and associated description to all. They provide vivid, awakening descriptions of the dystopian modern systems of industrial scale agriculture and food production, which Jim Miles left behind him:
- "King Corn", movie, 2007, for example on DVD from your local lending library, or via Netflix, Amazon prime video, or Apple TV.
- "King Corn (film)", article, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Corn_(film).
And, see a online film which describes a redemptive way forward, which is in progress, for you to support and participate in, via
https://farmersfootprint.us/watch/
Thanks Paul, It's story I can do sometimes, sometimes not. As for changing agricultural practices, I can do nothing. Therefore, I don't study the problem, but presume it exists. I am funny that way. I studied Spitzer, knowing I can do nothing. I'm funny that way. Are you?
DeleteI wouldn't hesitate to say that the world would have a much better future and would become a healthier, kinder, more loving place altogether were a majority of north Americans to start respecting and treating the ecosystem as a closed system in which each part of it affects all the others.
DeleteI would say that knowledge of where food comes from, and how it's treated and made, and passing that knowledge on to others is hugely effective in achieving change for the better. The two films I recommended makes it really easy for you to appreciate that. Alternatively, not 'peeking behind the curtain', living on food from big agribusiness without question and without discrimination is a near sighted and destructive behavior, leading to abuse all along the food chain, from health of the soil, rivers, water tables, oceans, to the rest of the ecosystem That is the country you love so much), to the farmers (who have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession), to the end-consumers bodily health, and on and on.
Paul, I am sorry that you find my opinion offensive. The King Corn movie explains the faults of corn farming in Iowa. I am not against what the movie concludes. I am not in favor of high fructose corn syrup, GMO seed, or chemical fertilizers.
DeleteGreene, Iowa, shown in the movie, is about 120 miles east of Alta, where my new friend Dan Young has farmed his entire life before he retired. Green looks very similar to Alta. Corn and soy beans are the only field crops found economical for farmers in Alta, and others have been tried. Recent tariffs have cut profits this year, and government subsidies have not compensated. Still, last week, trainloads of corn were moving out of Iowa. Farmers plan to begin again next spring, and keep going.
I once did organic farming in Tennessee, different from Iowa, but with similar objectives. We used no chemicals, and GMO’s did not exist. My corn was sweet and good and was never processed into other products. Never fed to animals. I don’t do it anymore and wish I could. You will not likely accept my cop-out, but there is nothing I am capable of doing to change farming practices. Sorry to disappoint. I don’t understand what you want.
Hi Sharon
DeleteYou remind me of the proverbial deer in headlights, “Moi?”. :-)
Sorry. I didn’t feel offended - should I have? I don’t want anything of you other than the opportunity to follow seeds that you’ve sown. Your poetic tale told of gigantic heaps of rotting, industrially-farmed GMO corn, which (though you didn’t mention) is the basis of a huge fraction of the S.A.D., the Standard (north) American Diet, via the food chain. And we are what we eat - one of the facts demonstrated in the film “King Corn” through the stunning ubiquity of corn DNA now found in the body tissues of north Americans. Most are literally predominantly built of GMO corn and soy.
Your tale told too of a fine son of Iowa who left there for a different (better?) life in California. Now I’m just noting the suspicious coincidence, and wondering. Did Jim Miles sense the horrific dystopian situation there (cf. “King Corn”), and then run like hell? He knew something big was wrong. Anyway, the recent articles at https://www.truthdig.com/articles/america-land-of-make-believe/ and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52945.htm
provide further clues for the clueless.
You wrote, “.... vast acres open for amber waves. Age doesn't matter; old farmers yield to boys and girls; and come summer a wild blue Iowa sky sends grain to the world.” Ah, the abilities of poetry. In reality - a full thirteen years after “King Corn” - farmers there continue to go bankrupt under agri-chemical bills, GMO-crop failures, low market prices, etc, and are then selling their farms to big agribusiness, and many are committing suicide. And we write dreamily about beautiful, sky blue, wild cornflowers waiting beneath the snow to grow - and not the tortured tassels and ears of the billionfold Frankenmaize.
If organic and similar sustainable methods have been tried and have failed there, there are other reasons (quite possibly nefarious). A large and growing number of sustainable farms have completed the transition, and are outperforming the sick agribusiness farms. Perhaps the folks in Alta still haven’t heard. Perhaps I was hoping, among other things, that some of them would read about it here. The Farmers Footprint movie I gave you the link for is only one out of numerous sources. A plethora of other documented assessments also includes UN reports.
Thanks Sharon for telling this story and all you did. I know how you feel about age doesn't matter and friendship goes deep and carries on no matter what, if it can. Your help to him and continued companionship was very special. It meant a lot and is inspiring. I know, as my heart is still with those we've lost and still carry on for, with their poems, ideas and love.
ReplyDeletea little wild blue
'midst amber waves of grain
cornflower
Amber waves are nowhere seen, but under snow the soil waits. Drain pipes underlay the fields to carry off excess water. Hogs unknowingly produce fertilizer. And come spring, waiting tractors will spring into the rows, wheels following the same tracks as last year and many years before, so as to compact the soil only in last year's tracks, leaving vast acres open for amber waves. Age doesn't matter; old farmers yield to boys and girls; and come summer a wild blue Iowa sky sends grain to the world.
DeletePretty words, but alas wishful/deluded. I hope that you will make the tiny efforts it takes to see the films I recommended to you.
DeleteSorry Paul, no offense intended.
DeleteThe skinny pictures
ReplyDeleteare more filling
than the empty spaces
one traverses
be it snow or sand
it's the thoughts
that are fat
sly, funny, ironic--I love it.
Delete