Farm Living Ain't the Life for Me

The Dirty Truth About Farming

(Enjoy this essay as read by the writer, not an AI Robot.)

Peckham’s Portable Agricultural Furnace and Farmer's Boiler. (front) Created/Published: Buffalo, N. Y. : Richmond & Co. Date issued: 1870-1900 Creative Commons 2.0 WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Hello, Friend,

I live in an apartment above a busy barn on a 50 acre working farm in Southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I have severe steroid unresponsive persistent neutrophilic cough variant asthma with significant airway remodeling. My asthma is not allergic, it is likely a hyper-response from a former bacterial infection, much like what happens to some people after COVID. The remodeling has caused extensive scarring in the airways of my lungs, which means the air has fewer places to go when I breathe. I am allergic to everything except for a few kinds of mold and, oddly, poison ivy, so my allergies exacerbate my asthma. I really did not want to move here the first time, yet due to circumstances beyond my control, here we are again. Life has not worked out the way I’d hoped, not for lack of tenacity or effort, but that’s the way of things sometimes. This is frustrating, as you might imagine. It’s beautiful here, but it’s making me sicker. Any romanticism I may have held about farming has all but disappeared. There are no organic farms in this valley. I might as well live in NYC, because the air here is worse.

There is a large field on the other side of the fence of our small yard. It is rented out to an Amish farmer neighbor. It was transitioned from alfalfa to corn last year. Part of the transition included spraying the field with Round-Up. I watched the mule driven sprayer going back and forth in front of my window for the better (or worse) part of a day. One of our dogs almost died a few years back after being exposed to Crossbow, which was sprayed along the fences on the farm, so I keep the dogs inside when herbicides are being sprayed. Our yard is chemical free and planted with lots of indigenous vines, grasses, and flowers. We’ve got a little flock of house finches that lives here year round along with an array of seasonal birds, hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. We do what we can to create a semi-safe haven.

There are other things the Amish farmers do that are horrible for the air and environment. This includes burning huge piles of plastic tubing that store the hay they feed their animals, detritus from construction sites (many Amish work in construction), and their trash (that they burn instead of paying for trash removal service.) The chemicals released from this activity are extremely toxic. If you have illusions of the Amish living on fresh, organic food, let me disabuse you of this notion. They eat junk food, sugar, and packaged foods, just like we do. Many days a huge black cloud floats above our valley. Today the air is hazy with a layer of grey smoke. I hide inside and turn up the air scrubbers.

The Amish spray liquid manure on the fields. It stinks and it stinks, if you get my drift. I get their drift and it’s awful. It’s not just Amish farmers that affect the air, soil, and water here. Amish and ‘English’ (the Amish call all non-Amish English) farmers use all sorts of dangerous chemical herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers on their crops. It isn’t just an Amish problem. The air quality in Lancaster County is some of the worst in the country. On a scale from A to F we have F-grade level air. Surprising, no? Beyond the complexities of this location geographically speaking in terms of air pollution from other states, farming is a major contributor to our air quality issues. I have to spend a lot of the warmer months (when I’d love to be out tending to our little chemical free gardens) stuck inside because of air quality alerts, and yes, the smoke and endless spraying of manure, pesticides, and herbicides. Our well water tastes awful, I suspect it’s full of chemicals from the run off of the fields. I filter it, but it still tastes bitter.

There are days when I feel so defeated and depressed at the state of the world at large and our little refuge within it. Birds are dying, bees are dying, entire species are disappearing, seas are rising, air quality is declining, storms are becoming more intense, our food and our bodies are filled with microplastics and chemicals…humans are the most selfish and destructive animals to ever live on this planet. We just keep shitting were we live and eat, shoving our heads into the contaminated sand, and pretending our actions have no impact. Farmers are beholden to corporations that create the seeds they have to plant and the chemicals designed specifically to partner with these Frankenseeds. Better living through chemistry is not better and for lots of creatures, including humans, not conducive to living.

Another chemical used by farmers here (and nationwide) is Paraquat. Paraquat is 28 times more toxic than Roundup. It is linked to Parkinson’s Disease. The EPA refuses to acknowledge this fact and they recently approved it for wider use after many years of limiting it. There is no cure for paraquat poisoning, exposure to it can be deadly. All of these herbicides are toxic. Bad for the soil, the air, the water, and the living creatures we need to pollinate our plants. Get ready for more of this because regulators and regulations are being gutted as I type.

Farmers are subsidized and protected by the local, state, and national governments. The big companies that make the seeds and chemicals are major contributors to campaigns and they are the lobbyists who often write the laws or hold offices in the agencies that should be working to protect us. The new administration is likely to push out small farms, which will only add to the toxicity with giant factory farms focused on efficiency and monoculture.

I wish humans would be better, but we’re selfish and myopic. I wish I could live somewhere that had A grade level air, hell I’d take B grade at this point. I keep dreaming of a move to Vermont or coastal Maine, even if it means long, cold winters. (Did I mention I am not a fan of winter?!) I mean, if Hawaii was on the table, I’d be all in on that initiative! I just want to be able to inhale, exhale, repeat.

Consider people like me the canaries in the coal mine of our modern age. With the dismantling of the EPA, FDA, HHS and other regulatory agencies, I’m afraid super shitty air, water, food, and living is coming for all of us. Elections have consequences, and this one may be the most consequential election in our nation’s history, perhaps even in the history of the world.

We can and we should do better. We don’t have to destroy this beautiful planet. Avarice and selfishness don’t have to reign supreme. Farming doesn’t have to be bad for the environment. If we could just find a way to remind people that we’re all connected, even the psychopaths in DC hell bent on destroying it all so they can profiteer seem to have forgotten that they live here too.

Farm living ain’t the life for me. I’m not sure it’s the life for any of us.

(As always, there are links in the essay you can follow to dig deeper if you want to learn more.)

If you dig this scene, and I hope that you do, subscribe so you never miss a post! It’s free with the option to support the work with a paid subscription.

If you can’t swing a sub, don’t fret, my pet! Consider buying your hostess a cup of coffee!