I write a good bit about renewable ammonia and its uses as a fertilizer – a vital input for our existing monocrop agriculture. I don't know that this is the best way but it's the way that works now to feed six and a half billion of us. I get a lot of push back from certain quarters who suggest that organic methods are the thing to do. They point to an individual farm that succeeds in a certain context. Such advances are admirable but with a little inspection the ones so far referenced have proven unscalable.
We are going to have some sort of a massive social dislocation as we enter the Greater Depression and many posit some sort of "back to the land" movement. This could be better than dwelling in some messy, unsafe shruburb, but under stand what you're getting into if you decide to just pick up and move to the country ...
This is what a healthy town looks like in farm country. Main street is two blocks in the midst of less than three hundred houses holding about nine hundred souls. On the left is the bank, a coffee shop, the library, a Laundromat I swear I've never seen any in despite having resided in this town for half of the last forty years, the post office, a small clinic, a bar, an empty lot, and what was once the bank that now hosts a hair salon and a dentist who comes one day a week. Cross the side street and the next block has something called Upper Des Moines Opportunity, a fur shop (trapping of muskrats and hunting of raccoon and fox are winter industries), and a café.
The right side has a Veterans of Foreign Wars post (Wednesday bingo & wedding dances), a chiropractic office, a grocery store, a barber shop, the senior citizens center, a now closed bar, a country crafts store, and an insurance office. Cross the side street and the weekly newspaper's office stands right next to the telephone cooperative.
Oh, and we can't forget this local icon. It's stood so long no one remembers when it was built. There is mention of it in a newspaper article in 1927 and it was in the same family from then until 2001. It opens up for an hour before bingo on Wednesday and Friday nights from spring through fall. The one with the great legs is Kossack peacerunner.
This place is only a little less exciting than it initially appears. This was taken around midnight on a weeknight. I had time to shoot as much as I wanted.
I've photographed most of the main streets in the thirty seven towns in my kayaker's footprint – Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, and Palo Alto counties. This town is lucky as it still has daily rail delivery in support of a local manufacturing operation.
I think the scale of things associated with our current row crop production escapes those who aren't from the area. See the tiny rectangle at the base? My Cannondale 400 is parked inside there and there was room to spare.
And that giant silver bin is the little one on the right in this one.
We have a rather single minded focus on this whole grain production thing.
Housing is cheap. Two acres on a lake, three bedrooms, one car garage ... take a wild guess. OK, now slice a zero off and divide by three – this one sold for $10,000 in the summer of 2007. I hope you like solitude – six miles to the nearest town, fifty miles to the nearest interstate ramp, and a solid three hours to an airport.
This one really needs attention soon or it's going to slip away. It's in the middle of town and things like this change hands for a few thousand dollars, but count on spending a whole season making it livable.
This one went empty in the summer of 2007. I drove this road often and the decay set in quickly – the front door kicked in, a window broken, and so it begins.
This one stood alone on a windswept hilltop with no evidence of outbuildings anywhere around it. A farm house without outbuildings is definitely an oddity but this mystery will go unresolved; the bulldozer got it some time in the spring of 2008.
Some times the abandoned farmhouses are purposely fired as part of a clearing process.
Leaving the old house standing when a new one is built is another common progression. This one was originally two smaller houses that were melded together in the depths of the Great Depression to hold a family with nine children. The house never had indoor plumbing and it was still inhabited in the late 1980s. My earliest memories of it are the late 1960s, right before my grandfather died.
Anyway, enough of a tour – twenty percent of the rural farmsteads are in this condition – electrical service, a well, some outbuildings, and a house that might serve as a squat until the weather turns, so long as you don't mind critter co-housing.
I called my mom today to wish her Merry Christmas and I got the weather report. An Alberta Clipper just plowed through the area – 21" of snow, five days of forty mile an hour winds, and temperatures well below zero.
This is from early March of 2007 – five foot deep snow drifts in the yard and fifteen feet worth of snow caught by the trees around the garden out back.
You get a house in the country and most likely you're gonna need one of these gadgets. That's a 1949 International Super M and it's a peach to operate compared to the 1939 International H that preceded it. This vintage of machine is still a solid, valued performer even though it's almost ready to collect Social Security, but do hold out for live hydraulic power and the wide front end if you're shopping for one.
If you're gonna have some of these guys around ...
You'll get acquainted with this contraption.
And you'll sweat behind it riding on one of these. The best days to bring in hay are the ones where the heat index is into the danger zone. Yeah, if you're a smallholder you'll do it this way – you'll want bite sized chunks for a small herd as opposed to the giant round bales and it's a winter ritual to stack these two or three high around the house to insulate against the relentless wind.
I wouldn't want you to think it's all dull and grim.
There are destinations for you and you alone.
Every season offers little wonders.
Mother Nature's whimsy strikes often ...
And some days angels spread their wings.
