Hangin' in the Heartland

Greetings from the Land of the Hawkeye!

It's been four days now that we've been on the road. We got a little bit of a late start on Friday. We were visiting with our beloved friends on White Owl Farm in Tyngsboro, MA. Saying goodbye can be hard with loved ones. But it really isn't ever goodbye, now is it?

We spent Friday evening in the Mohawk Trail State Forest in the mountains of western Mass. It was a cool and rainy evening. Jack was able to get a fire going after the sun went down, thank goddess! We had a great campsite, right on the river which sounded wonderful as it lulled us to sleep. No bears and sweet dreams!

During our second day, we wound through the beauty of upstate New York and stopped for lunch at the cutest little diner. That evening, we camped in the mountains of the Allegheny National Forest near the northern Pennsylvania border. Cold, cold, cold! Wow, that night was cold. We had to listen to a group of drunken teenie boppers that night, but we did manage to get in some zzz's.

On Sunday, we started out along the northwest edge of New York, stopping at a local farm stand for some fresh produce before entering Pennsylvania and passing through Erie. We drove through a few miles of vineyards, with Lake Erie all along our right.  Then we made it into Ohio and began noticing the landscape changing to corn fields abounding before retiring that evening at Harrison Lake State Park in Fayette.  We arrived just as the local christian group's leader was mic-checking for his weekly drive-in musical service, complete with steel guitar and fiddle.  We found the whole thing rather entertaining in a wholesome kind of way, and we were particularly impressed by one thing that the preacher/singer said. He commented on a comedian he had heard who made reference to the saying, "love the sinner, hate the sin." The preacher went on to say that the comedian then posed the question, "what if we just loved everyone and everything and instead learned to work on the things we hate about ourselves?" We found a lot of wisdom in the comedian's suggestion.

After the local folk went home, Venus made us some carrot pear juice on our manual juicer and some nice warm veggie miso soup as Jack made the fire and we settled in for the evening. The campsite was empty except for a small family of four with two small boys darting around playing games like young kids do. The weather was warm but not humid, the stars were shinning bright, there was no threat of wild animals because we were in farm country, and we eased into the tent like butter on toast, snuggling close and dreaming sweet.

On Monday morning, we left Ohio behind and flew through Indiana within a few hours, driving through some pretty heavy rain at one point.  All along the way, we couldn't help but notice that the majority of the corn fields were stressed for water, and some were obviously burnt up from the sustained oppressive heat. Indiana seems to have been hit pretty hard by the drought, and the stunted and yellowed stalks were a clear reminder of the tough times folks are experiencing because of climate change.

Illinois was pretty much the same, although the soy fields seemed to be faring much better.  As we approached Utica, Venus spied a sign on the interstate for an organic food store.  Oh boy, promised land ahead!  We wound around the little town until we spotted an old Victorian home on a side street that had been converted into an organic oasis, right smack dab in the middle of GMO Cornville.  The owners, Gerard and Becky, had moved there to be caretakers of their elderly parents, and they opened the shop in the interim. Gerard told us of how they had initially procured a large amount of organic hay from a horse farmer who didn't want it. These organic pioneers decided to employ a gardening method by which they piled the hay in beds 32 inches high and watered it for an hour a day for three weeks until the hay sunk down to about nine inches in height. They then opened up little pockets in the hay by hand, filled them with compost, planted their seeds, then left them alone to germinate and grow. And grow they did! Even though Utica had a watering ban, their garden stayed moist because organic matter holds water better than conventional garden soils. As the crops on the industrial farms around them failed, their little garden grew and flourished.

Most of the corn grown in the areas surrounding Utica is used primarily for ethanol production. Gerard called the area "Ground Zero" for GMO corn production. This brought to mind companies like Monsanto and the Franken Food seeds they peddle. Gerard talked about how most of his neighbors banded together against them, thinking that their little organic hay garden was a safety hazard that would somehow spontaneously combust. Really?! The neighbors even went so far as to have the local sheriff inspect their backyard garden for three weeks straight, just to make sure that it didn't go up in flames. Strange reactions these folks seemed to have when faced with "different." We found Gerard and Becky to be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stifled environment, brave people who are trying to bring some light to their fellow human beings about the common sense logic of eating real food grown consciously with love, without the downsides of chemicals and monoculture.

Today, after having crossed the Mississippi, we're sitting in Barnes & Noble in a mall in Iowa, having just finished breakfast with Venus' brother, Flo, who lives nearby. We'll continue westward through the rolling hills of corn and into the Badlands of South Dakota.  We'll keep y'all posted.  Bye for now!  :-)