Book targeting big ag is powerful

We are the last two of four daughters born to Garth and Betty Evarts. We were brought up on our family farm, which was homesteaded by Omri Evarts, our great-great-great grandfather. Ownership was granted to him in 1858. Everything we have become started on that land, on that farm.
Farming is not easy. It is 7 days of work every single day of the year forever. No days off, ever. Much of the farm’s income is based on the weather, and who has the ability to control that? Our Dad’s favorite joke was about the farmer who won a million dollars in the lottery. When he was asked what he was going to do now, he said, “I plan to just keep farming until the money is gone.” That’s farming.
Our farm was in Dodge County and was one of four farms on a section, 1 mile by 1 mile by 1 mile by 1 mile. Four families made a living on this section and raised their children there. As we were growing up, my father always hoped one of us would be interested in farming. None of us were. We all knew what farming was. All of us did chores twice a day, seven days a week until we left to go to college.
What did we do? Whatever we could. It didn’t matter how old we were or how big we were or that we were all girls. If we could lift pails full of grain, that was part of our chores. If we couldn’t, we fed the calves or cleaned the milking machine or any of another dozen jobs that had to be done. There was always more than enough work to go around.
We grew up in a neighborhood surrounded by children living on third and fourth generation farms. Our histories and heritages were deep and rich and entrenched in the land we lived on. We knew the parents, and often grandparents of all our neighbors. We rode the school bus together, played in sports and band together, attended church together, and played together during the weekends and summer vacation.
It is devastating to learn that the family farms such as these are now disappearing in our community because of the prevalence of corporate farms.
When we went to college, we were confused by other people that didn’t know what we knew. If you can do it, you should. We ran into a world with different rules that involved gender and size, not strength and ability. We used to tease dad that he was clearly a feminist since he raised four feminists. He hated being called a feminist but had to admit that he did teach us to do what we could do with no thought of gender or size.
We talked a lot as we became mothers. We struggled with how to teach our children the same lessons we had been taught. If we missed a calf when we were feeding the entire pen, we came home from school to a calf that had been crying in hunger most of the day. It wasn’t a mistake we made twice and our dad didn’t have to remind us or scold us. The calf’s cries did that.
How do you teach that type of responsibility when you don’t live on a farm? Trying to teach my sons how important it was to make their beds before they went to school had no consequences like that crying calf.
When dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he asked Claudia to be his Power of Attorney, and we talked daily about his wishes. He had known for some time that we would need to sell the farm, and he readily acknowledged that. However, he didn’t want to watch. We promised him we wouldn’t sell it while he was alive. He also asked us to keep it until Mom died as it would be a great ‘insurance’ policy if the costs of her care got too high. We promised that. His last request was that we wouldn’t sell to a corporation. We promised that.
All of those promises were kept. We sold to a farmer and to our horror, found out he sold it to a corporate farmer within a year. Despite keeping our promises, what has happened to our home and the land around us is truly a nightmare.
Claudia’s youngest son and his wife bought 20 acres in Wisconsin to farm. Their farm is not like ours. His vision for their farm is to make it sustainable, to feed the soil and the land, and to be the best caretakers they can, just as our dad tried to do when he farmed. When they were looking for land, I suggested looking around the Evarts farm, remembering the fertile black soil. He very gently told me, “Mom, that land is poisoned.” I didn’t want to believe him.
Sonja Trom Earys has written a powerful book, ‘Dodge County Inc.’ about our home and the home of everyone in Dodge County. She expertly tells the story of the poisoning of the land, the water, and the air. Why would anyone do that? There are no rational answers except it is being done for profit, and not the profit of farmers, rather the profit of people in corporations. I asked Sonja what gives her hope about this story, and she said, “We must tell this story, and tell it to people who don’t know what is happening.”
Please read this book. Please tell your friends to read this book. Please have your book club read this book. For us, reading it was emotionally devastating. Our father would not have been able to bear seeing what has happened. We owe it to him and everyone else, past and present to tell this story. It can’t be stopped unless we share the reality of what is happening.
Claudia lives in Minneapolis while Bonnie lives in Lincoln, Ill. They grew up on a farm next to Doug Eayrs in northern Dodge County. Doug is the husband of the book author, Sonja Trom Eayrs.