FROM KANSAS TO INDIANA

 One good thing about Walmart parking lots is, they are usually pretty empty while I'm there overnight, which allows me to have a wide enough view to enjoy the sunsets.  This one was in Columbia, Missouri, and turned pretty fiery.  

Sometimes I find a small park where I can take a walk, either in the morning before heading out, or late in the day.  At the Graham State Park in Montgomery City, MO, they carefully directed hikers to only walk one way on the trails to maintain social distancing.  

And on to Indiana.  I had followed I-70 most of the way through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois - quite a lovely road really.  My friends Johan and Michelle has just driven east from California on I-70 and advised me there was a lot of construction starting in Indianapolis, so I headed north before I got there, to visit my friends Marian and Jay.  They live in a wild farm/animal sanctuary in rural Indiana.  I've known them for years and hadn't seen them in a couple decades, so it was wonderful to spend time with them.  We wore masks, social distanced and met outside - or in a large camper they have parked on their land with windows open and fans running to provide good ventilation - still masked and 6' apart.  Jay does construction and is a fine woodworker.  Marian was busy transplanting seedlings into growing areas and I was happy to help her, though it was really hot.  Glad for the great fans in my camper which made for comfortable sleeping.  Marian trained as a nurse and an Ayervedic practitioner and is a staunch vegan.  Jay turns out to be an excellent vegan/Ayervedic cook.  I began trying out eating a vegan and Ayervedic diet.   I left there with many books on Ayerved and spiritual matters, which I'm happily working my way through over the summer.  

How to tell you how much I had missed these dear friends and how wonderful it was to spend time with them?

Jay whipped out his tape measure as a joke - to make sure we were properly distancing.

While I was there, George Floyd was murdered and the protests began.  Marian's grandson is half African American and it was terrifying to think of him in the midst of the demonstrations in Oakland CA where he lives with his mother.  We prayed for the safety of all BIPOC people and for a change of heart and of institutions in our White supremacist country.  

Our Black Lives Matter signs.

Part of the reason Marian is vegan and a vegan activist is that she has watched stretches of woods be bulldozed all around her green oasis.  Putnam County is almost entirely farmed land.  Jay told me that many farms are corporate:  7,000 - 10,000 acres in size.  It is all mono crops:  soy or corn, and all GMO varieties, which means multiple applications of poisonous chemicals to the land through each growing season.  I remember Indiana as a lush green place with deep topsoil and beautiful woods and parks.  Now it looks more like a wasteland.  Nothing will grow on the land until the GMO seeds are planted.  The soil just sits, brown and dry.  Even though much grain is grown in Putnam County, none of it is for human consumption.  Some is sold for ethanol production and most of it is fed to cows and especially pigs in CAFO's - Confined Animal Factory Operations.  This is how most of the food in this country is raised, especially the meat.  These CAFOs are an obscenity -- hell for the animals, stinking to high heaven, polluting the water tables.  The animals are living in such unhealthy conditions that they must be fed antibiotics and other medications all the time, just to keep them alive.  Enough to make anyone a vegan.

An empty barn near Marian's house.  The huge equipment necessary to farm 7000 acres wouldn't fit in an old barn like this.  You can see the barren brown land beyond - too poisoned by chemicals to even grow weeds.  Only GMO seeds will grow.

A typical farmhouse in Indiana now.  The only way a farmer could afford such a big house is to mortgage his land, which old time farmers would never have done.  And the only way to farm now is with big machinery and big grain elevators.  This is how farms get to be 7000 acres - the farmer goes too deep into debt by borrowing for a fancy house and big equipment, can't keep up the payments and loses the land which may have been in his family for generations.  It is bought by a corporation and added to an already large farm.  No such thing as small family farms in Indiana anymore.