end of summer corn

end of summer corn

ready for harvest, rural 

mailboxes, passing clouds

It's very much a typical Iowa scene: a rack of rural mailboxes against a backdrop of golden yellow field corn and a sapphire sky accented by a few little white clouds. 
          The only thing that spoils the scene for me is knowing that the GMO corn is destined to be fed to beef cattle and hogs. It's an expensive and unhealthy use of resources and land that was once covered with tall grass prairie instead of monoculture crops of corn and soybeans.
          Rural Free Delivery is still a good thing, even if the old humpback mailboxes are being replaced with locked cluster boxes to protect customers from baseball bat wielding vandals and identity thieves.
          The sky is still mostly unpolluted, though we do now have a huge grain elevator at the edge of town. And we just discovered that a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) is being built a couple of miles from our house, which will increase air pollution when manure is spread on fields, as well as pollution of our waterways from the runoff, and an increase in antibiotic resistance.
          What can we do to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the value of our property, which declines due to the stench? Be vigilant and proactive. Our group of neighbors are meeting in a few days to discuss how we can support JFAN (Jefferson County Farmers and Neighbors, Inc.) to help the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) crack down on too much manure being applied to fields.

waking on New Year's day

waking on New Year's day

to frigid air filled with light snow,

vandalized mailboxes

Happy New Year! Someone must have gotten pretty drunk last night and decided, like the guy in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, to vandalize mailboxes all along Glasgow Road. I can hear him gloating, "Ten in one blow, man!"
          They look like they're bowing down, all their mouths open, a couple of pieces of mail lying white in the white snow, and our red tray, to make it easier to extract the mail, hanging out like a disembodied tongue.
          Second time this has happened in recent years. Sheriff came out to view the damage, but not much they can do to catch the culprit. Going to be expensive to replace all those mailboxes and new posts. Wonder how that guy would feel if it was HIS mailbox!

rural mailboxes

rural mailboxes

stand in a row before rows

of withered field corn

     Farmers are saying they've lost a third of their crop to the long summer drought. The corn stalks began drying from the ground up way too early and soon withered completely. Now the carefully planted rows wait for the combine to harvest the desiccated crop.

     One thing farmers can be thankful for is Rural Free Delivery (RFD). It's been around for so long that it's hard to imagine what life was like before the US post office began delivering mail directly to farm families in 1896. Before the service was introduced, farmers had to pick up their mail at a distant post office or pay a private company for delivery. Free mail delivery in cities began in 1863 but the National Grange had to lobby for decades to get the service extended to rural areas.

     The 1890s saw the burgeoning of the mail order business, aided by the postal service, which classified their publications as aids in the dissemination of knowledge, entitling catalogs to the postage rate of one cent per pound. The advent of RFD made distribution of the catalog to rural areas economical, opening up a whole new world for isolated farm families. 
     The 1894 Sears Roebuck catalog claimed to be a "Book of Bargains: A Money Saver for Everyone" and the "Cheapest Supply House on Earth." It sold tools, saddles, buggies, bicycles, firearms, sporting goods, sewing machines, musical instruments, baby carriages, ear trumpets, and men's and children's clothing. It was said that farmers only read two books, and you could buy the Bible in the Sears Roebuck catalog. When parcel post delivery was added in 1931, mail order merchandise could be delivered directly to farm families. 
     My grandparents lived on a farm in Southern Illinois and I can still remember the excitement when the thick Sears Roebuck winter catalog was delivered to their mailbox. We kids drooled over the toys, marking our favorites for Christmas. Santa Claus ran the original Rural Free Delivery service, but only once a year.