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If you zoom out from the picture of the most recent piglet, or the turkey on pasture, you’ll see power lines crossing our farm, coming from a power plant in the background, with a smoke stack casting shadows on the river. Further upriver is the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, and just downriver is the incinerator for the county’s trash. Speaking of trash, in the wooded areas of the farm are piles of trash, perhaps the community dump, layered with leaves and dirt over the years. This week, Tyler saw a car stop along the road, and when it drove away, a small pile of landscape rocks was left, ready to mess up the next mower that comes along.
Our farm is not the picturesque kind that you find on calendars. The land we work on, and with, has the fingerprints of abuse and neglect. ALL land has the fingerprints of the ones who have come before; caring ones, greedy ones, ignorant ones. However, this is the setting we have chosen. Part of our farm vision is to use what we have, and to restore the land. Or more specifically, to help the land restore itself. So this is what we have: 35 acres downstream from a nuclear power plant, upstream from an incinerator, with power lines crossing it, listening to the roar of a coal power plant across the river. And we are the stewards of it. Donning gloves, I pick up countless bags of glass, plastic, and metal. Tyler builds swales to slow the water in its downhill journey. We rotate animals, allowing them to harvest the grass, and leaving behind nutrient-rich piles of organic matter. Tyler works with the animals to clear brush, allowing more sunlight to reach through shaded areas to grow the seed we spread there.
The power company is replacing two of the cables that cross the river, and our farm, strung between towers. They’ve been very nice: communicating with us when they’re starting, and what they need to do. They built a wood-slat access ‘road’ across the pasture to the towers, where they built an even larger wooden base for spools of cable. However, most of the work is done by helicopter. In a second of our fields, they base the helicopter, which often has a tray between its skids. The pilot hovers the copter right by the wire, and a guy sits on the tray to work or the line. Sometimes the helicopter will transport the cable workers via a 50′ rope. The cable workers, harnessed up, take a ride, swing under the helicopter over the trees and river, until the pilot sets them on a tower, where they hook onto the top of the tower.
I can’t image how much this is all costing. All to bring power to the homes and businesses in southeastern Pennsylvania. All kinds of these ‘necessary’ projects are happening most everywhere; oil and gas pipelines, new sewer and water lines, dams, lumbering, mining, fracking, quarries. The extent of our society’s consumer appetite is overwhelming. An appetite for quick, disposable everything is evident in the truckloads of trash we pass on their way to the incinerator. An appetite that has ballooned, according to a friend who’s driven truck for the solid waste authority the last 20+ years. He remembers when you brought your container to the store, and scooped out the dry goods that you needed. A far cry from the single serve, ultra-packaged convenience items that he hauls the remains of (Keurig cups, I’m looking at you!)
In our world overwhelmed with consumerism, trash, pollution, and the social and health fall-outs stemming from it, Mirror Image Farms is a green spot. A place where we faithfully do what we can to heal body, soul, and soil. So borrow a book from the library, instead of buying new, strategically plant a tree (or at least reconsider cutting one down!) to reduce your need to run the air conditioner, don’t buy the new phone just because you can, and buy your meat from Mirror Image Farms, who raises it responsibly, while healing the land.