Tamarack River Ghost (20 page)

“The truth, huh.”

“Yup, I’m always searching for the truth. And to do that, I’ve got to be open to new ideas and new facts and allow the material to tell a story.
People understand stories, and I’m trying to dig this one out and shed some light on it.”

“And then what?”

“I write the story, including facts, perspectives, arguments, pro and con.”

“So you’re not going tell me if you’re for or against big factory farms.”

“That’s right.”

“And I thought I was beginning to know you.”

They drove quietly for several miles, neither saying anything.

“What’s for supper?” Josh finally asked, breaking the silence.

“Just like a man.”

“Just like a man what?”

“Thinking about your stomach.”

“That’s not all I’m thinking about,” Josh said, a smile spreading across his face.

“Oh, really. And what else might the male half of Team Karlsen-Wittmore be thinking about?”

“Dessert.”

“Chocolate cake?”

“It wasn’t chocolate cake I was thinking about.”

“Neither was I,” said Natalie.

Josh was up early on Monday morning, his mind filled with thoughts of Natalie and the wonderful time they had at the Smear tournament, and the even better time they had at Natalie’s cabin in front of a crackling fireplace. He looked forward to visiting the big factory farm in Iowa. As a reporter, he knew he must gather some firsthand information about a large-scale hog operation. Too many rumors floated around as to what occurred on one of these farms. Josh needed to see an operation up close, see the hogs, smell the smells, listen to the sounds.

Josh crawled into his pickup, traveled down Interstate 39 to Madison, and got on Highway 151 toward Dubuque. As he drove along, he wondered if Nathan West’s operation, when he got to see it up close and smelled it, would be similar to the beef feedlot operation he visited in Missouri. Although he tried to be objective about these large-scale farming operations, his thoughts were far from positive. Having grown up on a small dairy farm near Link Lake, Josh remembered the hogs they raised, up to twenty-five or thirty a year that his dad shipped to the stockyards in Milwaukee. He didn’t much care for hogs; they ate a lot, fought like the dickens with each other at the trough, and dropped a lot of smelly manure. His dad had told him more than once, “If you’re gonna raise hogs, make sure the hog house is downwind from the farmhouse. Nothin’ worse than the smell of pig manure.”

In spring, when the hogs had access to pasture, the smells declined considerably, and the pigs seemed happier roaming around their three-acre lot that was fenced with woven wire to keep them confined. Unlike cattle,
hogs used their noses for rooting in the dirt—and digging their way out and escaping from their enclosures.

Josh knew to keep his opinions to himself, but he wondered if he’d be able to do this when he confronted Nathan West’s enormous hog facility. He also still had Shotgun Slogum’s ideas from the town hall meeting floating around in his head—that we should eat less meat. He wondered if anybody in Ames County agreed with him. He doubted it, but you never knew these days.

Less than an hour out of Dubuque, Josh arrived in Decker, not more than a grain elevator, a church, a few houses, and a coffee shop. The town looked tired and worn, not unlike many midwestern farm towns that had seen tremendous changes in farming during the past couple of decades. Josh stopped at the Home Cooking Coffee Shop for lunch and picked a booth where he could spread out his materials and think through what questions he wanted to ask the Nathan West people. The counter was lined with what appeared to be retired farmers, several of whom had likely sold their land to Nathan West, and a few sales people of one stripe or another. He ordered the special, homemade meatloaf with mashed potatoes—$5.95.

The waitress was an older, gray-haired woman who walked with a bit of a limp. When she brought his food he asked, “Do you know about Nathan West?”

“Yup, I do. Everybody does. It’s what we’ve got here in Decker. It’s about all we’ve got anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she said as she lowered her voice a little, “Nathan West bought out most of the farmers around here; paid ’em good money, I heard. But before you could say ‘Farmin’ ain’t what it used to be,’ we got but one big farmer, if you can call Nathan West a farmer, and a few smaller ones that are hanging on.”

“So what’s your take on Nathan West?” Josh asked.

“Oh, I really ain’t got anything against ’em, except they’re all that’s left. We used to have farmers all over the place; many of ’em were dairy
farmers, some had a few hogs, maybe a few beef cattle. Most are retired or gone. Now we got nearly all our eggs in one basket, and it’s called Nathan West.”

Finishing his meal, Josh gathered up his bill, left a two-dollar tip, headed back to his pickup, and made the short drive to the Nathan West 435 facility. He topped a rise in the county road and saw a set of brilliant white, single-story buildings sprawled out on the right. He parked his truck in front of a sign that said “Office.” Above the small sign was a bigger one: “The Home of Happy Hogs. Nathan West Industries, Facility 435.” He opened the office door and stepped inside to meet a receptionist at the desk, working at a computer.

“What can I do for you?” the woman asked, looking up from her work. She had a pleasant way about her.

“I have an appointment with Kyle Jorgensen.”

The woman appeared to be in her late thirties and had blue eyes and brown hair. She reached for a button on her desk. “What’d you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. I’m Josh Wittmore with
Farm Country News
.”

“There’s a Mr. Wittmore here to see you,” she said into the intercom.

After a moment or two, a man opened the door behind the receptionist and walked a few steps to where Josh waited. He extended his hand. “I’m Kyle Jorgensen,” he said. He smiled as he spoke.

“Josh Wittmore,
Farm Country News
.”

“Pleased to meet you. Always glad to work with the press—need to get the word out about how our food is produced these days. Not enough information available about that.” Jorgensen wore a green dress shirt, open at the neck, with khaki pants. He had a shock of blond hair that appeared to defy combing. Josh figured him to be in his late forties.

“Thanks for taking time to talk with me and give me a tour. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. No problem at all. As I said, we’re always available for a visit from the press.” Josh remembered the difficulty his boss had setting up the interview and tour, and how reluctant Nathan West was to have him visit, but he kept that information to himself.

“So, where do you want me to begin?” Jorgensen asked. He sat behind his desk with his hands folded in front of him. Cartoon pictures of smiling pigs hung on two walls of the office.

“You don’t mind if I record our conversation, do you? I want to make sure I get all this right. And how about photos?” asked Josh.

“No problem, record away. Take whatever pictures you want.” Josh thought about how different this was from the Lazy Z feedlot operation, where taking a picture resulted in a brick through his motel window.

Josh slipped his tiny digital recorder from his pocket and put it in front of Jorgensen. He then took out his pocket-sized digital camera and snapped a photo of Jorgensen sitting behind his desk.

“Let’s start with the size of your operation. How many acres do you have at this site?”

“Well, we keep adding as farms come up for sale. Right now, I think we must have about three thousand acres.”

“So you grow crops as well?”

“We sure do. We grow about twenty-five hundred acres of corn, about enough for all our finishing units.”

“How many hogs have you got at this site?”

“This is one of four farrow-gestation units we have on this farm. We have three thousand sows here, all together about twelve thousand on our four farrow-gestation sites, at different places on our land.”

“And how big are these farrow-gestation buildings?”

“Oh, let’s see. Each one is 82 feet wide and 740 feet long.”

Josh had a note pad in front of him where he scribbled,
Sow building almost two and a half football fields long
.

“How many little pigs do you farrow each year from this unit?”

“Let’s figure it out. The gestation period for a sow is about 114 days, so we expect on average about two and a half litters per sow per year. Our average litter size is ten per sow. So, three thousand sows times two and a half litters and you come up with seventy-five hundred litters. Ten little pigs per litter times seventy-five hundred litters amounts to seventy-five thousand pigs coming out of this building each year—if everything goes right, and most of the time it does. You ready for a tour?”

“Sure,” said Josh as he gathered up his notepad, camera, and recorder.

They entered a little hallway just beyond the office, where Josh saw a sign: “Bio-security.”

“We work hard to keep all diseases away from our hogs. So, everyone coming into any of our buildings is required to shower and wear the company’s clothing and boots while in the building.”

Jorgensen pointed to a pair of shower stalls and a dressing area behind them. “You can leave your clothing here,” he said, pointing to some hooks and a shelf.

“Even I shower every time I walk into the production unit,” Jorgensen explained as he began unbuttoning his shirt.

Josh undressed, showered, dried himself with towels with the NWI logo printed on them, then stepped into the little dressing room, where he pulled on underwear, socks, and blue coveralls, with “Nathan West Industries” printed in gold letters on the back. He found a pair of knee-high rubber boots that fit. Leaving the dressing room, he spotted Jorgensen, dressed in similar fashion, emerging from his dressing room.

“You mind if I bring along my camera, notebook, and recorder?”

“No problem,” Jorgensen said.

Josh snapped a photo of Jorgensen dressed in the blue disease-free garb.

“You ready?” Jorgensen asked as he reached for the handle on a heavy metal door.

Once inside Josh glanced around. As far as he could see were pens, each containing about fifteen big, white sows. What he expected was the terrible, nauseating smell of hog manure. But although there was a smell, it was mostly of ammonia—not altogether off-putting. He snapped several photos.

What immediately struck him was how clean the building was. Everything was painted white—the walls, ceilings, even the panels that made up the pens. The hogs, also clean and white, stood on slatted wooden floors. The building, with rows of bright lights, had no windows, and thus no sunlight entered. He remembered the hog pen and hog yard on the home farm. On hot summer days, the pigs wallowed in the mud and manure;
they were dirty from their snouts to the ends of their tails. And the smell was overpowering. So different from what he was seeing in this modern hog house.

The second thing that surprised Josh was how quiet the building was—none of the squealing that he remembered from hogs inside and feeding. On the home farm, the pigs fought with each other over a place at the trough—there was always a certain amount of pandemonium and considerable noise among a group of feeding hogs. Not here.

Josh commented on the quiet.

“Like the sign says, these are happy hogs. No reason for them to make any noise. We control the temperature to within two or three degrees; we control the humidity; we have huge fans to keep the air clean and fresh; and we have automatic, computer-controlled feeding stations in each pen.”

“How do these feeding stations work?” Josh asked, pointing to what looked like a metal box with a little door on his end. He snapped a photo.

“Each sow has a tag in her ear. When she’s hungry, she walks into the feeding station. A sensor reads the tag. It sends a message to a computer, which in turn drops the appropriate amount of feed in front of the sow, based on what she has or has not eaten so far that day.”

As they talked, a sow approached the feeding station and entered. In a few seconds, Josh heard a whirring sound as the overhead auger-feeding system came alive and delivered just the right amount of feed.

“Pretty slick,” Josh said. “What breed are these?” On his home farm they raised Chester Whites and Berkshires.

“They’re mostly a Landrace-Yorkshire cross. They have large litters, are good mothers, and do well in confined situations.”

“And they’re big,” said Josh, not remembering ever seeing sows so large.

“That they are; they’ll weigh around 280, some a little more.”

“This is a bit of a difficult question, but I’ll ask anyway. Hog operations like this have been accused of inhumane treatment of hogs. How do you respond?”

“Maybe some operators treat their hogs poorly, but not many. You can’t stay in business if you don’t take good care of your animals,” said
Jorgensen. “Our on-call veterinarian conducts classes on humane treatment of animals that all of our employees must take. All of our workers are certified for handling animals humanely.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Josh.

“Lots of misinformation floating around out there. I’m glad you asked the question.”

“What about your breeding practices?”

“It’s all done with artificial insemination. Several of our employees are trained to do it. We get our semen from one of our subsidiary companies, which supplies all of our hog operations.”

“What about those boars I saw when we came in?” Josh had seen four big male pigs in pens on one end of the building.

Jorgensen smiled. “Having the boars around helps bring the sows into heat so they can be inseminated.”

Josh saw the stalls where the sows were bred, located on one end of the long hog house. He and Jorgensen walked through a hall on their way to the farrowing house, where the little pigs were born and kept until weaning age—about eighteen to twenty days. In the farrowing house were long rows of farrowing crates, one for each sow and her litter. Josh watched a sow nursing twelve little pigs, and he took several photos.