Greg Brown

Tell us about this place.

We’re in southern Iowa. We’re about 20 miles south and a little bit to the west of Fairfield, would be the closest town. About five miles off the Des Moines River. It’s an area called [Hakimori]. All these areas out here used to have a local name before they were many towns at all.

Like, Turkey Scratch was the next area over, and this was called Hakimori, this area. The borders of it are hard to say exactly what they are. But it used to be if you said, I live on Hakimori, everybody would know pretty much where you were.

How long has this place been in your family?

This plot, which was originally, I believe, was 100 acres – it was homesteaded by my grandparents-grandparents in the late 1840s, 1846s, somewhere in there. The story is my uncle Rosco, who is just two years older than me, tells me that original Brown – he planted that old cedar tree that’s right out there.

And the cabin was originally right here. This road out here, even when I was a kid, was not a gravel road. It was a mud road, just wound every which ways down through here. And this little barn that we’re in now was a big barn that at out there where the road is now. And when they straightened out that road and gravel, they tore that old barn down and made this little barn.

Good memories as a kid growing up out here?

Yeah. I had a real good time out here. We were just free. There was a pack of us, a bunch of kids, and we could just take off anywhere. And a lot of music. Grandma and grandpa both played music. My grandpa ran a sawmill with an old steam-steam engine. And, looking back now, I know it was a rough life for them in a lot of ways. Grandpa used to say something like, “This old piece of ground killed everybody that tried to make a living off of it.”

And it was a hard life, but it was a good life. It was kind of typical, I would say, for those times, in that it was never what you could call farm. It was acreage, 40 acres grandma had a huge garden, two or three of them, and two milk cows – which Rosco and I would bring right up – there used to be a fence path coming up here. Rosco and I would go out and get the cow. There was a bunch of chickens.

So, everything that you needed to eat, there was an orchard. Everything that you needed to eat was pretty much raised right here. And then grandpa, with the sawmill, what cash they needed, that was that. So, that was a common way of life.

The trends are going away from small family farms.

Oh, yeah. It’s been quite a trend that way. When I was a kid, we lived up in north. My dad was a preacher. We moved around quite a bit. We lived in Southern Kansas. My dad’s from the Ozarks. We lived in Missouri for a while. We lived in Iowa. We lived up in Northeast Iowa. And pretty much the landscape back then was a series of small family farms.

And a lot of them, of course, were farms. They had a cash crop, corn, beans, or whatever they might be growing. Back then most places would have a small orchard. You’d raise some animals for your own consumption. You’d have a big garden. You’d raise a lot of stuff, and this was the way it was.

And how was town life?

Yeah, a lot of little towns, they’re going down because they depended so much on the family farm, really. And if you you’ve got three farms where there used to be 30 or 40 farms, it’s just a while different deal. Some of the towns have found ways to hang on. Our little town here just five miles down just keeps going, somehow or another. I’m not sure exactly how, but it takes a lot of spunk to keep things going.

What’s your take on “Get big or get out?”

I think it’s pretty much a guaranteed road to disaster and doom. I really do. I think not just farming and agriculture that are a part of that process, the corporate process of bigger, bigger, bigger. A lot of things happen in that process that I think are deadly. One thing that happens is the sense of personal responsibility goes out the door. There’s nobody to talk to if you have a problem.

There’s nobody. Go talk to this person — they’ll put you on hold, or whatever. That sense of personal engagement in what you’re doing, and personal responsibility, that goes away. And when the dollar and the bottom line becomes the only thing people are after, that’s always been a strong element in America, and not necessarily always a bad thing. Trying to get somewhere, do something, make a good living for your family. That’s all good.

But you get over the line with that stuff, and if that becomes the only value then it just turns into a slow murder, a slow suicide, I think. It’s obvious in what’s happening its healthcare, it’s obvious in all the farms that have been driven off the land. It’s obvious in a million different ways where that process leads. It leads to really bad food and agriculture, for one thing. The food that is grown in this new way has often times has about a quarter of the nutritive value of the way things used to be. The diversity of our seeds has gone down an alarming amount.

I just did a benefit a couple of weeks ago for the seed savers up in Northeast Iowa. We were trying to save all these strains of seeds that had been localized to various places all over the country and all over the world, to keep that diversity in our seeds. These days, farms don’t even own their seeds. A lot of times, with the GMO stuff. It’s frightening, to me it’s sort of a nightmare world. And I can’t see how people can look at it and think it’s going to some good place, that it’s this is progress, or we’re marching bravely into the future. We’re marching bravely off the edge of the world, is what we’re doing, I think.

You spoke to the taste of food.

Yeah. If I go down here to the garden and pick you a cucumber or a tomato, I can give it to you with some pride and a good feeling, because I’m giving you something that tastes good, and I know it. And the stuff that is sold now – whether it’s melons, or tomatoes, or whatever it is – to me it all tastes sort of like wet cardboard. It’s like wet cardboard with cucumber flavoring, or something, the way these things are grown with the great deal of chemicals.

Never ripened on the vine. It’s frightening what’s happening to our food supplies, and the way chickens and hogs and cattle are often raised these days. It’s common knowledge now, where that all leads when these animals are all drugged up, and the illnesses that results from that for the people – it’s like, why are we still doing this? The knowledge is there.

Up in Northwest Iowa, they wanted to put a hog confinement on one of our few little trout streams that has a naturally-reproducing stream. Up in the UP, they wanted to put a sulfide mine on a little river up there called the [Yellow Dog Way], that’s a natural river. And they always say the same thing. No problem, there will be no runoff, and there always is, and the fish always die, every time.

So, the way this whole issue has developed, I have a hard time understanding the people who are proposing that we continue down that path. What their values are. What their basis is. To me, it’s not a matter of some kind of sentimental let’s all be sweet and kind and live in a community. It’s just the way we’re going is just dandy to people.

That’s the part I don’t get. How can you say, I’m going to raise a bunch of hogs in miserable circumstances right on a little river, probably kill that river. How can that be a good thing? I don’t understand the how people can think that going down that road is a good thing. I think people have just kind of gone to sleep, is what has happened. And I get the feeling that some people are starting to wake up, particularly about food, as more people get sick from this stuff.

As more people become aware that food doesn’t have to taste that bad, that it can nourish you and you can tell when it’s nourishing you. I see some hope there.

We filmed one containment unit. Those animals were in agony.

Yeah, and the same with chickens. The same with cattle. I find myself more and more personally just heading towards a vegetarian diet. I’ll still eat fish if I catch the fish out of my pond or water, where I know it’s safe, or a chicken that’s raised around here somewhere. But I just found myself more and more going that way.

What’s your sense on fishing, swimming holes, and kids?

Well, that’s very true, and if your pond water or your rivers are all polluted and you know it, and the way you’ve been farming has contributed to that, I don’t see how you could feel good about that. It’s just remarkable to me that we’ve gotten to the place we are with this stuff because it’s a great pleasure to have a little swimming hole where you’ve watched the rain fill it up – there’s no [woke up], no chemicals being put on the ground anywhere around. And you know you can eat a fish out of there, or jump in that, your kids can jump in and swim.

That’s the way life’s supposed to be. I’ve been frightened many times over the last 20 years. One time was when they came out with standards for how many fish you could eat of the Great Lakes. I was like, whoa, that’s a big, big, big body of water . . . And now it’s in the oceans, too. It’s amazing what we’ve done. I think, whatever story it is, at some point things have to turn.

Things are going to go, stories don’t necessarily have endings, but things come to conclusion in any story. And I think we’re at that point, now. I think, what I call the corporate process, this whole thing that’s going on in healthcare, and food, and everything, it’s so destructive. And I think it’s coming to a point where people around the world, just people – because the politicians are not going to do it – they’re not going to make the change. They can’t lead. It’s too bad that at this particular crisis time. If you look around the world, you’ve got mediocrity almost everywhere in the leadership.

People are going to have to wake up and say, okay, wait a minute, we’ve got to change this deal or we ain’t going to be here. I really personally feel that’s where we’re headed, is to that moment. That’s one great thing about all the media that’s going on worldwide. I mean, a lot of it of course is bullshit, but there’s a lot of other stories being told now that didn’t use to get out there. And I think that moment is coming, where people are either going to stand up and say, okay, we’re going a different way, or the earth has wiped off a lot of species that didn’t work out and tried something else.

I like people. I’d like to see us survive and thrive and love this beautiful place where we are.

Our elected leaders are forced to turn to deep pockets.

Yeah, insurance companies, etc. When the whole Clinton health plan way back was booted off stage, I saw a little article in the paper – just a couple of paragraphs – it said how much the insurance industry had spent trying to make that look like a clown show. And it was alarming. It was in the billions and billions. So, big money gets what it wants.

How about public funding of elections?

I think that’s the only way to go. And it’s I think it would be the most profound change we could come up with for our political system right now, is to get-change that whole thing, and get those guys and gals out of there, and get it back to be a publicly funded thing. I think that’s the only big change I can see that we can do right now. It wouldn’t be immediate, but it would be very effective. I think it’s the only way there’s hope of getting our politicians to look somewhat like the face of America looks like now instead of all these shined-up dudes. I think that would be the best thing we could do right now.

Do you believe people have the power to make change?

Yeah, I do. I do think that it’s still there. I think it’s a lot harder for that to come out now because much of the media is owned. To me, what’s happening in America is the political community, the business community, all the different businesses, big businesses, media, all these things have kind of become one thing. It’s become one thing, and they’re all scratching each other’s backs. And to get a different voice in there is much harder than it used to be. This particular bunch of goons we’ve had in here for the last seven years have been very good at scaring people, through the media, through any way.

They do it. That’s the way they operate. Scare them, and they’ll get in line. And, unfortunately, it’s worked pretty well, but I think that old spirit is still here in America, of we the people. And I think the great thing about America is that that is such a powerful thing, we the people. It also calls for such alertness. Thomas Jefferson was right about that. It’s not the kind of country where you can just, sit back and, oh, these people will do what you’re supposed to.

The way things have been going, though, I think it’s just a lot harder for people to feel like they do have that power, and that they can stand up and make a change. The media and politicians are constantly reminding you, you can’t really do anything. That’s the subtext of a lot of what you say. There’s really nothing you can do here. Plus, you should be really scared, by the way, too, and if you do try to do anything. They get message across in almost everything they say. It’s a lie.

So, that’s the only hope I see, really, as I said earlier, is for the people to – not just in this country, but around the world – to see what’s going on here, and for their children and their grandchildren, stand up and say, no, that’s it. Whether that can happen in this climate, I don’t know. I think that spirit is very strong in people all over the world. And I think certain things like the Internet worldwide have great communication possibilities. I just hold onto that hope that the story will turn that way eventually. Otherwise, I think [Cormack McCarthy’s] last book, The Road, is pretty much the picture of our future. It’s very grim, very grim.

Anything you would care to add?

Well, what I’ve always said, and which I have to constantly say to myself, is don’t give up. When you look at this world and what we’ve done, in all these areas, it’s so alarming. [I heard] go to a great church in Kansas City. It’s called St. Mark’s. It’s basically a black church. The preacher is white, a guy [Sam Ebb], been there 30 years. The church is open to everybody.

It’s a very small congregation. It’s a great church, a beautiful church. We have a big child development center we opened a few years ago. There’s no money there. There’s no money. But Sam and everybody in the church gets this hope and energy going, and there’s that child development center, sitting right besides the church, for little kids who don’t have a place to go.

That came out of hope and out of, as Sam says, making a way where there is no way. And I think that’s what we’re confronted with. You can’t lose that little spark of hope and that idea that, oh, there is a way. It may not look like there is. And I struggle with myself with that all the time, thinking, somebody is going to wake up and think, there ain’t no way. But then, so far, something in me says, you know, you’ve got to keep looking for that.

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