LIVING IN FARMLAND, USA in the 21st Century

LIVING IN FARMLAND, USA in the 21st Century

My family and I chose to live in the farmlands of Ohio in a magnificent farmhouse built in 1900 with silent flats of land surrounding us, horses walking down quiet roads, and dreams of a life so simple that you knew all was good within the world — particularly our world. We dreamed for years of sleepy lives and times of gentle laughter as my daughter grew into a young woman riding her horses, enjoying 4-H showing her rabbits and her show dogs. Living in the country held the strong kiss of promise and warm memories as life drifted onward embracing quietude and the 'All American Dream' built on simpler skills of living. Organic gardens, horses out in the pasture, flower gardens and beautiful tree groves, surrounded by fields of growing crops and pleasant country people who wanted a simpler and kinder life.

The unfortunate truth was that this did not exist as the spills of the new toxic century was pillaging and raping the land for more years than I had been alive. What we thought would be a simple existence based on contentment and harmony, became a life of illness, erosion and death. Periodic bi-planes would fly above us dropping pesticides, crop-dusting over the farms and all of the homes that farmed and did not farm. There were no notices to tell us when to shut our windows and to protect ourselves from the harmful chemicals being deposited over our homes and yards and pastures. Pesticides drifted into our windows like soil dust depositing its lethal armor upon us like old, torn and tattered clothing. Trains on a old, historical track would stop for a few hours and sit and idle outside our home blowing diesel in our open windows while tired and worn conductors would sleep to make ready for the long journey ahead. It was easier to leave the train idle for hours as opposed to restarting the engines when it was time to travel. Diesel would blow into my yard, over all of my plants and organically growing vegetables, and into my home depositing itself like a fine layer of grit on my furniture and in our lungs.

Our well was filled with fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides that left iron-laden rings like bands in our tubs, toilets and sinks. Every shower we took, every dish we washed, every load of laundry we cycled, we were poisoned by the plentitude of toxic chemicals soaking into our skin, through our eyes, through every pore in our bodies. It was a silent threat that we had not agreed upon or consented to. Farms all around us laid fertilizers over every square inch of the hundreds and thousands of acres of land that surrounded our home. Year after year, the rains would push that fertilizer down into the earth, filtering into our wells, into our pastures, and into our homes through pipes and windows that were there to serve us and give us safe refuge from the rest of the world's agreements.

Down the road towards the west where the breeze blew in from, unbeknownst to us, never divulged to us as prospective buyers, lived a fertilizer plant. For the 3 and a half years we lived in our historical and gorgeous farmhouse, we never knew this invisible, odorless fertilizer was being made and processed day and night. It, like the diesel and the pesticides, drifted on the west winds into our home silently creeping into our lungs, our nervous systems, our brains, and deep within our cells. It's accumulation of poison and horror settled in our bodies like silent monsters eating away at our health and the dreams we had for our future.

Instead of life caressing us, we found death all around us feeding us like hungry, innocent birds that are clueless to the emissions that settle all around them. Our beautiful 50-year-old plus trees began to crack and lay fallen in our pasture as testimonials to the chemical potpourri that was assaulting us all. I had a small animal rescue on my land started before I realized the issues that I was actually dealing with in and around my home. My animals, the rescue animals, were plagued by illnesses such as cancer, brain tumors, epilepsy, allergies, digestive dysfunctions, behavioral issues, tumors, neurological disorders, respiratory infections, to name a few. Many animals from the area came in with terrible and obscene health problems, and many came down with them living in the fields of my land. Trees that I planted would grow but begin to die bowing and bending weakly until their fragile trunks hung dead like a standing corpse.

Neighbors were fraught with illnesses of the body and of the mind. Mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, bipolar illness, and worse plagued the area in numbers that were shocking. Children of all ages cutting themselves, burning themselves, acting out, having fits of rages and falling into depressions so deeply that some children were despondent. ADD and ADHD seemed to be an issue for 60% of the children in school. Adjustment disorders, personality disorders, dissociative disorders, suicidal feelings, and attempts to commit suicide were on the rise.

Phobias, oppositional deficiency, drug and alcohol addictions, self harm and harm to animals and other children, fighting in schools, disruptive behaviors, sexual promiscuity, just to name a few of the imbedded issues that were plaguing our children and all of the people in the area. Obesity, people using mobile chairs, wheelchairs, walkers and canes was also fairly prevalent in this area. Loss of hair, heart issues, diabetes, thyroid disease, brain tumors, heavy metal poisoning, nervous system damage, violent shaking, tremors, asthma, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue were disorders or symptoms of disorders that touched every home in this area.

We moved to the country away from paper plants and steel mills, industries and the heavy pressures of city living thinking it would be a quiet, healthful life for us all. To raise my daughter in, to heal unloved and lost animals, to find my health and restore myself. We envisioned that paradise wed us to the countryside, and by that lifestyle it was a clear choice to live a healthy, plentiful and robust life. In this country, we believe and trust that the air is clean, the land is pure, the people are happy and content, and that life will be good and filled with joyful wonderment in such simplicity. That our spirits will be nurtured and that one can feel the connection to the motherland, the earth, and have the unfoldment of a health-laden life. In this country and in so many countries, this is not the case. The lands have been raped and pillaged by the chemicals that are being poured into the fields in order to grow more food.

Fungicides and pesticides are heavily sprayed on the crops that we eat, that we ingest into our bodies, flooding our bloodstreams and corroding our cells with toxic and neurotoxic chemicals. The waters that we drink, that we bathe in saturate our organs and our systems through our skin with such an abundance of chemicals breaking down our immune systems while opening us up to disease and death. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, diesel, chlorine, rocket fuel, pharmaceuticals, mercury, cadmium, lead, PCB's (Polychlorinated biphenyls), dioxins, motor oils, gasoline, antifreeze, coolants, sulfates, are to name only a few chemicals and chemical compounds found in our water ways and in our wells and in our land.

Pharmaceuticals that we ingest fill our watersheds from the sewage systems in our homes. Hormones from contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy, Viagra and male enhancement drugs; antidepressants, tranquilizers (benzodiazepines), anti-psychotic medications, heart medication, antibiotics, radiation, chemotherapy drugs, synthetic insulin, blood pressure medication, headache medication, cold remedies, anti-viral drugs, sulfites, nicotine, crystal meth, cocaine, crack, street drugs, steroids, detergents such as cleaning solvents and laundry detergents, air fresheners, and on and on the list goes are filling up our rivers, lakes and waterways from OUR TOILETS in our homes and work places.

We go every morning and evening to our medicine cabinets and take our loads of medications that we are prescribed every day in this country. We eventually excrete them from our bodies through our urine and our feces. They are flushed down our toilets into treatment plants that chlorinate the waters to kill microbes and bacteria, but does nothing to dissolve the chemical load that is being distributed by nearly every home in America and in other countries in the world. From the treatment plants it is washed away into streams, rivers, lakes and other watersheds down into our oceans. There these pharmaceuticals and toxic petroleum products we use daily in our homes, bodies, foods, and in our farmlands are taken up by fish and wildlife, and taken back in by the very water that we drink and shower and bathe in.

Ranching of animals, just life farming of crops, is as much a toxic load on our lands, our homes, our communities, our cities, and our watersheds. We pump our animals full of hormones to 'plump them', to 'beef them', to bring them to market much sooner than we could if we allowed our cows, our pigs, our lambs, our chickens, turkeys, and so on to eat healthily and normally and grow naturally. We ingest these hormones through our meats, our milk, our eggs, our butters, our deli meats, hot dogs, our poultry, our inorganic and hybrid foods and as we do so, we become obese. We have hormonal imbalances that require more dosing and medication. We are becoming more infertile giving way to increasing issues with procreation. Sexual dysfunction is on the rise where both men and women are having less desire or ability to achieve longevity or pleasure in the bedroom.

Depression is on the rise as our brain chemistry shifts due to the avalanche of estrogen that is in most of our foods and in our plastics. Boys now growing breasts. Girls bust sizes and hips are expanding exponentially to give way to the 'Jay-Lo' butt that young girls now dream of. Acne is on the rise giving way to acne medications that are dangerous and toxic. PMS is becoming epidemic. Menopause is starting earlier and earlier with greater symptoms and repercussions to our mothers and grandmothers. Sexual deviancy is also becoming epidemic as our bodies fill with synthetic layers of hormones coming in from so many sources that it is truly astounding. Again, this is just the tip of the problems of this iceberg that has launched itself in the middle of our country and in the middle of our world.

We fill our animals with antibiotics to prevent disease as if giving a healthy animal antibiotics is the answer. Letting animals graze, not crowding animals into filthy cages and buildings, giving them fresh, whole, organic foods, fresh water, and a natural life is the answer to health in any animal, ranching or otherwise. We ingest these antibiotics into our bodies through the foods that we eat and eventually these antibiotics flow into our waterways through our toilets and sewage system, and end up back into our animals and into our bodies in a more toxic state. From there, the cycle continues in a constant evolution of toxic warfare from land and water, to food and drink, to the bodies of our animals and ourselves, and back to the beginning of land and water. Then, we become sick and run to the doctor to heal us. S/he gives us antibiotics and we wonder why they are not working so well. Why our children are breaking out in rashes, having allergic reactions, growing sicker. We blame the doctors for not curing us. How can these antibiotics cure us if we are ingesting them every day into our bodies building antibodies and resistance to the very drugs we believe are going to help save us. I know more people that cannot take antibiotics without a reaction or lack of healing reaction then I know of anyone who is helped by them at this time. It was not like this 30, 40 years ago. This is an endless cycle of toxic overload and deadly harm to the people of this country and around the world.

Every day, we get up and go to the bathroom or our kitchens in our air-freshened and "Febreezed" homes, pump a little antibacterial soap into our hands and wash. We think how clean we are and, therefore, how healthy we are. We are so far from the truth. We wash our hands in antibacterial soaps, and the bugs and microbes and bacteria and viruses only transmute and do not respond to the chemical baths that we are washing in. Like cockroaches and mosquitos that spread deadly diseases, these entities (microbes, bacteria, viruses) flourish and change their structure to not respond to the soaps and cleaning solvents that we use to de-germicide our bodies and our homes. What we are doing is simply washing our bodies in germicides and toxic solvents, breaking down our immune systems, causing cancers, mental health issues, allergies, asthma, and so on the list goes, while offering the very entities access to negative and harmful transmutation. Antibacterial soaps are an entrenched cause of the proliferation of viruses and mutated disease.

After we are done dosing our bodies with germicides and more heavily-fragranced soaps, shampoos, deodorants, hair sprays, make-up and perfumes, we then feel that fragrancing our homes smells beautiful and cleaner and fresher. We plug in air fresheners and ask electricity to continue to pump out lethal toxins into our homes in the name of fragrance. We spray all of our furniture; textile, wood, glass, everything in our home is cleaned and/or sprayed with lethal combinations and doses of heavy chemicals in order to 'freshen' our homes, kill germs and leave petroleum-based oil slicks of chemical residue for us to absorb through our skin, our olfactory receptors, our eyes, into our bodies' delicate eco-systems. These are toxic chemicals and neuro-chemicals floating through the air on small particulates, damaging our lungs irreparably by 20%, destroying nerve tissue, nervous and neurological systems, brain tissue, liver tissue, every organ in our bodies down, deep into our bone marrow. We are destroying our immune systems with all of our 'freshening and cleaning' agents.

Then we move to our clothing and we pour petroleum-based toxic chemicals into our washing machines and float in our dryers dryer sheets filled with air freshener, and then put these bleached, air freshened, petroleum-based products onto our children, our babies, our elderly parents, ourselves so that 24 hours a day our clothing rubs into our skin, the largest, absorbent organ in our bodies and we wonder why we are all so ill. Cancer, allergies, asthma, depression, mental illness, hyperactivity, emotional rages, heart disease, diabetes and on and on and on it goes based on our genetic pre-dispositions, continue to rise in our communities and countries. We allow dry cleaning chemicals to rub into our skins, into our bloodstreams, into our organs, creating a chemical heavy environment in our bodies that we cannot deal with. Our bodies cannot handle this type of load for long without breaking down into disease, imbalance and death.

When we are done 'lifting up' our homes, our personal hygiene, and our clothing in the name of cleanliness and smelling pretty, we then take our pets to the groomers or to the vet's office where we pour more fragrances on our animals to freshen them up. We douse them in pesticide flea inhibitors, dose them in pharmaceuticals and vaccinations year after year while feeding them kibbles of cast off moldy foods, by-products, and chemicals that no one, if they saw the foods being made, would ever wish to eat. The same animals come home and run through pesticide laden yards and heavily sprayed and mulched garden beds just so we can show our neighbors and the world what beautiful landscaping we have created. We spray lawn care to make our lawns grow full and lush and beautiful, and then we moan about having to go out more frequently to mow these fast-growing lawns. So gasoline is emitting through our lawn mowers and our weed whackers that whack down weeds that most people in other countries eat as food and use as medicine. Then we water our lawns and yards and pesticide-laden gardens abundantly, wasting water and bringing our utility bills to wallet pinching levels.

We then up the ante and have exterminators come out to spray more chemicals to keep bugs out and people in! Termite sticks surround our homes making the yard a toxic playground for our children and our pets. Instead of putting up screened-in porches and rooms, we go out and buy DEET and other neurotoxic chemicals to spray on our children so that bugs will not bite them. We would rather destroy their nervous systems and their brain matter than to allow a bug to sting or bite them, building antigens in the blood. This is a part of our daily lives and consciousness that supports living this way, thinking this way, and we choose not to see what we are doing to destroy our health, our quality of life, our land, our planet herself. Cancer and other diseases and imbalances are on the rise in children and in animals across the world and particularly in the industrialized countries. We are a sick world that is bursting at the seams of disability, despair, and hopelessness. So many people will not see this as happening and why it is happening not only to the few, but to us all in various ways. We have become a toxic society and a toxic global community because we have moved into agreement with allowing our lives to become a chemical bath.

After all of that is said and done, we get in front of our computers, text and talk for hours on our cell phones, plug ipods into our ears whilst blasting the music, play video games and online games and barrage our immune systems with an overabundance of electromagnetic frequencies that cause tumors, brain tumors, cancer, heart disease, liver disease, and again, so on. It sickens and destroys the immune system as much as any overuse of chemicals does. With the advent of cell towers all over our landscape and transmission lines that are growing to monstrous proportions, the electromagnetic frequencies that are bombarding our body systems, our mental systems, and our planetary electromagnetic system is epic in the damage it is doing to us all. In order to disconnect from family meals, family outings, family discussions, and games and sharing, we opt to spend our lives talking through an electromagnetic field that is in direct negative opposition to our physical bio-fields. It is a destructive field of energy that our bodies' eco-systems cannot hold up under for a long period of time. I personally know people who have died by living close to sub-stations, cell towers and transmission lines. People and animals that live close to these towers and lines have an extraordinarily high rate of cancer, mental illness, anxiety, heart disease and health issues.

I remember a time when you drove or walked by parks and the parks were filled with people playing and waiting to join a game of basketball, softball, volleyball. Children running all over the playgrounds socializing and imagining together while moms and dads visited with one another and grew to know their neighbors and become friends. Tennis courts were littered with bright yellow balls flying through the air while community pools played babysitter to the kids while mom could rest and soak in the sun and a few quiet moments to herself, or a good read of a book. When kids were roller skating every Friday night or bowling on the weekends. Hanging out with friends in places that parents agreed were safe and kids got to blow off steam, together. Laughing, together. Watching out for one another. Going to drive-in movies and breathing in fresh air while watching a flick and enjoying good company of friends or family. Miniature golf courses were full of families out to enjoy an hour or two of good memories. A time when money was put away all year long so the family could travel to the wilderness or the woods and camp, fish, picnic, hike, see natural places of wonder for a week or two during the summers.

Today, our parks look like skeletal remains of a time when children knew how to laugh and play and enjoy swinging in the sun. When hopscotch, 4 square, jumping rope, playing jacks, marbles was magical to do. Basketball hoops stand torn and broken, baseball diamonds stand empty, tennis courts show cracks of an age gone by. Bowling alleys, roller rinks are but a thing of the past. Swimming pools are half empty, and drive-ins no longer exist. Vacations are about cruise ships and extravagance rather than fresh air and singing songs together. Photo albums are online being shared with the world who really doesn't care and will never share the memories the way your family does in your private lives. The living rooms across this country gather dust while everyone in the family heads to their office, or their bedrooms, or the den to sit in front of a computer screen and feel connected to the world that is mostly an illusion. The children eventually leave home depressed, lonely, uncertain of how to BE in the world, to make friends, to connect away from the constant empty chatter that they find so comforting on the computer and cellphone whilst poisoning their brains as we all know cell phones do.

What I came away with from living in my beautiful farmhouse was many physical health problems that I still deal with many years later. I was driven out of my home after the last fall crop dusting with a severe case of Environmental Illness. An autoimmune illness that sends the immune system into hyperdrive, attacking and reacting to every chemical, every environmental factor, pharmaceuticals, foods, housing, clothing, automobiles, exhaust, supplements, herbs, most of life in a negative, allergic, anaphylactic way. I now suffer from hypothyroidism and am on a fairly high dose of natural medication to control this which is not under complete management. I am diabetic and yet, I have not eaten white, refined sugar or high sugary foods, iodized salt, or white foods for 30 years. I exercise and I am one person who should never have diabetes but I do, and I am incapable of taking synthetic insulin to control the diabetes. I am certain that the diabetes results from a improperly functioning, toxically overwhelmed liver and the liver damage happened due to the constant stream of chemical debris inside and outside of my home, my well, my food, my land, and the community farmland I chose to raise my family in.

My daughter who was raised on organic foods had severe heavy metal poisoning. She had and still has mercury and lead off the charts. She suffered with terrible depression, anxiety attacks, symptoms of mania at times, over-verbalization, hyper-emotionality, fatigue, weakness, sallow skin, dark shadows, bouts of anger and rages. Her mind became a cycle of obsessive and compulsive thinking which has changed over time and worsens when she is in chemical-laden areas or eating inorganic foods.

My former partner fell into a deep depression and was plagued with anxiety and obsessive compulsivity. He was hypo-emotional and flatlined in his mental, emotional and spiritual state. He lost weight, his teeth began to go bad, had hypoglycemia and heavy metal poisoning. He, too, a laid back and gentle man, would fly into angry behaviors, be oppositional and stay fixed to positions that made no sense. Obsessive worry ladened all of our consciousness due to the toxic loads on our bodies and the layers of death that surrounded us.

I, too, suffered in great depression and anxiety. My body bloated to 204 pounds of bloat weight when I had always been 115 pounds at 5'6". The fatigue stole all the energy in my body and left me bed-bound for nearly 5 years. I walked with a cane, and though my mind was intact mentally, I could not push myself out of the deep and toxic fatigue that consumed me. The attack on my liver, My gallbladder, my nervous system, my brain matter, my entire body, pushed me into a state of disrepair that I live presently to heal. My digestive system failed. I could not assimilate foods, nor did my body nourish itself from the foods I took in. I could not go to the bathroom without a colonic or an enema for five years. I became a prisoner of the toxic overload that was placed on my body by the choices of the people who would rather look the other way and not decide for themselves and their families what is healthful and life supporting.

We MUST look at the truth of our lives and our choices. We must look into our children's and our pets' eyes and see their innocence and want a better future, a better NOW for them, and for us. We must read, and listen, and discuss with passion and understanding that our lives, our communities, our country, our planet is in serious danger and risk now. Every can of disinfectant, every wood cleaner, house cleaner, solvent, paint, VOC laden chemical, treated building supplies, formaldehyde-riddled automobile and new article of clothing, inorganic food, air freshener, mainstream laundry detergent, fabric softener, dryer sheet, dry cleaner, perfume, cologne, hair dye, enamel-based nail polish, toothpaste and mouthwash, shampoo and soap, all of these items plus so much more, is causing the rampant escalation of disease and chronic illness, mental illness, disability and death in this country and on our planet. I speak of this out of my experiences and out of observation of others' experiences; out of research and talking with doctors, naturopaths, acupuncturists, healers; listening to people all over the world who cannot leave their homes, who cannot work and live their lives because they are so environmentally ill that they are now the living dead hobbling on two legs; and listening and weeping for the ones who have passed away because their bodies were too sick and weak to recover.

In 2001, I bought a beautiful farmhouse after a life of saving for my dream home, to have it be a source of poisoning for me, my child, my partner, and 17 animals that lost their lives in that home in 3 years time. Two years ago, I had to lay to rest my beautiful dog, Ladybug, the last of any of my pets that survived and moved away with us, due to her extreme environmental illness that I could not help her to heal from. She was only 6 years old and spent her life itching from terrible allergies. No treatment worked to heal this beautiful and precious being. What was once my dream, like everyone else who has the desire to live their lives in peace, safety and harmony, became a nightmare of disease and illness and a long process of recovery.

In my next article, I will address what it is like to live environmentally ill in a toxic world. In future articles, I will discuss living in and through a natural disaster and what it means for us all.

Raven Dutko
Prescott, Arizona
July, 2010