Thoughts On East Palestine, OH...
A few of our customers have reached out about the disaster in East Palestine. I agree that we should absolutely be concerned with how this affects our water, our land, the food grown on the land, and our animals.
Here is how I have been thinking about this so far…
The hardest part is not knowing what is actually happening and how unsafe things are...where is that line drawn? 30, 50, 100 miles away? I am personally 120 miles from there and still don't feel completely "safe". I was in a session yesterday at the OEFFA conference with a guy that is on staff with Sherrod Brown. They have people monitoring the situation closely, and he literally said that no one knows anything “ACTUAL” about the conditions of the water or the air.
The best I can tell, most of our farms are not using the water that is coming from the Ohio River...that can be deceiving because people think that it gets pumped backward, up to us, that are north of that river. What is most likely actually happening is that we are getting our water from places that are north of us as it runs south and eventually lands in the Mississippi.
Also, most of our farms draw from their own wells, not public water. That's not to say that something that is in the water table can't get down that far but as an example, the water on my farm is coming from a well that is over 200 ft. deep.
AGAIN, I have no actual data on this, but I would guess that the most damage is being done by airborne toxins...which of course are probably blowing mostly to the east.
I am keeping my ears open to how we can help...it's not yet clear so for now I am just trying to figure out the best course of action.
The last piece of good news is this...most of the food we are eating right this moment was grown in the fall...all those roots are already picked and just being stored at the proper temps so that they will hold us over until fresh food in the spring.
I’ll continue to monitor, as I’m sure we all are,
Benji
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