Another feature which dominates the landscape here in Minnesota is the everpresent Lutheran church.
Sometimes, when I ride through some of these small towns in the middle of the country, I am transported back to my childhood. Today had one of those moments as I passed a kid on a bike with baseball cards attached to his bike (with clothespins, of course) so they flapped in the spokes. I wonder if he has tried balloons....?
I spent the night in Janesville, at the house where a dear friend from Seattle grew up, and her mother still lives. By luck and chance, Cris, my friend was in town and it was wonderful to see a familiar face. The highlight of the stay was the tour of the family hog farm, I have been cycling past farms like this one for weeks, and it was very enlightening to get a view from the inside. Actually because of the late hour, we kind of rushed around seeing all the various pieces of the farm from the car. I think the principals were relieved that there was not time to get out and walk around because they have been quite fearful of foreign bourne diseases since last winter when they had something of an epidemic run through their barns.
Here are some stats: 600 acres of corn is half the amount they need to feed all their hogs. I saw two nursery barns, each of which held 3000 piglets, all less than 60 lbs each. They have birthings every week of the year. They keep the sows and the newborns separated from these young piglets for health reasons, and they are all removed from the hogs which are fattened still elsewhere. The corn had been pretty dry, but last week got three inches of rain and it now looks exquisite. They grow eight or nine different varieties of corn, for safety's sake.
The scale of the operation staggered me, especially since I had seen farms like this for weeks. The scale of the countryside has fooled me into thinking these farms were big but not HUGE. When you get right up close to them, these operations are enormous, and this is just a small family farm. I continue to be amazed by it all.
Babcock and Turner are finding new and different obstacles:
We avoided hills and we found no sand, but it rained for several days and the fine hard roads were changed to miles of black mud. We lost at least two days. Once we tried riding in the wet, and at the end of a few hours had to turn the hose on the machines and then take them all apart. Thereafter we were contented to remain under shelter during the rainy days and talk politics. The political atmosphere is far different than what we observed in Montana. We meet many McKinley Democrats and comparatively few silver men.
When I was in Bismarck at the newspaper office, I met a reporter named Jane who told me that when I got to southern Minnesota to take special note of the soil. She said there was no soil like it anywhere else, rich, dark and three feet thick. I have seen it now and it makes me want to take some home for our garden. I think the 1896 cyclists were overwhelmed with it for other reasons.
64 miles to Janesville and dinner with the mayor.
Another fine day on the road,
Dennis