COVER STORY:

Anatomy of a Manure Spill

Factory livestock accidents that kill fish and pollute water are reaching epidemic proportions. What really happens when 100,000 gallons of raw manure spills into a local creek?

By Brian DeVore

This is a story with many vital statistics: 100,000 gallons of raw hog manure spilled; 690,000 dead fish; 18.7 miles of polluted stream. These numbers represent the results of one factory farm disaster on a typical creek in the Upper Midwest this summer. Unfortunately, they are not uncommon statistics in this age of industrial meat production. In rural America, initial shock is giving away to feelings of helplessness and apathy as the fish body count climbs, the rivers of manure rage and the burgeoning banks of pollution line miles of streams. This apathy is the byproduct of trying to digest and imagine facts and figures of astronomical proportions. But this story takes a look beyond the sterile statistics of news reports and offers a down and dirty glimpse into what happened to one rural community's natural and human residents when factory farming went awry.

The fish aren't biting
Dennis Barta has lived within a few hundred feet of the east branch of Beaver Creek all his 45 years. So it was no big deal to walk the few hundred feet from his house to the small stream with his 18-year-old son, Nathan, for an evening of fishing. But on Saturday, June 21, they couldn't even catch the lowly chub in the two- to three-foot water.

"They weren't biting," recalls Barta, who farms 640 acres of corn, wheat and soybeans seven miles south of the western Minnesota community of Olivia. "I think they were too busy fighting for air."

That's an understatement. The chubs, bullheads, darters, minnows and various other species of fish were literally gasping for their lives. By the time the Bartas arrived at the creek at about 4:30 p.m., the fish were at the surface, trying to get any oxygen they could. Some of the fish were clustered around places where fresh water was trickling into the creek, desperate for any new source of oxygen. Even more troubling was that crayfish, tough bottom-dwelling crustaceans that are seldom seen on dry land, were literally crawling up the banks to get away from the water.

This was a hard scene for the Bartas to take in. The creek runs a half-mile through their farm and Nathan is the fourth generation of Barta to go fishing in the creek, which had always been relatively clean even though it runs through one of the most intensely farmed areas in the country. But seeing fish struggle for oxygen was nothing compared to the scene of devastation that developed before the Bartas' eyes within a half-hour of arriving at the creek. "Then all we saw is the dead ones," recalls Dennis. "The creek turned white with the bellies of dead fish. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what."

Hogging all the oxygen
What was wrong was that tens of thousands of gallons of hog manure - Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) officials estimate as much as 100,000 gallons - had washed into the creek roughly 10 miles upstream of the Barta farm. As nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus started to break down, they consumed all the dissolved oxygen needed to sustain life in the creek. In addition, the manure contained ammonia, which can be toxic to fish. The fish literally suffocated. The hog producer responsible for the spill, Roger Kingstrom, has told the authorities that the manure escaped his operation sometime during the evening of Thursday, June 19. What the Bartas were witnessing was the climax of one of the state's worst manure-caused fish kills.

Old news in farm country
As large livestock confinement systems and their multimillion gallon manure storage facilities proliferate throughout the countryside, scenes like this are all too common. That's not to say manure from farms of all sizes hasn't found its way into our nation's waterways in different proportions in the past. But for the first time in history agricultural waste accidents are taking on the same size and importance as, say, oil spills. Factory farming has earned significant clout in at least one area: its industrial-sized ability to produce pollution. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that raw manure has a "pollution strength" that is 160 times greater than raw human sewage.

There have been dozens of major manure-caused fish kills throughout the nation in the past few years. In 1995 alone, a year when several major manure spills made national headlines, at least 30 such incidents took place in hog producing states. They often occur as a result of a leaky earthen lagoon, an equipment failure, or employee incompetence.

In Missouri, where the amount of hog waste generated by Premium Standard Farms' "state-of-the-art" operations is the equivalent of the human sewage produced by five metropolitan areas the size of Kansas City, they measure manure spills in terms of millions of gallons. In July, manure from a 3,200-head hog farm in northeast Iowa contaminated eight miles of creek and killed at least 115,000 fish. And it's not just hog farms that are the culprits. Waste from mega-poultry operations in Virginia and Maryland is contributing to an oxygen-short "dead zone" in the Chesapeake Bay. In March, a large South Dakota dairy farm leaked manure into a tributary of the Minnesota River.

But the granddaddy of all manure spills thus far happened on June 21, 1995 (exactly two years to the day before Dennis and Nathan Barta made their horrible discovery on Beaver Creek), when a damaged lagoon servicing a 1,200-sow operation in North Carolina spewed a 22 million gallon flood of feces into a river linked to a coastal community. That's twice the amount of oil spilled during the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. Bacteria levels in the water measured 15,000 times higher than normal after the manure hit the river.

In fact, it's no coincidence that the fastest growing hog factory state also is number one in manure related water quality problems. North Carolinians call the period between July and October the "fish kill season," as warm temperatures help make pollution even more deadly to the wild residents of waterways.

Bad timing
Minnesota's Renville County isn't North Carolina, but fish kills such as the one that occurred in late June are making it increasingly easy to compare the two.

What exactly happened on the hog operation north of Olivia between June 19 and June 22 is difficult to determine. When contacted by the Land Stewardship Letter in late August and questioned about the spill, Kingstrom declined to comment. MPCA officials who investigated the spill at the nine-barn, 9,000-pig finishing facility say an automatic timer in one of the barns failed to shut off when it was supposed to. The timer controlled a water rinsing system for flushing manure into a pit beneath the barn's floor. As a result, instead of pumping water for an hour, the system pumped much of Thursday evening. This caused the liquid manure to rise above the floor of the barn and out the doors. The manure then ran across a field into two tile inlets - one as close as 150 feet to the barns. In Minnesota, tile drainage systems are allowed to be placed adjacent to large livestock facilities. In this case, the tile lines served as perfect conduits for the manure to flow into a drainage ditch and eventually on to Beaver Creek, less than a mile away.

A hog farm employee discovered the leak at around 7 a.m. on Friday, say MPCA officials. Kingstrom reported it to the authorities on 2 p.m. Sunday, according to MPCA records.

That's basically all that's known about the farm end of the spill. The operation, according to county records, raises hogs for Christensen Farms & Feedlots, Inc. Based in Sleepy Eye, Minn., Christensen Farms is the 21st largest pork producer in the country, according to Successful Farming magazine. Construction was finished on the facility in October 1995, making it a "state-of-the-art" facility by industry standards. The facility's owner has had no prior water pollution violations, say MPCA officials.

Citizen action
It's difficult to tell when the spill would have come to the attention of the authorities if it hadn't been for the quick action of some local citizens. Soon after the Bartas' foul fishing trip, the Renville County Sheriff's Department was called, as well as the State Duty Officer, a kind of clearing house for such disasters that contacts the proper investigators from the various agencies responsible for water resources. Barta and others then spent the night tracking the manure plume upstream. It was a fairly easy task, given the odoriferous nature of the culprit.

"There were times when we were trying to find the creek and all we had to do was open the car window and smell it," recalls Mary Elbert, whose crop and livestock farm is four miles from the stream.

Elbert, her husband Doug, and several neighbors photographed and videotaped the dead fish and manure that saturated the stream. As dawn approached, they narrowed the source of the spill down to an area between two bridges: The lower bridge had dead fish and reeked of manure; the upper bridge did not.

"We did everything but put up an orange flag and say 'here it is' for the PCA," says Doug Elbert.

By the time Kingstrom reported the spill Sunday afternoon, investigators had a pretty clear-cut case on their hands.

To provide an insight into the significance of this citizen action, consider what happened in 1995 when a fish kill occurred on the west branch of the same creek. Although environmental officials say that kill was not caused by manure, it was human-related. Beyond that, officials aren't saying much about the spill, pending conclusion of "negotiations" with the responsible party. That investigation was significantly hampered by the fact that state officials were not notified until five days after dead fish were first found, says Lee Sundmark, an area fisheries supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Investigators need to obtain fish within hours of a kill in order to have tissue that's still good enough to conduct tests on. In addition, they could not get an accurate count on that fish kill because of fish washing away, being eaten by predators, etc. (some fish sink to the bottom when they die). As a result, Sundmark says that the fish kill estimate on the west fork - 43,000 to 61,000 - is probably a gross underestimate.

But in the case of the east branch disaster this summer, investigators were on the scene the day after the first dead fish were found. Thus, they are fairly confident of their final tally of 691,140 dead fish. That includes 16 different species of fish, but doesn't take into account the insects, invertebrates and other organisms that make up an integral part of a stream's ecosystem. The shells of dead freshwater mussels, which live up to 50 or 60 years, were also found by investigators.

In short, a major disaster befell Beaver Creek that weekend in June.

"It's the largest [Minnesota] fish kill in recent memory that I'm aware of," says Sundmark.

Spilt milk
But Beaver Creek's watershed is made up of more than wild residents. Richard and Mary Nina Serbus don't know if one enterprise on their farm, which is 15 miles downstream from the Kingstrom operation, will ever recover from the spill. Since 1957 Richard has been milking some 20 cows on the land his father and grandfather farmed. The couple also raises 1,100 acres of corn and soybeans and this year their son, Galen, started to take over the herd in hopes of expanding it and improving from grade B to grade A status. But that effort suffered a major setback on the weekend of June 21. That's when the herd started scouring and running high temperatures. By Sunday, most of the cows had all been treated with antibiotics for what originally looked like pneumonia (although the cattle had been vaccinated against that ailment).

The cows must cross Beaver Creek to get to a pasture, and they often spend time there during the hot weather, drinking large amounts of water. When the family heard about the spill on Sunday, they went to the creek and saw dead fish and raw manure. They're convinced the cattle drank the contaminated water and got sick as a result. A June 21 water sample taken from Beaver Creek at a spot within the same township as the Serbus farm showed a fecal coliform level that was 3,800 times higher than the Safe Drinking Water Act's maximum contaminant level, according to an independent laboratory's analysis.

Milk can't be sold from cows that are being treated with antibiotics, so the family dumped milk for six days - a total of 3,000 pounds. That alone cost the family hundreds of dollars, estimates Richard. But the final price could be higher. By late August, it was clear the cows had been aborting calves, another possible side-effect of high fever. The herd's breeding schedule, so critical in dairy farming, has been thrown off kilter, and Galen's attempt to enter dairying is on the rocks. "What do I do?" Richard asks.

The creek's cash cows
Don't expect any answers from environmental officials. For one thing, whether or not the spill was the direct cause of the high fevers in the Serbus's cows is difficult to determine. Understandably, the MPCA and DNR are mostly interested in investigating matters that have a direct cause and effect relationship. That's why they are focusing on the number of fish killed. It also helps that fish are one of the few organisms in the creek that have an easily calculated monetary value.

Luckily for Kingstrom, none of the 16 species of fish included in the final kill count are considered "valuable" as game species by the DNR, which means a much lower fine. In fact, DNR officials are quick to point out that the reason so many fish were killed was because the stream's population consisted of many smaller, nongame species such as minnows, bullheads and suckers, as well as species that aren't exactly household names such as brook sticklebacks, western sand darters and johnny darters. Local citizens did find and videotape some larger species such as walleye and northern pike, but the DNR's Sundmark says no game fish showed up in the six sub-samples investigators took.

Not including game species in a fish kill can make a significant difference. If criminal charges are brought against the owner of an operation that causes a kill, then the death of a game fish like walleye or northern pike can be worth as much as $30 per fish. If the charges brought against the polluter are civil, rather than criminal, then the price per fish is about one-tenth that of the criminal values. MPCA and DNR officials say Kingstrom will undoubtedly be charged civil fines only, since there's no indication the spill was intentional.

Marilyn Danks, who calculates fish kill restitution values for the DNR's Section of Ecological Services, says nongame species are key to the ecological health of a waterway. But since people don't buy bait, gas and equipment in large quantities in order to pursue chubs and bullheads, it's difficult to calculate a monetary value for them. And what about all those crustaceans, amphibians and aquatic insects so critical to the health of a stream? Experts won't even begin to calculate their economic value.

Ironically, it's those organisms lower on the food chain that could take the longest to recover from the spill. Larger, more mobile fish could move back into the area from other waterways within a few months. Crayfish populations could take years to bounce back. Freshwater mussels are a big question mark.

"We'll never know what effect this would have on them," says Sundmark. "It may take decades for the mussels to recover."

Kingstrom will probably be fined based on, for example, the market value of minnows as bait fish. In September, minnows used for crappie fishing were going for around 50 cents a dozen.

But there may be other costs tagged onto the fine. For example, the MPCA considers it a "very serious" offense that Kingstrom did not report the spill until three days after it was supposedly discovered, says Pat Mader, who is with the agency's feedlot section. Most farmers understand how important it is to report such a mishap right away, and the MPCA has had good luck getting such information quickly in recent years, says Mader, who hopes to have the final fine amount determined later this fall.

Is there any way to make certain the broken timer has been fixed, that steps have been taken to prevent future mishaps? Mader says in most cases officials do try to do follow-up activities after "enforcement action," and in this case they've "asked" Kingstrom to fix the equipment.

How certain is it that a spot check will be done?

"Well, I'd like to tell you we always do that, but we can't," Mader concedes, adding that fewer than a dozen MPCA staff are qualified to do such checks for the whole state.

The enforcement buck pretty much stops with the MPCA and DNR in this case. Because waterways fall under state jurisdiction, the county doesn't have much of a role to play in any civil action.

"We haven't had any official contact with the MPCA on the Beaver Creek spill," says Tom Simmons, Renville County Attorney. "It would be somewhat redundant for several government agencies to step on each others' toes in prosecuting the same case."

Simmons says in some ways local and state government officials are struggling to determine how to handle such cases because of the relative newness of mega-manure spills.

"We didn't have manure spills like this until we had these hog barns," he says.

Going beyond individual blame
But in a way, focusing too much on the appropriate punishment of one individual hog operation draws attention away from a bigger question: How long will society allow our food system to put a community's social, economic and environmental well-being at the mercy of an unlucky farmer and a misbehaving slurry timer?

Right now, area residents are dealing with even more immediate questions: Why weren't people warned against swimming in or fishing on the creek once the spill was discovered? What guarantee is there another timer or some other mechanism won't break? Why are tile inlets allowed so close to large confinement facilities? Why aren't secondary containment systems such as earthen berms required around such facilities? What if a spill decimates more than the local fish population? If minnows, mussels and crayfish are valuable to the health of the stream, then why don't restitution penalties reflect that? What if the manure plume, which petered out 9.6 miles short of the Minnesota River, had reached this major waterway? And finally, what if a group of active and informed citizens aren't in the right place at the right time?

These aren't purely academic questions. They dominate the thoughts of people like the Elberts as they play a tense waiting game in the shadow of two mega-lagoons operated by hog giant ValAdCo. The lagoons - one alone holds 28 million gallons of liquid manure - are within a mile of their farm.

"If one ever broke, we would get the manure running through a drainage ditch and under our driveway," says Mary. "That's pretty frightening. This is our backyard."

And this is one backyard that has suffered a blow to its ability to offer residents a good quality of life. Before it joins the Minnesota River, Beaver Creek flows through a county park that serves as a popular fishing and swimming spot. Mary Nina Serbus remembers when the creek, which is three to four feet deep where it meanders through their farm, was "clear down to the bottom."

"The kids used to make rafts and float around or get inner tubes and float down the creek. We wouldn't dare do that today."

LSL Q&A:
When sprawl hits a wall

EDITOR'S NOTE: Gene and Louise Smallidge began fighting urban sprawl some two decades before the Land Stewardship Project even came into existence. Soon after they started farming in the 1960s near their hometown of Cottage Grove, Minn., it became clear to the grain and livestock producers that development, along with its accompanying sewers and roads, was threatening to make agriculture unaffordable in the area. The scrappy couple fought back. They helped organize farmers and other rural residents, reducing dramatically the amount of cropland threatened with immediate development. In the early 1990s, they teamed up with the Land Stewardship Project and convinced state lawmakers to further strengthen farmland protection initiatives in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. Although much of the 660 acres they farm is within the city limits of Cottage Grove (pop. 27,000), the Smallidges - both are 57 - continue to raise corn, soybeans, hay and beef cattle in the shadow of subdivisions. The family's farming success can partly be attributed to their willingness to educate and develop good relations with non-farm neighbors. Over the years, they have served as eloquent and rational spokespeople for the preservation of farmland and an agricultural infrastructure in an area barely 30 minutes from the downtowns of St. Paul and Minneapolis. In 1993, they appeared in the popular LSP video, Houses in the Fields. The Smallidges, along with their son Scott, recently took a break from summer field work to talk to the Land Stewardship Letter about their past battles against sprawl and the future of farming in the area.

LSL:How did it first become clear sprawling development was threatening your farm?

Gene: With all of the housing development taking place in Cottage Grove during the 1960s there was a need to put utilities and storm sewers in for the developers. The attitude of our local government at the time was that if any utility or storm sewer project was initiated anyone who had potential to hook up to the storm sewer main at any time in the future would get an immediate assessment. The assessments were generally more than what farmers had paid for their land, so it had the effect of confiscating your property.

For example, back then the highest priced farmland in the community was sold for maybe $500 per acre, but a storm sewer assessment would be $800 per acre. So if you were making payments on farmland and then all of a sudden got an assessment that exceeded the purchase price of the property, you couldn't hang on to it.

There was a program that's still around today called the Green Acres program which allowed you to defer the assessment. However, the interest started accruing immediately and the interest could compound and accumulate so rapidly that eventually you would have more assessment plus interest against the property than the property was worth. Back in the 60s and 70s, anyone who got an assessment was literally forced to sell as fast as they could.

LSL: What did you do? Gene: We organized property owners in the community. I think we had in excess of 100 farmers and rural property owners and we hired a lawyer and fought the proposed assessments. Eventually the governing body at that time reduced what was proposed from 7,700 acres of storm sewered land down to 1,100 acres to be storm sewered.

LSL: So what's the situation with assessments today?

Gene: We still have to fight them, but after talking to state lawmakers over the years we've been able to get a few safeguards initiated. For example, the Ag Preserves program protects farmland from assessments.

But we discovered about three or four years ago that the Ag Preserves program was not really complete. When it was originally written, it simply stated that it was set up to protect farmland from water and sewer assessments. Those are broad terms and the interpretation was that sewer really meant only sanitary sewer and the first assessment that generally comes into an area is the storm sewer assessment. Because of the loose language of the law, storm sewer and road assessments likely were not covered.

So the law was in real need of some reform. With the help of the Land Stewardship Project we got some momentum going from ag people in the metro area to make the law better. LSP organizer Lee Ronning in particular helped us to find our way though the bureaucracy, to get the appointments, to meet with people in the Minnesota Legislature, to get meetings set up with the Metropolitan Council. The Met Council's support in particular was important because it administers the Ag Preserves program. After several meetings between farmers and the Met Council we got its members to say yes this law needs amending. So then we went to the Legislature and got it changed.

Louise: We wouldn't have been able to do it without LSP. At the time there were two farm couples from our community, two from Dakota County and probably a couple from Scott County that went to the Legislature with us. In other words, there were probably less than 10 of us representing the whole seven-county metro area. Sure, we can get a directory of who's in the Legislature but we don't have the contacts or the know-how to get through the bureaucracy. Lee did the homework to provide us with information on who might carry a bill to make an amendment to the Ag Preserves program. She also had the information about who made up the committee that would hear the bill. She would call and say, "They're going into session in an hour and a half, can you get up here?" That was invaluable, because as farmers we don't have time to sit around and wait for something to happen.

LSL: When you approach policy makers and start talking about protecting farmland, what kind of attitudes do you run into?

Gene: I think most of our local officials over the past 30 years have had the mistaken idea that the more houses we build in the community the better that is for the community.

LSL: Do you think local government is getting the message about farmland's value as farmland?

Louise: They seem to know it when you elect them but they forget after they've been in office a couple of years. I think they need constant reminders. Our new community development director, who comes from Eden Prairie [Minn.], was quoted in the paper recently saying she was so happy to come to Cottage Grove because there was so much vacant land here. Gene attended a meeting soon after that and told her that just because there wasn't a house sitting on that spot, that didn't mean it was vacant.

Gene: I think the theory that more developments create a positive tax dollar situation has been disproven by some of the research projects LSP has done comparing tax revenue to the cost of servicing new developments. We've always had suspicions the tax dollars generated by those large housing tracts simply weren't going to be able to cover the costs for the school system, the infrastructure, the fire protection, the police protection, the roads and snow removal. I would hope that through some of these studies maybe we can do a better job educating officials that building wall-to-wall houses within your township is not the answer.

LSL: How about your non-farm neighbors?

Gene: The citizens within our community would just as soon continue to see a mix of agriculture within their community. There have been a couple of surveys made, one by Washington County and I believe our city has also done some. These surveys usually come back with a large majority favoring saving some agriculture, or saving a large portion of agriculture.

LSL: How else do you convey the message that this farmland is valuable as farmland, and not just as future development parcels? Gene: Each spring we give a tour to approximately 80 high school sophomores from the Cottage Grove School District who are the accelerated social studies students. We discuss the economics of agriculture, the impact of politics on agriculture in the local community, those types of things. We hope these students leave this place with a greater appreciation of agriculture. Louise: It makes a difference what kind of a farmer you are too. You can preserve a 25-acre vegetable farm in the middle of the city and get by with that. But to preserve a grain farm in the middle of the city you have to have the shipping terminals and have the farm supply people within a reasonable distance. The city people don't see any need for corn and soybeans, directly. But they have the need for vegetables straight off the farm, so they see the benefit of having the land there in that case.

LSL: Has Cottage Grove shown support for agriculture in recent years?

Gene: Our local community is taking a more relaxed position about assessments today. They are currently not levying the assessments on property until the development actually occurs. But as we get new elected officials that could all change too.

The city designated some land on their comprehensive plan as permanent agricultural but every time you get a new planner, new employees in your city offices, every time you turn your back you'll see some land with a new designation on it.

Louise: The city has created a task force which I happen to co-chair called City Vision 21. The city's comprehensive plan is a five year plan and we thought five or 10 years was too short a time to plan for. You should get some idea what you want the city to look like 30 to 50 years out and then work toward that instead of just five or 10 years. So the city formed a group of 19 people who are from various walks of life in Cottage Grove, various age groups, various living standards, and so on in the city, all the way from a high school sophomore to some senior citizens. We meet monthly to deal with various growth issues and what we want the city to look like in 50 years. Our group has said we don't ever want Cottage Grove to be more than 45,000 people and we've designated some areas of Cottage Grove that we would like to stay rural forever, or during the next 30 to 50 years anyway. And now we're dealing with different types of housing, industrial and transportation issues in order to make recommendations to the city. We won't know at this point if it's just lip service or if the city will actually act on our recommendations.

LSL: Are there more permanent alternatives to farmland protection?

Gene: Ultimately it's going to take programs like buying development rights because as farms change from generation to generation, there's always going to be some break in the family chain where somebody simply doesn't desire to farm. And then what's going to happen when that property is disposed of? If the bids coming from development are double or triple what the bid for agricultural interests might be, then without some special program that land is going to ultimately be lost to farming.

LSL: Even when the preservation of your particular piece of agricultural land is assured, farming in such a highly populated area must be challenging.

Gene: Anytime you get an increase in population, increased problems come with it. If you're moving farm machinery the increase of traffic on the major highways as well as the local township roads becomes a problem. You have the additional people who want to jog and they want to use snowmobiles, mini-bikes, motorcycles, all terrain vehicles, you name it.

They move into these subdivisions and there's really no place there for them to move around in and so they immediately assume that what's across the road is obviously state land so you run into additional problems with trespass and some vandalism. You'll have a problem with fences occasionally, or tampering with farm machinery. One time someone started a tractor of ours and played with it all night. Another farmer left machinery in the field one night and kids took it and drove it into the river. It's actually improved recently, but there was a period of years where a great deal of things like that were going on.

LSL: With sprawl a threat virtually from the beginning of your farming career, why didn't you just sell out and move somewhere more rural?

Gene: My personal dream all my life has been to be able to farm in this community. I don't know if that's realistic forever, but for the time being that is still our goal.

When you are born in an area that's the area you'll do best in generally because there's many differences in the climate, in the soil type, how to farm a given soil. It's going to take you a number of years just to develop those skills. I don't remember what the statistics are, but most farmers end up farming in the county they were born in. Louise: As young farmers it was important to us because we were still renting machinery from Gene's father. That's an important consideration. Because of the high investment necessary to start, you have to have help from the previous generation, and if that means sharing labor or sharing machinery, renting machinery or whatever, those are all important things. The advice that comes from the previous generation is also important because farming isn't something you learn by attending four years of college and all of a sudden you're ready to start farming. Farming is something you learn from a lifetime of experience.

LSL: What are your plans, Scott?

Scott: Right now, I'm teaching full-time in the Hastings School District and working on the farm during summers and weekends. I'd like to farm full-time eventually, but there's a lot of considerations. One is it has to be financially possible. If there's no money to be made then it just doesn't make a lot of sense. If Cottage Grove stays the way it is now then it's a fine place to farm. But if the Cottage Grove of the future is our 300 acres surrounded by 10,000 acres of houses, then I guess I'm not interested in that. There's a lot of what-ifs.