I like Breathing Clean Air When I Can Find It

Today we drove from Roswell, NM to Amarillo, TX and man alive, I did not realize how much I missed having humidity in the air. For the past month plus we've been in the desert, which for me is a really interesting place to visit, but I was honestly ready to get out of the dry air. 

I was born into humidity and have been in humidity my whole life, so this was the first time I've experienced a complete lack of moisture in the air. Although the dry was nice for things like how quickly our clothing dried when hanging after the wash or swimming, breathing dry air all the time was not as fun. And the floors of the RV - the moisture has gone out of them so much that the floors are developing huge gaps between the floorboards - that's really not good. 

Our drive was through the most disgusting stretches of factory farmland - it was heartbreaking and horrible and I cannot believe there is any part of any human being that finds this practice acceptable. The stench was unlike anything I've ever smelled, and those poor cows were in such abhorrent conditions. The smell lasted for miles and miles after we'd passed each one. And the farms themselves were vast. No one should ever eat anything that comes from those places, not if they want to achieve health. Not the meat or the grains. 

On a related note, Anthony William, the Medical Medium I go on about, did a podcast just this past Monday called "Environmental Illness" that talked about factory farming and pesticide use in conventional agriculture. If you want to listen to it yourself, it can be found here on Soundcloud. He also talks about carpet chemicals, paint, mold and other airborne toxins that threaten our health. 

He also did a blog post on the subject that can be found here. 

I learned from that podcast that even worse than all of the pesticides (if you can imagine anything worse for our health) and as bad as or worse than any car exhaust or diesel fumes is the burning of those pesticides. He said that agricultural....I mean conventional farms use this plastic that is already industrial (not food grade) plastic they put on or next to the crops as row covers. Then when they drench everything with pestides wearing  Hazmat suits, after the pesticides have soaked into the foods, they take all that pesticide-coated plastic and they BURN IT. 

No one knows about it or if they do, they don't realize how incredibly toxic this is. Not JUST the burning plastic, which is horrible, but the pesticides when they burn. In the spring when everyone's allergies go insane and people start getting sick - Anthony said it's not (just) the pollen that's the culprit. This is when they are burning all of this plastic. He says that they do it in all the states but that California has it the absolute worst (presumably because that's where they grow the food). 

I thought you might want to know about that, because I had no idea, and like he said, I doubt many people do. This ties into when we were driving by all the farmland where they keep the cattle they're going to slaughter....again, factory farms. The stench is unbearable, I cannot imagine anyone living in those conditions, and yet there were houses. I couldn't believe it. It went on for hundreds of miles,  but the energy there - it was just dead. You could see it in the cattle all bunched so tightly together in pens, you could feel it in the air. You could see it in the buildings, falling apart and decrepit, just factories these places were, and these cattle - I think death is the best thing one could wish for them all at this point, it was that bad. 

I didn't take any photos. I don't want to have a record of this horriffic scene, it's already emblazoned on my psyche for life. It was really hard to look at and even harder to smell. And lest anyone think that's "just what farms smell like", let me assure you that it is NOT.  I have been to grassfed free-range cattle farms and there is an organic cow manure small that is natural and farm-like, for lack of a better description. This was NOT that. This smelled like death and decay and chemicals  - it was far beyond anything I've ever experienced, or that anyone should ever have to experience, man or beast. Worse than any pig farm. As we drove past the slaughterhouse I couldn't even imagine what it looks or feels like in there (I've seen photos, cannot unsee).

It's so important to know where our food comes from, and to be connected to that. When we ate beef, we knew our farmer and their cows. We'd go to their farm and pet the cows and watch them live out their happy lives before they became food. Heck, we even went to the processors ourselves to pick up the meat after slaughter.

I don't begrudge people eating meat  - humans are omnivores after all. But there are better ways - healthier ways - to care for our food. It tastes better when it has a good life - meat and plants alike. It tastes better because it IS better - it's healthier, and it makes us healthier too. Not just us, but the planet that we live on. How did we become so far removed from our food in just a few short generations that factory farming has become a viable option? And how long will it take us to see that it really is not?