Last night, we lost our second sheep of the week, and I snuck into bed wet and exhausted on a pillow covered in tears.
She was an adorable little “elf-eared” sheep that had been born too little and seemingly with a heart problem. When we brought her into the house after we noticed her strange breathing, and I had to work all day to keep her, but about ten minutes after I turned the light on and placed her on my sleeping case so she could still feel like a member of the flock, her heart stopped beating.
Although I had to watch her pass away, I had the pleasure of witnessing her having what we call a baby sheep dream about five minutes prior. She had finally gotten secure enough for a short while to feel as though she was running through the foliage, her tiny feet pawing the air as she lay peacefully on her part.
We were forced to put down an sheep earlier this year because of a quick-moving skin cancer that had started on her eyelid. It had twin six-week-old calves at her part. We believed she would survive until the calves were weaned, which she was close to, but we hadn’t noticed that her butter had dried up as her figure battled the disease. Thus, dehydrated, and hypothermic thanks to the extremely cool we’ve been having, we lost the little child and had to get the small boy to the physician to become the$ 6-million sheep.
Even though this is frequently the problem producers face, I can’t help but wonder if there might be something else at play.
Farmers Hurting Farmers
My husband and I have a little 10-acre farm where we raise chickens, ducks, turkeys, a completely loveable ( but ungrateful ) mother-daughter donkey pair, four dogs, and two small flocks of sheep. We gladly exist without the aid of the state, squeeze our occasionally escalating vet charges into our one-salary resources, and struggle to make ends meet.
Our area has not turned a profit in the nine years we’ve farmed it, but our large yard and the animals would undoubtedly suffice to nourish us if the garbage always hit the lover, which means a lot to us.
There are many small farmers like us who live where they work and don’t stage their cattle herds or market their crops to maximize their grain crop. I support the bigger, separate farmers and producers out these, though, because they serve a lot of people in our region and beyond. That is, I support them to a place.
There are some even bigger differences between us, some of which go beyond length. For example, we didn’t put “free” people sewage on any of our meadows, like some of our bigger relatives who do so to avoid buying expensive professional nutrients.
Yes, you read that right. People sewage — the strong remnants of wastewater treatment flowers, which are collected, dried,” treated” and finally provided as fertilizer to farmers at little or no charge.
I wasn’t aware of any of this until about five years ago when a neighbor/homeschool companion came to my attention.
Human Waste Getting Dumped On Farmland Stinks
Saundra and her father raise American Mammoth goats on a farm that they butter (yes, like a cow ). Donkey dairy, according to research, is one of the best products available to treat a wide range of human diseases. She also sells milk to benevolent families, and she also sells it on her site for its collection of soaps and beauty products.
Saundra and I started talking about the process of dumping human waste on land when we had our children at co-op one time. She claimed to have first learned about it after smelling a terrible smell coming from her sister’s home. She began doing a lot of study after talking with the neighbors and discovering that they were actually spreading animal feces on the property right next to her mule dairy.
Biosludge, humanure, and biosolids can essentially contain anything that enters a sewer and into a water treatment plant, despite the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA )’s ( EPA ) health risk assessment. Anything: viruses, bacteria, hormones, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals and products from industrial processes, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances ( PFAS ) — known cancer-causing chemicals used in things like firefighting foam and waterproofing compounds that are classified as “forever” chemicals because removing them from the environment is virtually impossible.
This obscene mix is trucked out of meadows, sprayed or dumped onto the property, and dumped with a vehicle into the ground. Sadly, neighbors frequently report seeing biosludge resting like a poisonous coat on the top of the soil for weeks or even months, and the smell is pronounced during that period. The smell is undoubtedly wicked, an evil union between something perniciously chemical and something that is happening somewhere in the decay process, even if it has been disked in.
We’ve had it dumped near us and what’s worse, weeks after the initial horrific abuse to the sensations, when it rains, the odor comes up as negative, or worse, than previously.
However, the smell only serves to illustrate a portion of the narrative. The slurry of human waste and chemicals can enter into the hay that is then fed to people, leaching through the ground, or run off into water sources where livestock and people drink.
Human Waste + Farmland = Toxic Produce
Maine has experienced some destruction as a result of this behavior. Farmers have been forced to stop because of the effects of PFAS toxicity on Maine’s water and cropland.
Maine tested 34 towns in 2021 for PFAS contamination, including one town where one farm produced milk that was more than 150 times the state standard level. By 2022, Maine had become the first state in the union to ban the spreading of biosludge, yet today PFAS contamination due to biosludge “fertilizer” has been found on more than 100 Maine farms and 500 residential properties. For consumers buying locally to provide “healthier” food choices, this is truly concerning.
Unfortunately, Maine isn’t the only state struggling with PFAS contamination from biosludge.
Concerned landowners in Texas are suing Synagro, a company that sells biosludge “fertilizer” to farmers, for allegedly being opaque about the chemicals in their wastewater slurry. Two Texas farms have sued Synagro, a company that sells biosludge “fertilizer.” Dead fish and calves from affected farms have been tested by the county and found to have “30, 000 times higher than EPA’s standard for daily]PFAS ] exposure”, according to DTN.
Farmers like Saundra and I have been fighting the practice for years in Oklahoma, where Synagro also distributes biosludge to farmers in the east central region of the state. But the state capitol has ignored our pleas.
Shane Jett, an Oklahoma senator who is one of very few lawmakers fighting to curtail or ban the practice in Oklahoma, recently summed up the issue with enormous clarity:” Effectively, we have a government agency]municipalities ] that is colluding — to save money, or make money — with a private corporation]wastewater treatment companies ] competing with the private sector and they’re assuring us that it’s’ safe and effective.’ Does that sound like anything we’ve heard before”?
Free Doesn’t Mean Good
And this is the tale. Farmers buy biosludge to use as “fertilizer” from businesses that claim to have tested the ingredients of the slurry because they want to save money. Municipalities pay wastewater treatment companies like Synagro hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of their municipal waste. Farmers then defend the practice because it saves them thousands of dollars and is defended by everyone, including the EPA, to their local environmental quality agency.
However, if the Texas lawsuit against Synagro can be used to learn anything, it is that there isn’t enough transparency in the process, which is putting farmers and consumers in danger down the road.
Saundra presented to our town board in 2020 about the risks of PFAS contamination through biosludge while I was mayor of our small town. Due to the very high water table in our town, there is a very real chance that PFAS will be sucked into our neighborhood aquifer through the soil, or run off from the soil. Our town council sided with Saundra, becoming the first ( and thus far only ) town in Oklahoma to outlaw the practice of spreading biosludge on farmland despite a presentation from a California-based Synagro employee intended to show us the rainbows and unicorns associated with its use.
Numerous legislators raise the question of property rights. They’ll say it’s the landowner’s choice to use it on their property, perhaps after a lobbyist for waste water treatment has come to the area and suggested they should be shielded from lawsuits resulting from biosludge application, but it’s not. When they violate your property rights, you forfeit them, and I have the same right to clean water and chemical-free produce as everyone else who purchases “farm fresh” produce, expecting it to mean what it says.
And I can’t help but wonder, as I bury my little elf-eared lamb this morning, if her condition — or the other ewe’s — had anything to do with our well water. Is it contaminated with PFAS as a result of all the biosludge dumping in my area? I can’t know. I haven’t tested. But I shouldn’t have to. If farmers won’t stop dumping biosludge on their property, the state should stop them. It’s the only way to ensure consumers that “farm fresh” actually means what it implies.
