You want to find pigs? Go to Iowa. It's the largest pork producer in the country. The ratio of pigs to people in Iowa is about 7 to 1. I've had a hankering to spend some time on a farm for my series "Our Land." Over the next few months, I'll be out on a road trip, visiting communities large and small, and talking with people about what's important in their lives. So with farming in mind, off to Iowa we went — to Buchanan County in northeastern Iowa. There, we meet up before sunrise with Ryan Kress, 35, a pig farmer and father of two young girls, Kading, 5, and Reagan, almost 3. In the early morning darkness, Ryan kisses Kading, bundles her onto her school bus to preschool, says goodbye to his wife, Dawn, and climbs up into his Ford F-250 pickup to go check on his pigs. "A lot of the work and things that we have to do aren't real glorious," Kress says, "and you're gonna get dirt under your fingernails, and it's not cut out for everybody. But it's what we do, and we're proud of it." As
↧