It’s almost summer and as the warm breeze wafts into my apartment, it draws my memory to the drive on I-64 to my grandmother’s house when I was younger. The “back way” as my mom would call it as we drove through Wakefield and other smaller towns that dotted the road. Growing up in the suburbs, there weren’t a lot of occasions for me to see expanses of farmland. With the sun shining and the windows down, gazing upon open fields, rows and rows of corn, and the occasional deer in the distance felt like an unwinding. Over the years, the drive more or less remained the same, but the rows and rows of corn grew shorter and shorter. What started as edges of dried-out stalks gradually became rows and soon, “for sale” signs appeared. In a relatively short amount of time I saw the landscape change, farmland sold, and I wondered about the people impacted.

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