Sustainable development lessons for mining from Iowa

The Iowa land is changed in every way from what it was before the coming of the farmers.  Is this a lesson in sustainable development for modern mining companies?  They came and cut the trees, ploughed the grasses under, fertilized the soil, dammed the creeks, and built houses. They established their farms that now produce corn and soya bean which in turn feeds pigs and chickens and ethanol plants.

Each farm is different with a mix of house and barns in white or red and trees that remain from the forests that precede farming or vegetation that was planted as windbreak by the settlers who homesteaded the site. The farm houses fascinate me; so many are of the same vintage as our farm house; but each is a variation on the basic form that I am told could be ordered and delivered to be put up by local builders. We will never know, but I suspect that our farm house was first built in the 1880s over a mortar-less sandstone block wall basement as a 15 x 30 ft two story, two bedroom structure with an adjacent mudroom. Then sometime in the 1920s it was doubled in size by adding another 15 x 30 ft section over a concrete stem-wall crawl-space to add the living room, study, and two bedrooms upstairs. In the 1940s, they converted one of the upstairs bedrooms into a bathroom and small bedroom where now the boys sleep, and they added a second mudroom. Probably in the late 1950s, the fireplace between the living room and study was walled up and a furnace installed. I have painted the inside and part of the outside of the house. I have removed the 1960s carpet from the bathroom, the kitchen, and the old mudroom and restored the oak floor that is so beautiful. I made a 9-ft long dining room table, a matching sideboard, a kitchen island, and bookcases from the cedar of the 1920s corncrib and we have somehow gathered together a collection of chairs and beds of great age that fill the rest of the house. It is a comfortable place and alive when the kids are in residence.