We lost our third sheep of the week last night and I fell asleep – exhausted – on a pillow wet with tears.
She was an adorable little ‘elf-eared’ lamb that had been born too small and apparently with a heart condition. We brought her in to the house when we noticed her odd respirations and I struggled all day to save her, but her heart gave out about 10 minutes after I’d turned out the light and laid down on my sleeping bag next to her so she could still feel part of a flock.
Though I had to see her die, I got the joy of watching her have what we call, a baby ‘lamb’ dream about five minutes before. Happily, she’d gotten comfortable enough for a few minutes at least, to start feeling as though she was running through the grass, her little legs pawing the air as she lay otherwise quietly on her side.
Earlier in the week, we’d been forced to put down an ewe who had twin 6-week-old lambs at her side because of a fast-moving skin cancer that started on her eyelid. We thought she could make it until the lambs were weaned – and she was close – but we hadn’t noticed that her milk had dried up as her body fought the illness. Consequently, dehydrated, and hypothermic thanks to the super cold we’ve been having, we lost the little girl and had to take the little boy to the vet to become the 6-million-dollar lamb.
Though this is often the kind of thing farmers deal with, I can’t help wondering if there might be something more 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 happily exist without government subsidies and we wedge our sometimes-burgeoning vet bills into our one salary budget and struggle to make ends meet.
In the nine years we’ve farmed it, our place has never turned a profit, but our large garden – and the sheep – would absolutely keep us able to feed ourselves if the crap ever hit the fan and that means a lot to us.
Where I live, there are tons of little farmers like us who don’t go to the sale barn with their cattle herds or time the market so they can make the most of their soybean crop. I support the bigger, independent ranchers and farmers out here, though, because they feed a lot of people in our area and beyond. That is, to a point.
There are some even bigger differences between us and some of them beyond size. For instance, we won’t pour ‘free’ human sewage on ANY of our pastures, like some of our bigger neighbors who use this as a way to keep from having to buy expensive commercial fertilizers.
Yes, you read that right. Human sewage – the solid remnants of wastewater treatment plants, which is collected, dried, ‘treated’ and then provided to farmers as FREE fertilizer.
I had no idea about any of this until about 5 years ago when a neighbor/homeschool friend told me about the process.
Dumping Human Waste On Farmland Stinks
Saundra has a farm where she and her husband raise American Mammoth donkeys, which they milk (yes, like a cow). Studies indicate that donkey milk is one of the best substances in the world for treating numbers of human ailments. She not only sells the milk to appreciative families, but she uses it to make a line of soaps and beauty products for sale on her website.
One day when we had our kids at co-op, Saundra began telling me about the practice of dumping human waste on farmland. She told me she’d first found out about it after smelling something horrible coming from her neighbor’s property. After visiting with the neighbors and finding that they were literally spreading human feces on the land next door to her donkey dairy, she began to do lots of research.
Essentially, biosludge/humanure/biosolids, contain ANYTHING that goes down a sewer and into a water treatment plant. Anything: viruses, bacteria, hormones, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals and products from industrial processes, including 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 disgusting concoction is trucked out to pastures, sprayed or dumped onto the land and disc’ed into the soil with a tractor. Unfortunately, neighbors often report seeing biosludge resting on the top of the soil like a toxic coat for weeks, or even months and – during that time – the smell is palpable. Truly – even if it’s disc’ed in – the odor is unlike anything that can be described; an unholy union between something toxically chemical and something about midway through the decay process.
We’ve had it dumped near us and what’s worse, months after the original horrific assault to the senses, when it rains, the smell comes back as bad, or worse, than before.
But the smell tells only part of the story. The rest resides in the ground, where that slurry of chemicals and human waste can leach through the ground, or runoff into water sources that livestock and people drink, or get baked into the hay fed to livestock, that are then fed to people.
Human Waste + Farmland = Toxic Produce
Maine has had its share of destruction from this practice. Farmer after farmer has been forced out of business due to the ripples of PFAS toxicity across Maine’s cropland and water supplies.
In 2021, Maine was testing 34 towns found to have substantial PFAS contamination – including a town where one farm produced milk with 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 over 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.
In Texas, concerned landowners are speaking out against the practice after two Texas farms have sued Synagro – a company which provides biosludge ‘fertilizer’ to farmers – for not being transparent about the chemicals in their wastewater slurry. 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”.
In Oklahoma, where Synagro also distributes ‘free’ biosludge to farmers in east central Oklahoma where Saundra and I live, farmers like us have been speaking out against the practice for years, but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears at the state Capitol.
Shane Jett, an Oklahoma Senator who is one of a very few lawmakers fighting to curtail and/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 want to save money, so they take biosludge to use as ‘fertilizer’ from companies that promise they’ve tested the constituents of the slurry, and municipalities that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to wastewater treatment companies like Synagro to rid themselves of their municipal waste. Farmers then defend the practice because it saves them thousands of dollars and they’re told it’s ‘safe and effective’ by everyone from the EPA to their local environmental quality agency .
Yet, if the Texas lawsuit against Synagro tells us anything, it’s that something is missing in the transparency of the process that’s leaving farmers and – down the line – consumers at risk.
In 2020, while I was Mayor of our little town, Saundra gave a presentation to our town board about the dangers of PFAS contamination through biosludge. Our town has a very high water table which provides a very real possibility of PFAS percolation through the soil, or run off from the soil, into our local aquifer. Our Town Council sided with Saundra and became the first (and so far only) Town in Oklahoma to ban the practice of spreading biosludge on farmland, even after a presentation from a California-based Synagro employee designed to show us the rainbows and unicorns associated with its use.
Many legislators make this issue about property rights. “It’s the landowner’s decision to use this on their land”, they’ll tell us – more than likely after a waste-water treatment lobbyist has dropped by to suggest they should be protected from lawsuits resulting from biosludge application – but it’s not. Your property rights end when they infringe upon mine and I have just as much right to clean water and chemical-free produce as everyone else who buys “farmfresh” 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 thanks to 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.
Wednesday, February 7th, Michael and I were joined on the ROPE Report podcast by Senator Shane Jett, Representative Jim Shaw and Saundra Traywick to talk about efforts in the Oklahoma legislature to ban ‘biosolids’ – aka humanure, aka biosludge – from use on Oklahoma farmland. You can find the full LIVE broadcast on both our YouTube and Rumble channels.
For many years, Saundra has been sounding the alarm about this stuff that has such an horrific scent that you can smell it for miles and, up close, almost has a feel it’s so strong.
For many years, few have wanted to entertain Saundra’s concerns about what was in it to cause such an odor. Even after stories came to light in the media about towns in Maine and Texas where animals exposed to the sludge were dying and treated farmland lay in ruins from exposure to PFAs, or forever chemicals, found in industrial coating processes and things like firefighting foam.
Her Senator, Shane Jett, got it though. In 2023, he wrote a bill attempting to curtail the dumping of this toxic substance on Oklahoma farmland, but it didn’t even get a hearing. In 2024, SB874 was re-introduced, made it all the way through the Senate and then died on its way to the House.
Last August, Ben Felder with Investigate Midwest came to Luther and wrote a very long and complete article about the issues surrounding the use of human sewage waste on farmland and its link to Maine and Texas farms polluted with PFAs.
In this clip, we talk about how farmers who use this sludge get it for free from a private company who works with the government (the City of Oklahoma City) to remove their sewage waste while they’re assuring the farmers taking the sludge that it’s safe and effective (sort of like a vaccine we’ve heard about). As with so many things, the application of toxic wastewater to farmland apparently has everything to do with money and very little to do with the safety of the farmers using it and the people eating whatever comes off it.
During another part of the video Representative Jim Shaw spent some time talking about how, without regulation, companies tend to do whatever benefits them – whether it’s spraying farmland with human poop, or putting in a carbon capture facility because, well, tax incentives.
As Rep. Shaw says, Oklahoma has to do better at protecting its citizens and that’s what we have to do this year.
Saundra has created a list of legislation to support and oppose. Check the list out and be familiar with some of the issues. These are the bills that MUST be dealt with this year to help solve the problem of toxic sludge dumping. Make sure to contact your Representatives and Senators and let them know how you expect them to vote should they make it to the floor this session. This practice of biosludge dumping may happen in the rural areas of our state, but depending on what is then grown in that soil, it could absolutely affect you and your health as well.
SUPPORT
HB 1726 – prohibiting land application, spreading, sale, and distribution of biosolids
SB 268 – preventing the spread and application of biosolids for farmland
SB 620 – forces those who use biosolids to have to disclose that they have used it
OPPOSE
SB 271 – Exempts cities and wastewater companies from liability for contaminating rural communities, and allows other states to dump their toxic biosludge on Oklahoma as long as it’s within our negligent (currently non-existent) PFAS regulations!
SB 3 – a temporary fix for biosolid application
Oklahoma Representative, Kevin Wallace is doing EVERYTHING he can to win re-election to a seat that makes $47,500/year with a generous $168/day per diem. Why? Does it have anything to do with the fact that he controls the purse strings for multi-MILLIONS of dollars of taxpayer funds as the House Appropriations and Budget Chair? Who would want access to those millions of dollars forced from hard working citizens each year? Special interests? Businesses?
Wallace drew two challengers for the November 2024 general election – Jim Shaw and Jason Shilling. Both men ran on similar platforms; concern about biosludge application to farmland (Wallace has admitted publicly to dumping humanure/biosludge on his farm twice) and the takeover of private land by solar and wind technology firms, among other issues.
In what could only be called a ‘dark horse’ race, Jim Shaw, beat Wallace by 212 votes in the primary, forcing a run-off election scheduled for Tuesday, August 27th.
[NOTE; only 5117 voters participated in the primary. That’s ONE FIFTH of the REGISTERED voters in HD32 according to Oklahoma County Election Board statistics for January 2024. Get a load of the census data and you’ll see that the percentage of REGISTERED voters is a fraction of the TOTAL of the over 18 citizens in the district. It’s gross. We’re a representative REPUBLIC, but not if YOU DON’T VOTE! If doing anything else is more important than becoming educated about your representatives in government and then voting, MOVE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY! You’re the reason we’re losing this one!]
Jim Shaw moved to Chandler from Arcadia with his wife and two small girls several years ago. He’s never been involved in politics before, and didn’t even have running for an office on his radar, until he became concerned about the assaults being made on the land occupied by Oklahoma’s small farmers and ranchers – solar, wind, biosludge, Chinese land ownership (which has skyrocketed since medical marijuana was legalized) and a swath of land to be usurped for a giant electricity transmission corridor, just to name a few.
Though Wallace has been in office since 2014, the Primary clearly unsettled the incumbent.
Since that time, Kevin Wallace been on a PAC/lobbyist/attorney/business spending spree that has resulted in a reported $380,714.02 spent just for his political consultant, Campaign Advocacy Management Professionals (CAMP) alone. In fact, he has raised a total of $368,738.95 and spent $438,572.96 just since the Primary! What’s interesting, is that there are so few INDIVIDUAL DISTRICT CITIZENS donating to his campaign, I could barely spot them on his report – can you? But that’s not new, don’t forget – we showed in our May 19th video – that less than 1% of all Wallace’s donations came from citizens in his district!
[NOTE; Apparently Wallace LOVES getting taxpayer dollars as much as he LOVES spending taxpayer dollars. He’s taken $67,603 from the federal government in disaster and commodities subsidies since 2015!]
Truly, since the Primary, the HD32 race has been disgusting on the part of Wallace – and his supporter Governor Kevin Stitt! In the video below, Shaw explains that a video recorded by the Governor in support of Wallace – in which the Governor calls Shaw supporters “Political Animals” and then basically calls Shaw a liar by saying that Wallace helped him author a bill to stop Chinese land ownership – is wrong. Shaw shows in the video below that – NO! – the bill that BOTH the Governor and Wallace are talking about HAS NO TEETH. It’s completely unenforceable, rendering it null and void essentially.
But this is nothing new. This is the Kabuki Theater that IS Oklahoma government. If you watch the FULL live video (Rumble, YouTube) you’ll see me go into a rant about how the Common Core legislation was the same – yes, it was repealed from law, but no one could ACT on it to keep it out of schools.
Hopefully, you read a recent article on this blog about Governor Stitt’s TOOTHLESS immigration bill. The Kabuki theater goes like this; you put a title on a bill that the leftist news media will pick up on – never reading the bill – and it goes viral because the lefties are all screaming against it. This automagically makes all those on the right start shouting about how great the bill is to counter their narrative and voila! A bill passes that would be fine except that it will be meaningless once the Task Force the Governor will implement comes back with a way to get the illegals here illegally to stay legally. It’s all nonsense and yet SO MANY people buy it because they won’t research what is actually going on instead of listening to all the media hype.
And then, of course, there’s the post made by Wallace to one of his three Facebook pages (the one from which I’ve been blocked, apparently!), where he has someone from his campaign go onto Jim Shaw’s property to take photos and then puts his address on a PUBLIC POST in an effort to show that Shaw has solar panels on his property, thereby making him a “liar” and a “fraud”.
I’d have been embarrassed to post something like this, but when he was confronted with the FACT that he doxed his opponent, he would simply respond, “It’s called Google”. This person should represent others in his district? I’d also have been embarrassed to conflate a solar panel array on personal property for personal use, with a 10 thousand acre solar installation, but hey, maybe Wallace is just so interested in winning that he’s vacated all rational thought.
Wallace – and his ilk; career politicians who serve special interests above their constituents – are exactly the people we need to remove from public office. Jim Shaw is exactly the person our Founders talked about when they spoke of the importance of Citizen Legislators.
Saundra Traywick of Oklahoma’s only Donkey Dairy, has been studying the effects of BIOSLUDGE (Humanure/Biosolids) since it was first dumped next to her farm several years ago.
After nearly being run off their property by the smell, Saundra found that this, so-called fertilizer made from sewage solids, can contain ‘forever chemicals’ like PFAS that have been shown to cause cancer and ‘gender-bending’ chemicals like atrizine.
For three years, the Traywick’s have been working with Oklahoma senator Shane Jett to try and stop the use of biosludge in Oklahoma, where it’s usually spread on crop lands that are used for hay, or animal grazing.
Unfortunately, at least one permit for the use of biosludge, belongs to an Oklahoma legislator – Representative Kevin Wallace, Chair of the House Appropriations and Budget Committee.
How many other legislators are using biosludge on their farmland is unknown, however we do know that application is free for the farmer who uses it – unlike those who choose to pay for fertilizer application, or rent livestock to do that job. We also know from Saundra that no less than three bills have been run in the Oklahoma legislature to ban or otherwise control the use of biosludge, but none have passed.
Today, HB2305 will not only NOT protect the people of Oklahoma from the toxic effects of biosludge in their drinking water and/or food, but – as the EPA gets closer to regulating the amount of PFAS in drinking water – it will EXEMPT the sellers of this crap, like Synagro and the end users who spread it on their property, to name a few.
Just like BIG PHARMA’s vaccine manufacturers can inject people with substances all the while knowing they don’t ever have to be responsible for the end results, our Oklahoma House just voted nearly unanimously (thank you Rick West and Tom Gann for voting NO!) to protect everyone from the effects of biosludge – and the same with the Senate (and thanks to the whole 10 of you who voted NO! 👊💖) – but those who need protecting most – the PEOPLE.
Truly, it should be in the daily lexicon of every legislator – to ask before voting on ANY bill – does it protect the liberty of the people whom I represent? If it doesn’t, the VOTE must be NO.
There’s no way a bill that seeks to ‘hold harmless’ those people perpetrating and/or allowing biosludge to effect Oklahomans through their food, air and water, is protecting their liberty! Instead of creating exemptions, legislators should be working together to BAN the use of biosludge across Oklahoma!
Watch the FULL video here on our Rumble and YouTube channels.
