Iowa Farmer

Author: Pichan, Stave | Aesthetics, Human rights, Impacts, Iowa, Michigan, Videos

Translate: FROM English | TO English

Do you hear the sound keeps my kids awake
In fields where peace used to reign?
Notice the horizon, the obstructed view
All I see are those blades
The turning and whirling, the deafening sound
Killin’ the birds, spoiling the ground around me

[chorus]
An Iowa farmer has been taken by charmers
Who came waving that green stuff
Took over my land
What did I get from the deal that was made?
When they planted those turbines
Now I live in their shade
An Iowa farmer

The shadow it flickers on the walls and the pictures
What might this do to the mind?
They call it clean, I call it pollution
The man came and sold his big lie
I saw one catch fire but nobody came
All that I had is gone down the drain over time

An Iowa farmer has been taken by charmers
Who came waving that green stuff
Took over my land
What did I get from the deal that was made?
When they planted those turbines
Now they cast a shade
On this Iowa farmer

Maybe it’s time to put up a sign
Oh they tell me there’s not much demand
For a home that’s surrounded by rotating steel
The cause of scars on the land
There’ll be no escaping the tortuous sounds
Once silence prevailed in this small rural town
But for now

I’m an just Iowa farmer who was taken by charmers
Who came waving that green stuff
To control all my land
I didn’t get much from the deal that was made
But a view of those turbines
How I hate their shade
An Iowa farmer

—Steve Pichan 2019

Singer/songwriter Steve Pichan and his wife often travel through mid-Michigan where massive windfarms have sprouted over the past few years. It wasn’t long ago when the farms were in limited concentrated areas, but with each trip to the North Country, Steve noticed more and more turbines, first dotting the skyline and then suddenly polluting the once pristine horizons.

That observation got Pichan to wondering whether or not there were farmers who weren’t thrilled with the towering giants right behind barns and ominously rising above homes and fields. A little internet research was all it took for him to learn what farmers and others already knew; wind turbines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Common problems with them involves the thousands of bats and eagles killed by the rotating blades and an effect known as “shadow flicker”, caused when rotating wind turbine blades cast shadows through constrained openings such as windows and neighboring properties. Occasionally turbines catch on fire and, due to the average height, most fire departments aren’t able to properly extinguish. Property values also take hits when windfarms are nearby. Such examples are just a few of the many complaints Pichan discovered.

So, off to the northern Michigan with guitar in the trunk, Pichan set off to put his thoughts and discoveries into song, one empathizing with the plight of a fictitious farmer in Iowa who lives under the shade of multiple turbines. The farmer knows he got a bum rap when he sold out land to energy corporations that could care less about his scarred land and access roads that once provided fertile soil for profitable crops.

“Iowa Farmer” was written, according to Pichan, to shine a light on the windfarm debacle through art and expose this concerning issue often ignored by media and those profiting from the destruction of once peaceful farms.

This material is the work of the author(s) indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this material resides with the author(s). As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Queries e-mail.

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