The Dust Merchants

I do not get out much into The Homesteads these days. I am closely watched by The Apparatus and The Anti-Snailians, so one must be discreet.

But I was out there, oh, say, months ago, to see what one will always see out there which is, out there,  the corn and soybean and rutabaga fields. Though what they really deal in is dust:



Certainly, crops are grown and harvested and sold (to whom I know not). But the most tangible output is the dust:



And after the Dust is harvested and put in their Dust Cribs and milled to a fine dusty powder and then moved again to be weighed and priced at the Dust Elevators, the Dust Merchants swoop in.



Men in suits and hats and with corncob pipes in their fine milky teeth who bid on the dust and talk about dust and then purchase the dust and have the dust hauled to their Dust Mercantiles where another set of men come to evaluate and re-purchase said dust.



These are the Corporate Salesmen who will jack up the marked-up price for the dust and ship it to wherever and whoever requires or believe they require this fine Soybean Island Dust.

And then the fields will begin to look like this:



Greenery in perfect rows and neatness that make the denizens and The Apparatus happy. . . . Until late fall, when once again it will be time to harvest another crop of dust before winter sets in.



Goodbye from Soybean Island