The Devil Has Many Faces

The air is crisp and light in the farm town of Malcom, Iowa which is just about sixteen minutes outside of the university village of Grinnell, but a world away from any of its action. Part of Poweshiek County, Malcom farmers specifically, are salt-of-the-earth kind of people. They don’t mince words. There isn’t time. City slickers are welcome as long as they don’t complicate things and farming, next to family, is the central focus for most residents. Farming around these parts is sacred. A short jaunt around this area with a population of about 400 will reveal the wide open land and acreage. On a Sunday drive you might pass the Christian day school. Further down you’ll find the county courthouse which looks like a tourist postcard with its white steeple and brick exterior. And if you drive far enough, you may pass Mitchell Family Farms, a staple in this county for over two hundred years. The people are kind here, but weary of interlopers at first and for good reason. Certain industrial processing plants have come in of late, promising jobs and big production. But they take income away from the local, organic farmers by instead offering residents more industrialized packaged goods. Pick up the local paper and you’ll see it’s saturated with vows of “honest to goodness” this and “organic, we promise” that. All adages from local grocers who double as the local farm owners. Malcom, most agree, is an American throwback to an earlier time, to a time when honest to goodness American values mattered and family came first. Folks here like it that way. Charles Mitchell is a third generation farmer in Malcom and one of the town’s most well known residents. He is the owner of Mitchell Family Farms, his pride and joy. A devoted Christian and a strong family man, he is well liked and he loves everyone. But interlopers, well they can cause a whole world of problems, isn’t that true? The kind of problems Charles Mitchell knows all too well.