Nathan West 435 26. Nathan West 435 Josh was up early on Monday morning, his mind filled with thoughts of Natalie and the wonderful time they had at the Smear tournament, and the even better time they had at Natalie’s cabin in front of a crackling fireplace. He looked forward to visiting the big factory farm in Iowa. As a reporter, he knew he must gather some firsthand information about a large-scale hog operation. Too many rumors floated around as to what occurred on one of these farms. Josh needed to see an operation up close, see the hogs, smell the smells, listen to the sounds. Josh crawled into his pickup, traveled down Interstate 39 to Madison, and got on Highway 151 toward Dubuque. As he drove along, he wondered if Nathan West’s operation, when he got to see it up close and smelled it, would be similar to the beef feedlot operation he visited in Missouri. Although he tried to be objective about these large-scale farming operations, his thoughts were far from positive. Having grown up on a small dairy farm near Link Lake, Josh remembered the hogs they raised, up to twenty-five or thirty a year that his dad shipped to the stockyards in Milwaukee.
