When Anthony Castle moved to rural Rockwell City, Iowa, he pictured working on cars outside while his 6-year-old daughter, Hannah, played in the yard nearby.
Castle’s house is on a secluded stretch of one of Calhoun County’s many narrow, unpaved roads that crisscross the cropland grid and, in winter, accumulating snow that no one bothers to clear. He and his wife Tiffany bought the fixer-upper in 2017, and he moved in a month ahead of the family to rewire it.
Then, about six months later, Castle, 32, received a notice that Iowa Select Farms, the largest pork producer in Iowa, was building a confined hog farm about a mile away from the house.