This story bothered me on so many levels. Uh-oh, I feel a rant coming on...
First and foremost, I have to absolutely agree with Windup about all the details of small-town life being bass-ackwards. I've lived on a farm, though we just rented the house on the property and did not actually do the farmwork, and none of the details or people seemed real. Sort of how it would turn out if I wrote a story about living in the inner city. Every detail would be wrong and anyone who's actually lived there would be able to spot it.
Second, the cross-dresser was used simply as a hook to draw readers into the story, and then never mentioned again. If the story had been about the cross-dresser, or even if the cross-dresser had played some important role, that would've been cool, but that wasn't the case. The first paragraphs had only one semi-interesting point, and that was that the dude was wearing ladies clothing. So I assumed that this would be important or at least relevant at some point, but nope, not even slightly. So instead of helping me understand the POV of a cross-dresser, this story just cheapens the whole lifestyle. Sort of like the old gag hook "SEX!! Now that I have your attention <insert something here that's boring and has nothing to do with sex>".
There were so many characters that we didn't get to settle with any of them. The only one we stuck with was completely uninteresting. He was the only one who was even remotely sane, but that seemed to be his only distinguishing characteristic.
I do find it odd to classify this as fantasy simply because the pseudoscience used is ludicrous, but that alone isn't a huge deal to me. I'm listening to all 3 casts anyway, so it doesn't make that much difference if the subject material gets blurred a bit.
But most of all, the message that was beaten over my head was totally bogus! "All we need is hope. If we keep our optimism and band together we can accomplish anything." Blech. This message could be true to a certain extent for some goals. For instance, if their goal had been to create legislation for <insert political issue here>, then by doing a big weird project they might get some TV interviews, which would further their cause, create public awareness, etc... But when the goal is to settle Mars? Simply banding together is not enough.
The problem is, nothing in the story suggested that ANY of it would be remotely plausible. As far as I could tell, this was still intended to be our world, so until I see otherwise, our laws of science must be in play. You're not going to get anything into space that way without huge amounts of highly combustible fuel. Where did they get the jet fuel to fill the silo? How could they afford it or transport it? No idea. How did they keep the silo from breaking apart the moment it left the ground? Silos are NOT built to be mobile. What did they use for heat shielding? Nothing, apparently. Where did they get the money for all of this? Apparently out of thin air. Yes, they were having fundraisers for it, but all of the fundraisers were LOCAL in a small town which seemed to have very little resources. There is a finite amount of money and resources in a sparsely populated area like that, and all fundraising does is group the small amount of money into one place, it doesn't CREATE more money, unless someone's printing counterfeit bills.
But let's say the town actually gets all of this stuff together, pools their very last dollars together to do it. Then what happens? Then it would fail spectacularly, because they have no frigging clue what they're doing. This is their first try, and there's no way anything of this magnitude could be successful on the first try, and they couldn't possibly have money for another try. So to me, the real ending occurs when the whole thing blows up, probably demolishing the farm, maybe part of the town and killing most of the townspeople, and leaving all of them penniless and hopeless. And then the pig farmer can say "I told you so" but I doubt it will make him feel any better. So the moral of "we need something to band together for" falls flat when it's clear from the beginning that they will be worse off in EVERY way by undertaking such an endeavor.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to take off my ranting hat and band together the locals so that I can create a rift in the earth below our city that will allow us to meet the race of dwarfs living down there. I hear they have gold, and that could be the thing to fix our damaged economy! There's a teeny-tiny possibility that the seismic activity will kill millions of people, but if we all stay positive I'm sure it will turn out for the best.