January 8, 1874
Foggy and warm and it rained a little and I went up to Dunckels and in the afternoon it rained and got windy and cold and that is all.
3 eggs for today
Here in 2008 at Northview Farm the weather fellas are also predicting a warm day. I am predicting more grey hair, as I take Becky out driving every day, praying as we go. She needs her driver's license. I need a tranquilizer.
When that is done there is the work on the Census of Agriculture, which we are required to fill out. It is where all those NASS numbers come from but it is HARD (warning pdf file) and it makes me whiny. It says that it takes fifty minutes per response. I don't know if that means per question...there are pages and pages, per page, yep, a lot of them, or for the whole questionnaire. All I know it that I worked on it all afternoon yesterday and it isn't done yet. Wish the government didn't expect us to do their bookkeeping for them.
We also got news that our USPH inspection is coming up, which requires that we offer for consideration a barn that is somewhere near as clean as the set of ER. (Check that link out and imagine complying in a 200 year old barn full of unhousebroken animals, and run by men of the "drop it where you use it" school of tool care. Thank God for Liz is all I gotta say.) We knew that was in the offing and have been working on it, but it is no fun at all.
And then there is the Top Scan thing from Homeland Security. Farm Bureau has been frantically working to get farms exempted from having to fill one out (we have fertilizer and propane and such on hand and may be terrorists or terrorist targets). Even with the information they are sending me in almost daily emails, I have no clue whether we have to fill one out or not. Or how.This sort of snuck in under my farm politics and regulation radar (I get perhaps fifty or sixty emails and newsletters a week on farm policy, agricultural news and commentary and visit many sites that compile such data. Never heard of this one until last week. Since the deadline for compliance, once you figure out whether you have to comply is January 22 that is cutting it pretty close.)
Tax time looms. (Numberwise I need you....He-e-e-e-el-l-pppppp!!!!!) The books must be put in order. New files set up for 2008. All my mistakes of 2007 found and fixed. Arggghhhh!!!
I envy Charlie. I don't exactly want to live without electricity. I would miss my computer. However, I already take care of farm animals every day and I already have to keep warm with wood and hard work. We already grow a lot of our own food, and I do know how to live without modern conveniences having once resided in an itty bitty cabin in the woods, minus most of them.
I would love to forgo all the above government intrusion into our lives and business in trade for the ability to just do the work....you know, feed the cows, milk the cows, grow the food. I'll bet nobody told Charlie how tight his milkhouse door had to be or how to turn his calf buckets upside down.
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7 comments:
That census pisses me off!
I hate filling the darn thing out because like you say it takes sooo much time. Plus some things are a bit hard to understand. I have to admit I guestimated on the last four pages!
They sure don't make it easy on the farmer, do they? I understand why they do some things, but it seems a lot could be skipped in leiu of more important things.
You have made me think about my food in a whole different way.
I must have missed something though. What is "turn his calf buckets upside down"?
I heard recently that the USDA has 3 employees for every farmer in the US.
Your experience sounds like it may be true.
Joni, I was meticulously sitting at the computer going through receipts, totaling up the odd combinations of stuff they asked for and so on, when I discovered that a lot of farmers do just that. And I don't blame them. I think they can do the funding and things they need with a LOT less detail. Sooo some of the rest is going to get gestimated too. I think four hours is probably enough free labor to perform for the government. lol
Stacy, this is only once every five years but it is like filling out a whole tax form along with acreage reports, crop tonnage, number of animals. Yowsa!
Jan, the last milk inspector we had before the one we have now actually wrote us up because a pail we use for calf milk was sitting right side up on the milk house floor when he came in. Buckets must always be upside down so they can drain. This darned bucket is never used for anything but calf milk and never goes near the milk we sell. It always seemed absurdly petty to me that we should be written up for such a silly offense...especially since we ship milk that is exceptionally clean. Our new guy is also really picky about silly stuff. If there is a burned out fuse on top of the water heater he will write that up, which drives me nuts because I am too short to see what our messy men put up there!
FC, I can believe that...much that the USDA oversees has nothing to do with farming. There are the many feeding programs, such as food stamps and WIC that come under the farm bill and USDA too.
I am not looking forward to that census either!
WR, sorry I missed you...I just finished it yesterday. It was really miserable and I am glad it is done.
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