Country of Origin Labeling

These are places where American food is grown

Or COOL.

Are you one of those people? Who read every label and peruse every sticker on every single bag of fruit or package of vegetables or Styrofoam container of sausages to see where the food originated?

I am and I don't regret it one bit.

We have good friends who farm in this area

I want to know that when I serve a bowl of strawberries to Peggy or bite into a crisp Granny Smith that it was grown by American farmers and picked and shipped and processed under American food safety regulations.

Having been a dairy farmer for the majority of my life, working in what may be one of the most regulated of food industries, I have first hand knowledge of what goes into making our food safe....I have been forced by milk inspectors to pressure wash the gutter behind the cows......I know ten thousand ways to clean a bulk tank and keep it that way.

Having been an ag  columnist for 17 years I have learned a lot about what is done to inspect food being imported. There is NO comparison! A lot of food that comes into this country comes in on a sort of honor system...an inspection here and there, but by no means ubiquitous oversight.

It is one thing to import from neighboring nations that also work under stringent rules....but our new food trading buddies are going to be Pacific Rim nations...possibly including..... you know....China....thanks to the TPP

Those stickers and labels are probably going bye-bye. Since the World Trade Organization has once again struck down US COOL laws and Congress is scurrying to comply, I have one simple, homegrown solution to not wanting my apples and chicken to come from China...where we all know feed safety is not exactly paramount.

We are making plans to remove the old cement sink that clutters up the back porch and buy another freezer. We already raise our own beef, turkeys, get venison off our own land, and grow and freeze a lot of vegetables. We get strawberries locally and apples and other things we don't yet grow ourselves.

Black locust in bloom Town of Glen

Once the old sink is gone we are going shopping for another medium-sized freezer. Storage space has been one of the constraints holding us back from growing more of our own....we can fix that.

Jade's grandpa is giving him his rototiller, which makes expanding the gardens quite possible. 

A river flats cornfield in the Town of Glen

We can do this.

And Congress and their donors and their caving in to world interests at the expense of American interests can all go to Hell.

Maybe this little farm can't feed the world, but we can sure go a long way towards feeding ourselves.

Some tasty food stories for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Donkey Meat recalled
It hasn't worked for Mexico
Or pets

The Chinese stories...horror stories that is....never end.

McDonalds
Yummy....we can get chicken there now
And pork (Meanwhile on American dairy farms water sources are inspected several times a year and water samples pulled and tested by official inspectors)

I could do this all day. The stories of tainted food from countries that will now be our best buddy trading partners and won't have to say so on the packaging are everywhere you care to look. Overseas newspapers are on them like white on rice so to speak. You won't see much here.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

(You can right click if you want to look closely at men wearing tool belts and carrying hammers)

Or should I say these pictures? Hmmm, a farmer in his sixties, his son in his twenties, out working on the land, building new fence where the deer took it out over the winter. Alan has worked beside his dad since he was a wee lad. Along the way he learned how to do an amazing number of things from working on machines to driving them to doctoring cows and planting and harvesting crops. He learned to know our land...where the boundaries are, what fields have wet holes, which ones grow what crop the best and the myriad things a man (or woman) needs to know to be a farmer. The girls can feed and doctor and milk and raise calves and more other jobs than I can even think of to list. All three of them choose the bulls to make the matings on their cows. They could among them start running the place tomorrow and do it well.


There was a lot to learn while they were growing up. Each and every single farm is different from every other one in the world. Heck, each field is different from the one next to it. Farming can be and is taught in college and at seminars and all sorts of such places, but the kids who grow up learning by doing bring more to the table than students who didn't benefit from farm background.


Funny how these on the farm lessons translate so well out in the "real" world. All three of our farm-grown kids are valued out in the public workplace for the skills they learned and the attitudes and work ethic they bring with them. Across the USA thousands of farm and ranch families are raising kids who work along side them every day and have been since the dawn of agriculture, which is pretty much since we started planting seeds in the ground with sticks and rocks. 


Funny how our government in its infinite wisdom wants all this to end. Sadly kids have been hurt and killed in farming accidents over the years and the Department of Labor wants farmers to stop allowing our children to help us on the farm to ensure that kids don't risk getting hurt.


The way the new regulations are written, when our own grand babies come along, if we are  still farming or the kids are farming after us, those impressionable children, who could grow up to be the next generation of land-learners, food producers, capable, hard-working, useful folks, will be prevented by law from doing so. 


They won't be allowed to feed bottle calves, ride horses, show calves at the fair, participate in 4-H livestock projects, or much of anything but sit in front of the TV, cocooned in bubble wrap and safe from everything but drugs and drivebys.  


This safe-from-all-possible-danger mindset of the government, if it is going to take away our lifestyle and our right to raise our kids the way we think is right, will be a terrible thing for farm families and for the whole nation. How will anyone learn to manage the land and grow our food, if we are not allowed to teach our children? How many generations of know-how will be lost, ending with the generation that is farming now if we can't let them learn what we do?


 It is not as if farming is the only danger to kids. If farm kids are no longer allowed to work on the land with their folks, then NO kids should be allowed to ride in cars until they are 18, or play baseball, or football, or go swimming, ride ATVs or any other activities wherein they might come to harm. As I contemplated this story over the past week I saw headline after headline about children killed or injured in everyday activities like those above, or murdered. Now there is an all too common cause of death to children. Why don't we outlaw that? Oh, wait.....


Here are some links to stories on this topic:


Leave our kids alone
Proposed labor changes
FB Video on the Changes


And here is a link to the Congressional directory. Call, write, email your representatives if you don't want this to become the law of the land. NYFB has an easy to use ELobby form, which will send letters to our particular representatives on their site if you are a member. I used that Saturday.


This issue needs immediate attention from every one of us, whether we simply appreciate the values of farm families, or hope to raise our children and grandchildren the way we were raised. Please, if you want to teach your grandchildren to do what you do make those calls. Thanks

Health Care Comparison

Rev. Paul has a really interesting chart right here comparing health care in nations which have national health insurance to those who don't.

The SOPA Protest

Is on for the day. Check it out here.


And here.


And many other places around the web.