Met your farmer

March 28, 2012

Your video brought tears to my eyes, Melody. I was so excited for you!

I thought I'd throw this out there....I am a farmer. My husband and I started

with a few chickens about 4 years ago and then moved on to pastured poultry

(chickens for meat). We had a nice little side business going and it was really

rewarding - I went to the local market and sold my eggs and the whole chickens.

We " harvested " them on our property - which makes it as low stress as possible

and makes for the best tasting meat. Well....all in the name of " sanitation " ,

the state has new regulations that say we aren't allowed to process on farm

anymore. We have to go to a FDA facility. Well, wouldn't you know it, there is

only one in my state and it's about 3 1/2 hrs. away. I could go to another state

- but the gas and charge for the processing makes it prohibitive. We had spent

thousands of dollars on the equipment to process ourselves and sadly, we gave it

up. My only option now is to have customers come to me and purchase on farm.

I know I'm going on and on - but I thought this kind of tied into what you were

saying. It is so sad to me that this happened and really it saddens me for the

consumer. They have limited options that are unhealthy and inhumane. If I had to

guess who was behind all of the regulation, I have a good guess.

We are now raising pigs also - and have just decided that we will produce food

for our friends and family - to be as self sustaining as we can. We can't

control what the government will do - but just like with the sprouts....we just

keep learning skills to provide the best possible nutrition for our family.

That's about all we have control of at this point.

I hope this wasn't over the top considering the group is about sprouting...I'm

happy to move back to that topic again. Thanks for sharing your experience

Melody. Everyone should be able to have access to their local farmer and

hopefully appreciate the hard work they do. I agree that there is really very

little income derived from small farming, but there sure is a lot of

satisfaction knowing you are doing right by the animals and in the case of

organic gardening - producing the best possible vegetables with really superior

nutrition.

Carol S.

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