The Law in its majestic equality,
forbids rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges,
to beg in the streets,
and to steal bread
~Anatole France~
Since 1993 we’ve been an organically certified small farm in California. I had a job with a contractor which paid our household expenses and kept us solvent even when the farm sales were less than our farm expenses. But two years ago when the factory in town closed down, and most of us were laid off, I decided to go into the cactus growing more full time. We grow a unique vegetable which we’ve shipped throughout the country. Initially we shipped the cactus leaves as nursery stock, then governmental regulations tightened and we became more aware of the laws and regulations of shipping nursery stock into other states. So we switched to shipping the younger leaves for people to eat themselves as produce. Our goal has been to ship to Health Food Stores, and restaurants as well as individuals who might be interested in the leaves we grow. Through the years our customer list grew slowly but steadily at a steady 30% rate. As the years progressed the governmental regulations seemed to grow more onerous… and the last year we’ve lost many of our older customers due to the recession. Other businesses have quit, some people seem to have stopped their regular orders. Yet, due to aggressive marketing, our sales this year are the highest we’ve ever had due to many new customers. Yet this was done at the expense of any profit we might have had. And again the government has come down on us harder. Now we have been notified that we must complete a fifteen hour ‘continuing education’ credits in water pollution and conservation. I’m all for education, but these government-mandated classes for all farms in the state are not provided for free… we must pay for them ourselves. The worse part is that they are given in the major population centers of Ventura or Monterrey to which we must take ourselves, and pay for our own lodging for the three days of the course.
It is this extra bit that has me stymied. We don’t really make any money doing this cactus business. All of our money goes to shipping, governmental fees of several thousand dollars yearly in order to maintain our licenses, permits, and associated fees and overhead expenses. Knowing that this trip will lead us into negative financial territory makes me reluctant to want to go. Knowing that due to these regulations, we must take a sample of our water and have it analyzed monthly at unknown costs…. I am seriously aggravated at the state of our laws and the level of compliance required even for tiny little micro-farms.
We have some months in which to take the classes, and maybe I’ll find some classes nearby, but this more personal posting than usual is to let the people know that governmental regulations are a double-edged sword. While they give the USA good traceability in produce, and what is perhaps the safest produce in the world, it also makes for stronger economy-of-scale issues that stymie the small grower… right at a time that we are needing MORE small farms, not less. If we were a huge corporate farm, with many employees, still we would need just one person to go to the classes, but when it’s a one-man operation, the standards are the same. The costs are the same, but they are a larger share of the profit in a small operation like ours.
My usual outlook is of hope and positive thoughts. Rarely am I dragged into this level of aggravation. I am sure I will sign up for the classes in Monterrey, they seem very informative and interesting. But people need to know that excessive governmental regulations strangle small business, they hamper the process of business formulation. We need to seriously look at what we want for this country, a place where people can transact business legally and efficiently with little governmental interference. If the government requires classes such as this, it should place them within the reach of the people, if it requires monthly water sampling, it should have a method to make such sampling efficient and inexpensive, (the paperwork mentions some samples might cost $8,000 yearly).
Excessive governmental regulations hamper small business more than the large. If due only to ‘economy of scale’.
When my dad grew up on an Ozark farm in the thirties and forties, they raised corn and wheat, raised hogs which they sold every fall and winter, and had a hundred or so chickens from which they sold eggs daily. They had five or six milk cows which they milked by hand, using the milk for food and their dogs, and one milk-can daily which they left on the roadside for the milk company to pick up. They also went to neighboring farms to supply skilled farm labor. Nowadays they would have to have many more permits, and each operation would require specialized equipment and permits and licensing. As all these regulations pile onto business, you must streamline your operations, drop aspects that have no profit and require permits, then you start to specialize. Yet a small family farm should not be a specialist farm, it should have a wide variety of foods and animals to create the ‘loop system’ for bio-diversity. Yet through the years we have had to drop livestock from our farm, first initially because we did not have proper butchering facilities, so we stopped the breeding of animals, until we had no more. We stopped using manures for fertilizer years ago because the government is worried about contamination of the soils with bacteria from manures. We stopped bringing in mulches for weed control and soil building because we could not vouch for the exact trees the wood chips came from. We are now a closed system with no outside inputs, and only material going out at a rate of a ton a month. Yet even this production is priced so low, and the shipping and governmental costs are so high, that we make no profit. One day, it might just get through my head that I’m better off just enjoying the property ourselves, and stop working so hard to make a business out of it. Yet, I know I can’t, we have such great customers….
While mulling these thoughts over in my head, I decided I needed to go for a walk. So with my camera in hand, I went down the road and took photos of the things I love about living here. And it is when in the wilderness, when I am furthest from people and the government, that I am closest to God and nature. These photos are my world, they are my daily activities and sights…. it is what is most in my heart.
The large oak once was a nut that stood its ground
Spanish Moss on Black Oak
Cutbank on the canyon road
Cutbank on the canyon road
The green lush creek bottom
The green lush creek bottom
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Old cattle Loading Chute
Miocene Deposits, this was all once underwater
Oak Woodlands
Poison Oak vines wind up the Oak Trees
Spanish Moss on the Oak Tree
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
Right around the bend from home, my daily view
‘One Tin Soldier’
`Lambert-Potter’
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom,
“With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there.”
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
Now the valley cried with anger,
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it…
“Peace on Earth” was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
Painted Ladies, the small butterflies that resemble the large monarchs have made a huge pilgrimage to the Central Coast the last couple days. Huge volleys of them roam the countryside, I see thousands crossing the highways before me. On my travels along the coast I have had my windshield splattered with yellow spots from their fragile bodies as I drive heedless and full of wonder through these little colorful denizens of the fields and vales.
They make their yearly pilgrimage from Old Mexico to the hills of the American West at this time. And this year with the huge amount of rain and the recent warm weather their numbers that have survived the trek this far are beyond any I recall ever seeing.
At this moment the world waits as a Pope lies dying in a dark room in the Vatican. This Pope, a deeply committed man, the idol of my deceased grandmother is soon to pass from this world. He will come into the arms of a loving Creator and will sit at the feast tables of the New Jerusalem. My thoughts and prayers go out to him, and to all who regard him with the high level of respect he has accrued throughout his papacy. He is a refined man, yet a common man, one of the men of the earth. Born into a common family in Poland, he worked with his hands as a young man, and never lost his touch and connection with the common man. On the wall in my grandmothers room to this day is a photo of the Pope. A photo of a strong man, firm of face and rugged in body and spirit. His connection to the peasants of Eastern Europe is perhaps what drew my grandmother to him. She was also of common peasant people of Eastern Europe, and the Nazi and Communist invasion of her homeland was the same as what the Pope encountered. Yet from both families, triumph from the ashes and smoking ruins of a devastated Europe was the end result. True, none of our family made it to the height of power and influence of the Pope, but when you come from starvation and nothing, to get to the point of even a warm house and plentiful food is a high achievement.
And now, with butterflies stuck in my grill, and the sad news on the radio, I travel these lonely roads; alone, but not lonely. I am surrounded by the awesome beauty of these coastal hills, the verdant green, rolling on in wave after wave of velvet-lining over geologic formations squeezed and folded by seismic forces. The Pope came as a seismic force into our lives through Poland from God, and the butterflies come with the soft flutter of wings through Mexico from God. And my tires roll on, through the day, a continual succession of miles eaten up by rubber as my life continues, and the butterflies and the Pope die.
Dang, we’re a bunch of rabble-rowsers here in the states. Since the inception of this nation…. we’ve had a problem with authority, while at the same time we fight and die to preserve the institutions that keep ‘The Man’ in power but at least a little from just rounding us up wholesale in giant Pogroms such as you see in so many places. We suffer a dichotomy from our own love of the nation and people, and the same forces that keep us a bit secure yet ever-suspicious of those who hold the reigns of power…. sometimes our own personal feelings rub a bit with the authorities…. but what’cha gonna do?
My mom is from Hungary and went through some of the issues with the Nazis and later the Russians…. in either case they just ‘went along with the program’ until they could get the hell out of there. My dads’ family has been here since the late 1600′s, and some from before as Native Americans…. they fought against authority from the beginning, even while they were being rounded up in Scotland and Ireland in the ‘Clearances’ and sent here to ‘The Colonies’. There’s been folks from my family that have died in every war this country ever fought.. as Forest Gump said…. “He had a long family history to live up to”. Family lore has it that my granddad Lilburn and his brother used to run moonshine into Saint Louis in the prohibition days. I don’t know how much of that is true…. but knowing my family… I kind of believe there’s some credence to it. I’m sure he only did it part-time though.
You can see the video here…
embedding disabled by request.
It’s a great video.
Copperhead Road (Steve Earle)
Well my name’s John Lee Pettimore
Same as my daddy and his daddy before
You hardly ever saw Grandaddy down here
He only came to town about twice a year
He’d buy a hundred pounds of yeast and some copper line
Everybody knew that he made moonshine
Now the revenue man wanted Grandaddy bad
He headed up the holler with everything he had
It’s before my time but I’ve been told
He never came back from Copperhead Road
Now Daddy ran the whiskey in a big block Dodge
Bought it at an auction at the Mason’s Lodge
‘Johnson County Sheriff’ painted on the side
Just shot a coat of primer then he looked inside
Well him and my uncle tore that engine down
I still remember that rumblin’ sound
Well the sheriff came around in the middle of the night
Heard mama cryin’, knew something wasn’t right
He was headed down to Knoxville with the weekly load
You could smell the whiskey burnin’ down Copperhead Road
I volunteered for the Army on my birthday
They draft the White-Trash first,’round here anyway
I done two tours of duty in Vietnam
And I came home with a brand new plan
I take the seed from Colombia and Mexico
I plant it up the holler down Copperhead Road
Well the D.E.A.’s got a chopper in the air
I wake up screaming like I’m back over there
I learned a thing or two from ol’ Charlie don’t you know
You better stay away from Copperhead Road
One of the delights and also inconveniences of the US is the hodge-podge of laws and customs. Often these vary as much between states as they do between countries in Europe.
On occasion we as a people get together and hand over ‘blanket-authority’ to the federal government to consolidate laws regarding one issue or another into a set of standards determined by the Federal government. Of course, when we do this, the federal government also enforces, and regulates these laws. And the federal government being what it is, we can expect that it will not do a good job dealing with the small issues… or rather, they also focus on ‘small issues’ with blanket provisions that over-rule any objections based on individual circumstances.
Now in addition to the feds poking around.. farmers are having to deal with investigators hired by the large grocery distributors. They are on a quest to make the food supply safe by removing vegetated borderlands from farms, borderlands that might harbor wildlife and insects that might cause a ‘preception’ of problems. This of course comes down hardest on organic farmers who usually try to have some buffer lands with flowering brush and grasses that would harbor a beneficial insect population.
Texas Recipes yes… Texas visit… eh, maybe not so much
Texas…. it’s a pretty interesting place… but after almost getting arrested by San Antonio Police for a very simple misunderstanding (it had a lot to do with my big floppy hat, long hair, bushy beard and a knife I carried), I don’t know if I want to go back again.
But I found a very informative website called Texas’s Best Recipes. Great videos, great recipes.
One of the great things about this great country is we can live where our lifestyle, wants and needs are accepted and appreciated or at least tolerated. Yet we still band together as a tightly knit conglomeration of states under a big (hopefully loose) federal banner. While me, walking around in the California woods with a knife is accepted here…. most Texan municipalities consider a pocket knife to be a concealed weapon. Ehh, ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’… OK, I’ll go along with that…. but after all the travel I did for the first half of my life so far…. I’m really enjoying settling back in one little tiny spot…. not moving much at all. I know this canyon, I know these animals and the small number of people…. Texas Rangers can come back into our canyon if they want…. and I’ll probably treat them better than the San Antonio Police treated me… but still… I think the Rangers ought to stay on their own place… and I’ll stay on my own… so long Texas.. no offense, but until I shave and cut my hair, and dress nicer with no knives on me… I don’t think I’ll be visiting again. I just don’t know if I’ll inadvertently do something not seen as right in Texas and end up in the pokey….
Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Texas or Texans (some of my best friends are Texans, har har, but they moved to California….). While there’s benefits to our system of statehood with sometimes-widely-differing laws and customs between states…. I prefer to stay home.. safe in the refuge of Rivenrock…. where the laws of nature apply more than the laws of man. I know nature much more than I know people.
Some great bands have come from Texas…. one is the incomparable Willie Nelson who made it through decades of Texas and still kept his beard and hair… way to go Willie!
~Willie Nelson~
‘I’d have to be crazy’
I’d have to be crazy
to stop all my singin’
and never play music again.
You’d call me a fool
if I grabbed up a top hat
and ran out to flag down the wind.
I’d have to be weird
to grow me a beard
just to see what the Rednecks would do.
But I’d have to be crazy
plumb out of my mind
to fall out of love with you.
I know I’ve done weird things
I’ve told people I heard things
when silence was all abounds
been days when it pleased me
to be on my knees,
following ants as they crawled along the ground
been insane on a train
but I’m still ‘me’ again
and the place where I hold you is true
So I know I’m alright
cause I’d have to be crazy
to fall out of love with you
You know I
and I don’t intend to
But should there come a day,
when I say that I don’t love you
You’ll lock me away.
I sure would be dingy
to live in an envelope
waiting alone for a stamp
You’d swear I was loco
to rub for a genie
while burnin’ my hand on the lamp
And I may not be normal
but nobody is
so I’d like to say ‘fore I’m through
I’d have to be crazy
plumb out of my mind
to fall out of love with you
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Now, he didn’t come from Texas… but Charlie Daniels does have the attitude of a Westerner…. and an Appalachian…. and like so many of the other wonderful places and peoples we have here in this wonderful, eccentric, bright and beautiful land.
~Charlie Daniels~
‘Long Haired Country Boy’
People say I’m no good,
And crazy as a loon.
Cause I get stoned in the morning,
And get drunk in the afternoon.
Kinda like my old blue-tick hound,
I like to lay around in the shade,
And I ain’t got no money,
But I damn sure got it made.
‘Cause I ain’t askin’ nobody for nothin’,
If I can’t get it on my own.
If you don’t like the way I’m a-livin’,
You just leave this long-haired country boy alone.
We get occasional inquiries from folks in other countries for our cactus. The international laws on plant exchanges are particularly brutal to cactus. Cactus is listed as a CITES II (Committee for the International Trade in Endangered Species) endangered species. We found an exemption years ago in the requirement that the Opuntia cactus we grow can be exempt if the plants are verified to be grown in a ‘plantation-like setting’. Due to this exemption we were able to get a ‘Protected Plant Permit’ by appealing to the Federal Government (always capitalize The Feds… they are a deity in their own minds), submitting photographic proof that we indeed grow the plants we sell, and paying fees (that’s the real ticket to getting anything done with the govt). Using this and other documentations (you can see our licenses in general at ‘Rivenrock Licenses’)… a colleague in Canada was able to get permission to import our cactus into Canada. He is now selling our cactus through his own site at Sierra Madre Cactus Company Canada.
This makes it very easy for us now… we can merely send him the cactus he has requests for, and he takes care of all the cactus sales in Canada through his own company. So anyone in Canada that is searching for edible nopal cactus can go to Sierra Madre Cactus Company Canada and get the leaves we grow ourselves.
If you’ve not read George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, or ’1984′, do.
They are both amazing insights into humanity.
People are in general fairly easy to lead and manipulate on a social scale,
there’s the baton and the pizza
We’ve tended to go for the pizza approach in the USA.
Keep yer nose clean, work enough…
and you’ll probably always be able to have beer and pizza
while watching Monday Night Football.
It’s when either approach goes too far that problems occur.
When the government starts to give the pizza out….
you can expect that batons will be seen before too long.
Better to stay to the middle road.
From the film ’1984′
by John Hurt and Richard Burton
’1984′
‘Two minutes hate’
This is our land
a land of peace and of plenty
a land of harmony and of hope
this is our land
Oceania
these are our people,
the workers,
the strivers,
the builders,
these are our people,
the builders of our world,
struggling,
fighting,
bleeding,
dying
on the streets of our cities,
and on the far-flung battlefields
fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams
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‘Us and Them’
~Pink Floyd~
Us, and them
And after all, we’re only ordinary men.
Me, and you.
God only knows its knows,
it’s not what we would choose to do.
“Forward” he cried from the rear
And the front rank died.
The general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side.
Black and blue
And who knows which is which and who is who.
Up and down.
But in the end its only round and round.
“Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words”
The poster bearer cried.
“Listen son”, said the man with the gun
“There’s room for you inside.”
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Chapter 58
When a government is unobtrusive and tolerant
the people will be happy and prosperous;
when a government is suspicious and strict
the people are dissatisfied and crafty.
Good fortune is linked to calamity;
misery is tied to happiness.
So who can tell when the end of this will come?
Is there no measuring-stick for the norm?
What is seen now as right and true;
will certainly someday be seen as wrong and false.
The people have labored under this sea of vexations for a long time.
Therefore the Master is square
without sharp cutting corners.
His straightness is not strained;
he is pointed without being piercing.
And he is bright but not blinding.
Iran has long held a particular interest for me. While in the Army and afterwards I had plenty of associates who had been stationed in Iran at one time…. also, my own unit was put on alert and readied to be deployed to Iran during the Iranian Islamic Revolution.
I’ve not met anyone who’d been stationed there who bemoaned their time there. They all seemed to have appreciated Iran and the people of Iran a quite a bit.
Now, in this time of potential change…. we pass on to the Iranian people our hopes for a successful revolution once again, this time toward freedom and democracy…. and away from oppression and tyranny.
‘Freedom’
~Rage Against the Machine~
Paintings of rebellion
Drawn up by the thoughts I think
Yeah!
Come on!
The militant poet in once again, check it
It’s set up like a deck of cards
They’re sending us to early graves
For all the diamonds
They’ll use a pair of clubs to beat the spades
With poetry I paint the pictures that hit
More like the murals that fit
Don’t turn away
Get in front of it
Brotha, did ya forget ya name?
Did ya lose it on the wall
Playin’ tic-tac-toe?
Yo, check the diagonal
Three brothers gone
Come on
Doesn’t that make it three in a row?
Anger is a gift
Brotha, did ya forget ya name?
Did ya lose it on the wall
Playin’ tic-tac-toe?
Yo, check the diagonal
Three million gone
Come on
‘Cause you know they’re counting backwards to zero
The environment exceeding on the level
Of our unconsciousness
For example
What does the billboard say?
Come and play!, come and play!
Forget about the movement
Anger is a gift
Yes, there are times that anger is needed… not the ‘three minutes of hate’ of 1984…. but rational anger, strictly controlled… dignified… and used only for the sake of righteousness. That is what leads to freedom… but sadly, so many have to die to attain that.
In general the good people will not rise to the levels needed to attain freedom, but there comes a time…..
Freedom has never been free… someone always pays for your freedoms whether you realize it or not.
I don’t believe he exhausted all diplomatic processes.
And now Iowahawk informs us that the widow of the fly is looking into a lawsuit. The website gives some info…
“It was just before supper time and I was predigesting the evening @#$% for the kids,” she recalled. “When I looked up at the TV I saw Bob there, and of course I was pretty excited. He started waving at me, and then, all of a sudden, SLAP! My whole world, my life, layed smashed across the back of Obama’s left hand. And with 360 degree peripheral vision and hundreds of eye facets, it was impossible to look away.”
Note: mild language warning…. the word ‘manure‘ seems to be hard to find when there is a shorter alternative.
Galileo was forced to capitulate to the religious/political authorities.. and science took a step backward.
Usually religion will trump reason when placed toe-to-toe by their respective adherents. Because when ‘push-comes-to-shove’, the religious will often energetically promote their perspectives, and endeavour to embarrass all others to silence by implying they are not ‘properly pious’. In a social context, this is tantamount to banishment. Humans, the social animal will tend to modify their public statements to avoid the social stigma associated with ‘going against the flow’.
Religion does not always mean worship of a ‘Creator-Being’… religion can be any faith and belief in a system that has no real basis in verified proof. This is why we call religious persons ‘people of faith’. Many in the environmental/political worship system will say they are agnostics or atheists…. but perhaps their deep commitment to social and environmental issues is actually a type of religion.
The professor of the Classics in Calif, Victor Davis Hanson has a great article…. ‘I no longer quite believe’.
The adage ‘those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it’, has an ancillary meaning… we need to learn the past… and we should listen very well to the researchers in the antiquities of mankind.
