I get this newsletter regularly. I thought you might enjoy this one!!!!
March 6, 2006
The Way It Goes
Greetings Citizens,
You can be optimistic all you want, but then you realize that sometimes, that's the way it goes....
Aunt Penny, a fan of democracy (with herself in control of the Hen House of course) has announced that if early efforts aren't enough to stop this NAIS thing, she's ready to take the tractor to town and cackle her way up Congress Avenue to rally her fans. Tootie, however, having just produced the most magnificent egg in a little thrown-together nest under Uncle Mac's antique wheelbarrow, interrupted, squawking that SHE wants to drive the tractor. Auntie pecked her on the head and said "You haven't even been ON the tractor, much less do you possess the ability to drive it!"
It's a time-honored tradition for farmers and chickens to take the farm vehicle to the seat of government to address a perceived wrong. Sometimes, they even take their pitch forks! Auntie is sorely aggrieved because The TX Animal Health Commission has decided that Auntie needs to be identified and wear an ugly metal ankle bracelet, as if she were an uncommon criminal, or worse. Furthermore, Auntie is not in favor of being assigned a long series of numbers, instead of her name (Aunt Penny Barrrock,) and she especially doesn't want to notify the government if she decides to go to our other farm to visit the cousins there. Not that she really likes those old red hens, but she'd like to keep her un-notifying freedom to make the trip! What law has she broken anyway? she burbles.
And since she has been on the tractor and in its bucket, she figures she can straddle the steering wheel and aim it anywhere she wants to. "How will you reach the foot pedal?" queries Tootie, who, with her gold-rimmed round spectacles, looks indeed like a scholar who would be in tune with the way human vehicles work. "OK," sighs Aunt Penny, "I give up. You can stand on the gas pedal. But when I say 'goose it,' you better hop up and down fast!"
If the hens could write, they would petition all the congress people in the nation to try to stop this Animal Identification System, or at least make it voluntary. Those poor creatures whose owners want it can have it. But she's seen the tizzy her folks have been in, and she's afraid that if it goes on too long, in our exhaustion, one night we'll forget to let her, Tootie and Tita back into the Hen House for grain and the nocturnal perch. They get nervous just thinking about having to spend the night outside with the marauding raccoons and dogs. And already, they have had to track me down twice at dusk to do my door duty. I too may soon need an RFID chip.
Well, I tell her, as she turns her head sideways so that at least one eye can look me in my high-up eyes, we've been busy farming and talking to legislators and anyone, who will listen without becoming comatose, about how NAIS is not going to "end disease;" its mandatory implementation is going to raise TAXES and end local meat and eggs. (The TAHC needs to raise tax money to insure its continued existence; it uses fear of terrorism and disease to justify NAIS.)
There are already systems in place to track disease, and these have worked so well that there virtually is NO serious disease amongst animals in Texas. But if the disease-prone feedlot herds and the concentration-camp chicken barns want additional tracking "to protect the public," then great, they can sign up for the chips and the GPS surveillance. After all, the bird flu is a problem in confined mega-flocks in Asia, not in peasants' farm yards. The flu travels by virus-laden air, and that certainly defines the air in those barns -- so dangerous to breathe inside them that human workers must wear masks and moon-walk clothes to gather the eggs and pick up the dead birds.
"Well," a defiant Aunt Penny cackles, "The enforcers aren't going to be able to find all the little chicken flocks well-hidden all across Texas, so there!"
"Aunt Penny," I reply patiently, "Haven't you heard the neighborhood roosters crowing early in the morning?" "Of course I have, and it's melodic to my fuzzy ears," she says. "That's how they'll find them, Auntie. Imagine, they'll drive around until they hear the roosters and then they'll zero in, point the chip-reading gun at them, see that no data comes back, and consequently, they'll have to bust their owners and force them to comply. Once they pay the fines, there'll be no money for grain!"
Poor Auntie. The world seems so stacked against a little black and white hen, who's just trying to find juicy worms and score enough tofu to make a very nice egg for the farm stand customers. She's even tolerant of them touching her ever so briefly as she glides away. For she's a busy business-hen and doesn't have time for cuddling. But things change. Some folks have to go down so that others (like chip corporations and TAHC) can rise.
In Milam County, where our other farm is, an elderly ranch widow asked Larry, "What am I going to do? I can't chip my fifty cows and do all that computer data entry! I depend upon my animals to supplement my Social Security, and now I'll have to sell them!" "Miss Thelma," he replied, "You can't sell them. Then you'd lose your agriculture tax status and have to pay five years of back taxes!" "Oh," she cried, "Then I'd lose my home and land!"
And that's the way it may go....Across Asia, the peasants are being told that they must build confinement barns (which they can't afford) for their chickens or have them exterminated -- all to protect the profits of the corporate hen houses. And that's the way it goes. One world; one food source.
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And for market Wednesday and Saturday, 9-2:
Hen House Eggs & Louis' Eggs (eat them now so you can tell your grandchildren); A Few we-picked Strawberries (from the "winter" crop; main crop U-pick mid April, we hope); Head Lettuces; Personal Cabbages; Carrots; some Beets; Spring Garlic; Leeks; Green Onions; Turnips; Snow Peas; English Peas; Chard; Dandelion Greens; Escarole; Endive; Radicchio; Sweet Pea Bouquets; French Sorrel; Parsley; Chervil; Cilantro; and maybe Mache and Parsnips....
And: Smoke-dried Tomatoes; Pure Luck's Goat Cheeses; Wateroak Farms' Goat Cheese, Yogurt & Ice Cream; RainWater; White Mountain's Tofu & Smoke-dried Tomato-infused Wheat Roast; Miles of Chocolate; Fresh Bread from Sweetish Hill (Sat)....the farm books; Aunt Penny's organic cotton Tote Bag -- and new organic Aunt Penny and Hen House T-shirts! She and Tootie will wear the toddler size on the tractor!
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Please call your Legislative Representatives and write letters to the Governor and ask them to promote voluntary status on the NAIS. USDA did not mandate the plan to be compulsory; TAHC just wants it that way. $$$$$ And please attend the March 23rd 8 AM TAHC meeting at Marriott Hotel, Round Rock. More info: www.tofga.org and www.texasanimalhealthcommissionwatch.com (read about bird flu.)
Carol Ann --
Boggy Creek Farm
Larry Butler/Carol Ann Sayle
3414 Lyons Road
Austin TX 78702
www.boggycreekfarm.com
carolann@boggycreekfarm.com
The Farm Stand is Open Wednesday & Saturday 9-2
(c) Carol Ann Sayle | 
• Tue 7 Mar 2006 - Good Article!