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  • From: KAKerby AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Thank you for all the information and a few questions
  • Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 12:27:15 EST

Outstanding video.  God bless Mike Rowe for bringing some attention and dignity (and wonderful humor) to jobs that don't generally involve white collars and briefcases.
 
I sorta look at all this regulatory stuff like a pendulum - swings back and forth in a long arc that is sometimes measured in decades.  Just as it gets to one extreme and we wonder wow, how much farther can it go, momentum is overcome by weight and it starts to swing back again.  Maybe because I was raised in what was still in some ways a frontier town out on the plains, where laws were "what civilized folk had back East", I've had the dubious pleasure of watching civilization and regulatory oversight march into my area hand in hand.  Gawd that makes me sound 200 years old, but I do recall comments from the old cowboys along those lines from when I was real little.  I haven't lived long enough yet to see the pendulum swing the other way but historically it tends to run all the way back to anarchy if there's enough momentum to push it that far.
 
I guess with that perspective I've considered myself something like a boat just trying to ride out waves as they roll by underneath me.  I have the work I want to do, I know that sometimes things will tend towards one extreme and then just as they swing back and we breathe a sigh of relief they tend to swing to the other extreme and then we're nervous again for opposite reasons.  But I'll keep trying to do the work in spite of all that, rather than let those swings dictate the work that I do.  If there are certain products that I'd love to produce but current market conditions make it impossible, such as raw milk right now, I'll produce something similar for the public and keep the good stuff for myself. 
 
I just attended a farm marketing class the other night where some very suburbanite marketing pros showed up in their Prius to tell us about the latest and greatest and I remember thinking 'oh lordie, here we go'.  But they floored me with their latest marketing data - "less is more", "sustainable" and "frugal" are the new "bling", "local grown, in-season menus, farm to fridge" is the new up-and-coming religion, Grandma's thriftiness and 'make do or do without' is the new mantra, and apparently my banged up 1983 Ford Ranger pickup is quite the stylish set of wheels under this new domain.  Someone in class asked if this was just a passing fancy, a here-today-gone-tomorrow trend, and they said no, they don't think so.  They'd been doing marketing research for 20 years or whatever, and these trends had been building at strong, almost sub-conscious levels for a long time.  Then last year's economic slowdown somehow flushed them all to the surface.  The one gal said she considered it a "social consciousness correction change".  Um, alrighty then.  But maybe that pendulum is already starting to swing back again.  Let's hope.  In the meantime, Go, Mike, GO!
Kathryn Kerby
Frog Chorus Farm
Snohomish, WA
 
In a message dated 3/4/2010 7:01:03 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, jaysleichter AT yahoo.com writes:
I want to say thank you to all the people who share all the important information and topic on this listserve.  While I have heard about some of the things many of you are talking about, I know very little about many of the topics.  I find out that I know even less about everything everyday.  Many of you are talking about very neat things and I feel very primitive about my farming practices. 

My question is this.  When did all this safety, legislation, regulations, requirements get out of hand?  When will it stop? Can it stop?  When will someone step in and put an end to it and bring back some common sense (dangerous word I know).  When will people start watching out for themselves and not relying on someone else or the goverment to do it for them?  I ran across this video clip.  I think it hits on some of the things I am asking about.  It is Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs at the National FFA Convention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brlkkrxoezs

Just a thought.

Jay

Jay's Jellies, Produce and More
Clay Center, Kansas
www.jaysjellies.com




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  • Re: [Market-farming] Thank you for all the information and a few questions, KAKerby, 03/04/2010

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