I'VE HAD BETTER DAYS
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moon phases � |
Worked on finishing the walls in the cheeseroom today. Had some success in that the only thing left right now is a 5.5 inch strip on one wall. Had much frustration in trying to work with Rainman. I would detail in the private folder but I have spent enough energy on it today that I am now feeling totally drained. Suffice to say that A. sat down tonight and insisted on a conversation about what is going on. The kid is getting old enough that she is having her own opinions and will have her own take on what is going on. I just hope she comes out on the other side in one piece and still able to trust.
K. emailed me this evening about the local farmer's market website containing info that was not OK'd by us, the vendors. That is a bit disturbing. For her it is a hassle because she needs to control who can contact her for her baked goods. She can't field a bazillion calls for brownies and pies each week. For me, I don't need a satement of legal cheese until I am licensed. This whole thing is so complicated for me. Folks just don't realize that dairy products are regulated beyond any other food product. I cannot make cheese in a regular commerical kitchen. I need WAY MORE stuff to even begin to be able to process my milk. Plus I am the farmer so my animals and my farm have to be inspected and approved also. What I am doing is mind boggling in it's regulation. If you must have a comparison think about what is going on with the bird flu thing. People are afraid of birds right now.... well, the government is equally afraid of milk products. Sick, I know, but it is what it is and I have to find my way through this whole mess and come out on the otherside with a business that can survive without being drowned in debt accumulated in the equipement and other needed things to convince the government that my cheeses won't kill anyone. It is truely sad in the sense that you can go into a supermarket and buy a half gallon of milk that came from a farm that milks three hundred cows and one of the cows kicked off the milking machine and it fell to the floor and sucked up some soupy cow poop and that poop went into the pipeline and was "filtered" out by a sock filter but then the remaining "X" number of cows were milked into the same pipeline and their milk was then filtered through the filter that caught the poop thus being filtered through poop and into a bulk tank that was pumped out into a tanker truck that had some milk from the last stop and it all went to a bottling plant without a second thought. It was made "safe" by being pasteurized and put into a container and shipped off to the supermarket. That milk was contaiminated and by the time it reaches the store it is pretty damned old but that is what the regulations allow in the handling and shipping of milk from large agribusiness farms. Meanwhile me, and a bunch of other very small family farms, have to follow similar guidelines but we don't use the big pipelines and we don't keep our animals on feedlots and we don't ship our milk to be mixed with other unknown milk. We know exactly what is in our milk because we see it with our own eyes and if the milking machine hits the floor we stop and that milk is fed to animals and not put into the human food chain. Our animals are named and loved and each one is known very intimately. We don't let an animal got sick and we don't leave them to wollow in shit that will end up in the milk. We could easily go into our barns and milk into a bucket by hand and end up with milk cleaner than the large pipelines of the megafarms. We must have the equipement regardless of our size. We must sacrifice product to prove it is clean, we must use expensive equipment to prove we cooked the milk to kill the bacteria that would be present after the crap got sucked into the pipeline even though we would never allow poop into our milk bucket.......
Geeze, I'm ranting.... but damn it it is the truth...... I get so fucking frustrated with the whole damned thing sometimes. People, the simple fact that there are animals out there providing food to the mass food chain that can not even walk into a building to be milked/slaughtered is really fucking sick. We need to do better for ourselves and the other souls that walk the earth......
Shit, I'm starting again.....
Go eat some lettuce or something, Okay? Oh, make sure it is organic......
Gack......
written at 9:22 p.m.
June 11, 2006
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