NoNAIS.org

My spiders stumbled on this ironic post from the Faceless Bureaucrat:

Best Sentence Today
“I have a firm rule - I eat the mean people.”
(From Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm, on his culling policy.)

-Posted by Bill Harshaw at 3/25/2009 08:22:00 AM
Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs…retired from USDA in 1997 after 28 years in ASCS/FSA…

Here I stand quoting someone I see quoting me…

I’m honored.

This was sent to me by someone. Next time anyone asks you why you oppose NAIS tell them this story…

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back andstretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The studenttold him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist regime.

In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked: “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?” The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.

“You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods andputting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down onone side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used tothe fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side ofthe fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continueuntil you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the lastside. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them andcatch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. Theyrun around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they goback to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they haveforgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept theircaptivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he seeshappening in America . The government keeps pushing us towardCommunism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form ofprograms such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, taxcuts, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not toplant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continuallylose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

One should always remember two truths: There is no such thing as afree lunch and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaperthan you can do it yourself.

If you see that all of this wonderful government “help” is a problemconfronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably delete this e-mail. But God help you when the gate slams shut!

The only thing I can add to this is a question for you…Which candidates out there are most anxious to spread around the free corn, and what might their motives be?

Think about it…!!

[…and yes, this is a highly effective way of catching pigs. -WJ]

Hat tip to Mari

One of our sows* had a three headed piglet recently which I had posted about on our family farm blog.

Well what do you know but I almost immediately got a phone call from the USDA in Washington, DC informing me that I would have to do triple tagging of this piglet, one for each head. Apparently the regulations are written such that each head in a herd is to be counted and the aren’t about to make an exception for a three headed pig.

The problem is the piglet only has two ears between the three heads so I told the nice USDA lady on the phone that there was no place to put the third ear tag. She said that didn’t matter, I would have to buy one of those micro-chip injecting systems ($1,500) or get the vet to come out to do it ($150). You can guess which way I’m going on that one!

She said what ever I do the tags must be serialized such that the numbers for the three heads are in order reading from left to right. Apparently there is a new regulation that when animals are having their chips read they have to be done in order to avoid confusing the computers because the USDA databases are recorded in stone - something called Read-Only-Memory which is written into silicone crystals. The nice lady explained that this is why they couldn’t remove people from the databases - apparently it is a security ‘feature’ to stop terrorists from creating phantom animals in the databases like happened in Australia.

The other thing the USDA lady mentioned is I must track the three Animal ID’s separately - that if any one of them left the farm I had to report that. Frankly, I think they’ll be sticking pretty close together.

So to assure compliance I called the vet and he’s coming out with a chip injector so we can get this little guy properly recorded into the national herd. He’s also bringing his camera, since mine broke. Hopefully tomorrow I can have some photos up showing this amazing three headed piglet.

Update 2:46 pm: The vet came this afternoon to tag the piglet(s?). Fluffy, as my younger son wants to call him after the three headed dog in the Harry Potter books, is doing fine. The vet took photos and is going to email them to me later tonight. The vet said that it may be possible to surgically correct the birth defect removing the extra two heads so that Fluffy can grow up to be a normal pig. Alternatively I have bids from NECI for making a three salad head cheese and from Barnum and Bailey Circus. He’s so unique I am not sure if I can part with them though. Still, the offers are tempting…

Update 5:01 pm: I just got the photo back from the vet of my son holding Fluffy. I’ve posted the photo on my other blog.