Many of the things mentioned, are from previous safety failures in farm management. He considers his farm clean to process meat. Uninspected, unobserved, the animal and meat handling could be anything! I have seen home butchering done in the barn aisle, carcass dropped onto an old bloody sheet or canvas to cut up for packages. No washing of the butcher person, he is wearing his overalls, old muddy barn boots as he wrestles the half and other portions onto some boards across sawhorses to cut up. Open air, lots of flies on the meat, because it is a warm spring or fall day. Flies come on over from the paddocks of contained animals amd manure in them. Yep, I REALLY want to get my meat from him! Actually, I no longer accepted dinner invites from those folks after helping with some job or just visiting!! You would never know about that "handling method" as you buy those little meat packages. Whining writer could do as others do, sell the portions of animal. Then he will have animal processed at the butcher location, customers pick up the finished product from the Gov't. inspected, licensed facility. It is not going to cost him any more at all. Gov't. Inspected can mean a lot of things, they are not all equal. However the place and methods get looked at now and again, better than nothing. Hiring regulations are to protect the worker. If a farmer or his family members use tools that are elderly, questionable with no safety guards or bad wiring, that is a family choice. Hired help should not be forced to work under those conditions. Power tools, by their design, are not something you let small kids or younger kids use. They come with manuals of safety, handling instructions that no one reads, to protect the user. Do the farm employers take time to do safety training of these employees, to use the various tools? Not often, if at all. Everyone already "knows" how to do farm stuff!! Kids seldom will argue with an elder person if told to do a job. Kids do not have the experience to spot dangers or understand the problems that might occur in doing a job the wrong way. They don't often think, period! Kids want to earn money, are not going to worry about the dangers they place themselves in, while doing that job. Plus kids forget what you said, ignore the directions they were given before, THINK for themselves. Original thought by kids might add to the dangers!! Their "kid brains" just work that way! Part of growing up is brain development, which can't happen before brain is ready to grow that way. Actual body development may hinder kids in trying to do things, they have different visual fields, motor skills. They often can't help how they think and react, just an age thing. Each grows up at their own speed, should not be grouped by age in all cases. Big size or older age, is NOT mature in body or thinking!! Adult farm workers may not read well, or have used this kind of tool or machine before. They SHOULD be shown how to use it, have the guards and safeties in place to protect them. I can't believe how often the safety features are over-ridden or removed to make it easier to get hurt. Yet it happens ALL THE TIME. I guess you have to protect people from themselves because they will hurt and kill themselves if not supervised. I will agree there are many conflicting and peculiarly written laws in farming. Still were always written for a good, original reason. Farming is about the most dangerous occupation in the US. I think deep-sea fishing is number one. So many places and ways to get hurt in any farming operation. Even if just reading the laws makes you think about your lack of meeting the rules, you might CHANGE a couple things to be better/safer, for yourself. As we live in the setting, we lose our discerning eye for danger. No longer see the repaired cords, long extensions run to get power in a location, double plugs on an outlet, jury-rigging to keep a tractor running, instead of REALLY fixing it right. Just keep rounding up the loose animals, not fixing fence. Climbing the ladder with missing or cracked treads. Not turning off the tractor to unhitch the wagon by ourself, on the hill, with brakes we never repaired. Taking constant chances, which so far have not broken the odds of survival. Yet stuff like this IS a source of danger, we have become used to it or ignore the dangers. The Gov't. gets involved because this thinking is so prevailing, bad stuff never is fixed, endagers the hired help. Not acceptable as safety in Industry, or on the "old farm" either. People die with ignoring safety. The original writing is totally a rant, no one gets to do everything his own way, anyplace. Many nations are much more strict than the US. The food chain is very vulnerable anyplace in the length. It does need checking, to keep things somewhat safer than you would ever see with self-governing along the way.

Our market opened last month and our first day was very cold and drippy (it even snowed one county over from us). It didn't affect sales. Our current weather is pretty warm but so far we haven't had the wall to wall crowds that I was hoping for. This is my first year at this market and I am happy with the move - sales have increased each Saturday. I still need to make more money but other vendors that have been with this market for years are doing ok so I think I will stick it out and see what happens. Usually once the weather gets hot and buggy people give up on the yard - and plant sales drop off. So there is huge push to move plants before that magic moment. This Saturday will be in the 90's and I will be watching to see if it affects sales - or my level of perkiness as I stand on the asphalt pavement. Between all the years I have sold plants I still cannot determine a pattern to customers. What sells well one week won't move at all the next week.

Friday night was our last market, the rain held off, it wasn't really cold (til the end), but not many people there (vendors or customers). This despite last week's market being canceled due to rain. I had *beautiful* crisp green bell peppers, estimated could hold about 3/4C - 1C of stuffing so picked them, only sold TWO (and 6 bananas, a few jals and cherry bombs, and those were to a single guy who buys $2 worth from me every week)! One lady told me the bells were small, she was used to grocery store peppers. I told her I thought these were good-sized, refrained from saying that the grocery store peppers weren't (for the most part) organically grown, were probably waxed, and a week or more old, not 5 hrs old (I picked in the AM)! But the same lady thought $6 for a jar of jam was too much, I did tell her then that I could sell wild blackberries for $5/pint in season, so had to charge $1 extra for the jar, sugar, etc. to make the jam. Sorry for the rambling - had to vent. I guess I have lots of peppers to freeze, pickle, and make jam/jelly from (I did manage to sell 3 jars of pepper jelly and 1 fruit jam - bad night, I usually sell more). Plus tomatoes - another lady thought $3 for a 14oz (average) Pink Brandywine was too much, no one else even asked. Guy next to me was selling smaller heirloom-looking (squatty) ones, don't know how he did but still had lots left when he packed up. But I *have* been asked to supply the preserves for the Historical Society's Tavern night. Maybe make some pickled peppers? I'll start a new thread.

I think part of what is prompting the Facebook rant is longstanding resentment (I am not sure whether personal or "cultural") regarding how gay men, in some rather "non-public" settings have been treated by the police. Bars were regularly raided, the patrons arrested for being present, and a list of their names would be published in the paper. There were suicides because of this on a fairly regular basis, because the individuals were often shunned by their families and fired from their jobs. There is one famous case where a man jumped out a window to escape the police, and impaled himself on several spikes on a wrought iron fence. He survived but the railing had to be cut out and taken to the hospital with him. Even after this, places where pornographic movies would be shown would be raided and the patrons arrested for engaging in sexual activity. During one such local crackdown, they showed the interior of such a place on the news, and I remember a coworker saying "They arrested these men for having sex in public!" In reality it was hardly a public setting. The place consisted of a retail store up front (for porn and other such stuff) and the place where the movies were shown were behind a door that you had to pay an additional "entrance fee" and there was a turnstile or a door you had to be buzzed through. This was hardly a scenario that one was going to stumble into in all innocence and be shocked and forever tainted by what one saw by accident. I don't understand the particular attraction or drive to engage in such activity, but I feel some sort of pity for people who have such drives rather than thinking they are evil. I suppose it can be an addiction just like any other.