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.

I should clarify - it's not that we're 'evacuated', a person's fire plan is to either stay and fight or leave. So on high fire risk days, we go! It's still like an evacuation. So yes, we left again and guess what? Monday a fire breaks out a couple of towns away from where we were staying!! But DH's nephew has everything ready to defend his house so I watched them get their fire plan into action which was to top up their ginormous water tank, check the sprinkler system that's on the roof, fill pails with water and have mops by the pails then put them all around the house so that if a cinder falls you can douse it with a wet mop, change into all cotton clothing which is slower to burn, get wool blankets out to wet and put over yourself... have I missed anything? Oh yeah, then sit on the porch and watch the smoke and wind, listen to the news, and wait to see if the fire spreads our way. To be honest, we would have been safer if we stayed home! But on Monday the big worry was south east of here and, fortunately, nothing happened. Tomorrow, Friday, is another high risk day but I'm not sure if we're going to the nephew's house. Maybe we'll just spend the day at the mall. Then, if something happens in our area we'll go to the nephew's house. I don't know. This is getting very tiresome. I want these fires to stop already but someone told me she heard they were predicting a few more months before it's all settled. MONTHS!! And then yesterday we saw a new plume of smoke in the hills out yonder. So I called 000, our 911, and told the lady that I saw smoke coming from a hilltop but I couldn't tell her the name of the hill top and was just guessing about the area the hilltop was in. She suggested I check the CFA website to see if there was anything written there about the plume but I said it just started as I had been watching the mountains all morning and this one area suddendly started smoking - I called her as soon as I saw the plume of smoke. The lady asked if I saw flames. I said I was too far to see flames so she gave me this xyz number to call and report it. So I call xyz and I'm talking to this guy who seems absolutely clueless as to what to do and eventually suggest a number to call. And guess what number he gves me? xyz... I yelled at him and said that it's his number and asked him if he didn't know his own number. Sheesh. So then he gave me another number and I speak to that person who eventually says she'll transfer me to somebody else who might be able to help. So I'm talking to this lady and she says I've called the wrong number and that I have to call 000. I tell her that's who I started with but they didn't want to know. So this lady asked if I could see flames and I said no and then she said that 000 wouldn't do anything about it until ya saw flames. So I said, "Well, isn't it a bit too late by then? I mean, if you see flames the fire's on ya and you're dead." She was silent. So I then threatened to tell a popular news journalist here about the inefficiency and run around I was receiving and there was a big silence so the lady switched me to someone else and they said a fire truck would come by to have a look. So from when I first called to when the fire dept came was about 1 hour. The fire crew said it was a flare up within contained lines, and really that was what I was trying to find out, if the new fire was in a containment area, or even backburning by the CFA itself, or something new that needed watching. I kinda think it turned into something they needed to watch because after dark we could see trucks up there. I never felt threatened by this fire cuz it really is too far from my place, but it was extremely frustrating that when I reported it, no one seemed to want to respond. Thanks Luvs and Karen. Karen, your arm feeling any better?? LOL SHould probably ask that on 'your' thread. lol Thanks Nona. Why can't Bella write on here? I think that very weird. Glad to hear her son was safe. Well, will fill you in as it happens... or, as I'd prefer, DOESN'T happen. ;-)

We usually have crappy weather, we get lots of rain, but this year it is beyond ridiculous. We are getting 4 or 5 days in a row with no let up in the rain and big storms, than a crappy day and then more stormy days. It feels like the house is going to lift off its foundations and that I am going to be off to kansas to see the wizard. I forget what the sun looks like! It has been above average temperatures (17c yesterday) one day then freezing the next. We will get 4-5 inches of snow that turns to rain and then gets washed away. I forget what the sun looks like! The dogs and I are getting fat as we have not been doing anything and it has been tuff to even get out for a decent walk. My poor better half is working in the middle east this week and the weather has totally delayed her travel plans forcing her to have to overnight in a hotel at London's Heathrow airport at a cost of 185 british pounds which is close to $400 for a stinking night. The rain took a pause today and I figured I would go out and check out the garden. First thing I notice was that the neighbour's fence had blown down. The moose was though the hill garden recently: Here is the square foot garden beside the cabin today: I think I was talking with EG about swiss chard a while back and here it is after several frosts. I cut this chard to the ground in the fenced square foot garden a couple weeks back and you notice even in this weather it has grown a bit. Amazing stuff and so good with garlic and a little chicken broth. The creek is eroding away beside the creek square foot garden. I hope it stops there, Next year I am going to have to put rocks on the side of the bank here. Here is the strawberry patch where the creek overflowed. The two new areas that I planted square foot style have a bit of sand and silt but I hope will be ok. The creek has really suffered some erosion this last month. ...

Worst day? Gee, where do I start? So that this post won't be a total whine-fest, I'm going to do it in a bad-news-good-news format. Bad day: The day that we walked into our den, the showpiece of our home, and saw that a steel beam for the deck had been placed directly across and in front of all of the transom windows. Good day: The day the steel framing company came back and fixed it. Bad day: The day the steel fabricator informed me that they had not been paid by the GC. The GC had sent them faulty drawings (he made a change, at his initiative, to change the floor elevations, and then he forgot to update the deck draiwngs to match). Good day: The day, about a month before that, when the deadline for the steel fabricator to file a lien passed. (We're still going to try to compensate them, if we succeed in getting it out of the builder in court.) Bad day: The day my DW cried and stated that she hated the house and wanted to sell it as is just to be rid of it. This was the day that we came in and found that the stairs had not been constructed anywhere remotely resembling the plans. The GC's explanation: "Well, that wasn't going to work, so I changed it." Good day: The day a couple of weeks ago when we finally finished painting and cleaning the stairwell, after thousands of dollars to have a master carpenter re-do the railing supports and re-cut the trim, and months of fixing the cruddy drywall and refinishing all the trim. Bad day: The day that I had to call the police to get rid of the GC's employee who was busy face-nailing all of the T&G bamboo in the kitchen. Good day: The day that my brother-in-law, who does that kind of work, finished installing the last of the T&G bamboo (most of the house). And he did a great job. Bad day: The day that I did some exploratory digging and found that (1) the water service had never been connected to the house entrace, and (2) a sewer line in the back yard that had been damaged was simply covered over without being fixed. Good day: The day that the plumber, the one really good craftsman that the GC had, agreed to work for me directly and finish the job. He did great work and his rates were really reasonable too. Bad day: The day I went to the site and found that the GC had removed the building permit, and that there were piles of trash and debris piled up all over the lot. Good day: The day I finished burning the last of the contruction debris (they still allow that here). Even better day: The day that I convinced the city to take the permit away from the builder and give it to me. Bad day: The day after taking over the job, when I looked in the electrical panels and found that not one of the circuits was labeled, and of the few that had been hooked up in the panel, most of them had to be re-done because the work wasn't to code. Even worse day: The day that, while tracing all of the circuits, I discovered that two 3-way light circuits had been crossed between the den and the dining room. It looked like we were going to have to rip out the drywall to fix it. Good day: The day that I figured out how to put in a jumper between the two boxes (on different areas of the same wall). I managed to get a long drill bit to drill through studs in between, through the opening in the wall where the box was, and with my DW's help we got some Romex threaded through without having to tear out anything. And the circuit worked properly once I got everything hooked up. Bad day: The day I discovered that the GC had gone ahead with the drywall without ever passing the framing inspection -- he failed it twice. Good day: The day, way back at the beginning, when I decided I was going to take lots of photos of everything. I had the framing extensively photo documented. And with that, our architect was able to convince the city to sign off on the framing without requiring that any drywall be removed. Bad day: The day I had to go tell the city's chief inspector that the GC had used a sub who did not have a business license and had not paid his use taxes. Good day: That same day, when the chief inspector, after giving me a hint that they had had a lot of trouble on other jobs with this GC, waived the unpaid taxes and signed off on our C.O. We moved in to the house that evening and we were out of our apartment the next day.