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.

meghane, as a conflict-resolution specialist I knew used to say, "there's a lot of fear." That's what I ascribe the neutrality cult to be about. HGTV "it'll never sell" "it's personal to the owner" "it's you"...now *sometimes*, unfortunately, one person's color choice is not another person's taste, and it costs money to change out non-moveable elements like counters and backsplashes as opposed to pillows and lampshades etc., so it really is safer, if safe investment is your primary goal. That said, if y'all saw my house you'd know I'm not averse to color...The Hallarum cabinets with green-tea-Corian (with pencil edges -- it actually looks good, folks, don't choke!) with the Sicis waterglass backsplash in two shades of gold, deeper reddish brown, and two shades of green/gray, would prove it :) I love it so much that I hate to think that someone else won't, but what I did with the backsplash was to screw the backerboard in on top of the drywall and put tiles over the screws, so that if someone really hates it, I can just take it off and reuse the tiles in my new house. They can have plain painted drywall or tumbled travertine if they want :) They're stuck with the corian, though, but it is such a wonderful neutral green-gray, like concrete almost, that another backsplash would be easy to choose to coordinate with, IMO.

Been, lately, walking at health club. First time I did, nice man was walking in the other lane, and was supposed to pass me, as the rule says, not to walk side by side. Instead, he struck up a conversation with me. How's the weather, do you come here often, etc. Then others were coming around, so he moved on. Then I went downstairs, to talk with personal trainer, and he came and stood by me, obviously ready to talk more, but he backed off when trainer took me to machines. Wah, haven't seen him since. BUT he DID say, in conversation, he had noticed me at water aerobics. What? lol We've been moved to lap lanes, for swim team, so he must have seen me, attempting to do laps after water class. Sigh! Good while it lasted.

Hi Vapor - all my pics on my phones were high res. But when you choose some of them to send via email, the phone (the older iOS) would ask you which size you would like the enclosures to be. While the recipient of the email will have the pics in low res, my originals remain high res. So it won't be an issue. Don't know about the new iOS because I haven't upgraded my phone yet.