visit

It was a pleasant thing to take a few hours Wednesday to visit with a fellow on his way home to Pennsylvania from South Dakota.  He had been west to look at cattle, breeding stock in particular, and of course our conversation started during a walk through our cattle as well as a quick tour through the hog facilities and a look at the dormant pastures before expanding out to a seemingly endless series of thoughts and curiosities.  It put me in mind of another world, not even a lifetime ago, in which our farm was surrounded by a neighborhood of other diversified farms and we visited one another regularly.  But specialization rules now.  We have all been reduced from farmers to mere spectators at the high school's Friday night ball games.

At lunch my guest told the story of a dairy farmer he knew in Pennsylvania who persisted in being arrested for how he chose to sell his raw milk, this in a state that does permit the selling of raw milk subject to certain inspections and rules, rules which the farmer in question steadfastly refused to honor.  We talked of the tendency of some of the participants in the new and local food idea toward an unthinking libertarianism.  Some, I suggested, are more interested in fighting the government than in producing and selling their products.  We talked then about the necessity of some kind of governing body to impose some sort of structure on our lives together and how necessary that was, especially in a country as large and diverse as ours.  There seems to be a group much more dedicated to tearing the government apart than to decreasing the distance between all of us and the source of our food.  A sign of the times, I guess.  Sometimes it seems as if we  Americans are suicidal.