Life Transplanet

So it looks like the government needs to step in and protect us from eggs now.  From CNN:

“The fresh eggs from the recalled firms are being diverted to USDA-approved facilities for pasteurization,” Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Patricia El-Hinnawy said Wednesday.

Well honestly, that is about the expected result.  Instead of fixing the problem (large scale centralized food production) we come up with another quick fix.

I just find it amusing (especially after raising a few hens in our backyard) that there is all this hoorah about some eggs.  People really should just take matters into their own hands and raise a few themselves.  But as we’ve seen, the government does NOT want that. 

I mean just think.  People could be responsible for themselves and there wouldn’t be a need for a .gov agency to oversee EVERY single egg this country produces and consumes.  It really is laughable the lengths we Americans go to in order to feel safe.

Show me your papers

The Greeley Stampede (formerly known as the Greeley Independence Stampede) is by far the largest event that happens in Greeley. Really, it’s the only thing that brings in people from out of town in large numbers. As I wrote about the Greeley Stampede last year, it has rodeos, concerts, a carnival and lots of people-watching.

Unfortunately for us, this year we won’t be attending. You see, the Greeley Stampede is going to charge an entrance fee for the first time ever in its 80 or so years! Now, if we get free tickets to an event  again or for some other strange reason happen to end up there, I’m sure we’ll be happy to go, but otherwise, we won’t be in their count.

Because we ride our bikes there, do a lap or two around the midway, maybe grab a fattening snack and then ride back. We are not going to spend $10 for that ($5/person) just to walk (bike) in. Maybe others will, I don’t know. But for most people with families of 4 or 5 people who don’t ride their bikes there, just getting in the doors will likely cost $30-40 bucks -just for parking and admission. Then they will have to decide whether or not they want to buy any $5 corn dogs or $6 lemonades. Probably not so much. For a humorous look at this, check out this funny editorial column in the Greeley Tribune.

And I understand that the Stampede is a victim of this wacked out economy just like everyone else…but this is definitely a discretionary item, a fun thing, not a necessity. It is a community event, why not allow the community to come in? It seems to me to be excluding a lot of people to a public park. Would you walk around a park if you had to pay $5 to get in? That’s basically what it comes down to. A big, busy park.

And if you are going to the concerts, rodeos or have a full pass to the carnival, you don’t have to pay to get in…so it really is just attacking people who would be utilizing the park as it was meant to be used…as a public gathering place. You know, like back in the old days when it was meant to celebrate the potato farmers… But instead they are going to erect a fence to keep people out, instead of trying to invite them in…Sounds familiar as Greeley is known for its fences.

And for budgeting purposes, they had other options -for instance they could have charged more for parking…then people who car-pooled or biked like us would be given the motivation to do so. And people who lived in the neighborhood would feel a sense of pride for living there (that they don’t usually feel) because they could walk. They could have tacked on higher charges to vendors and sponsors. They could have charged the fee but then given a coupon for one item of 1/2 price food or drink at the vendors. This would have encouraged people to still spend money with the food vendors and at least made the entrance fee worth something other than just getting in to walk around. Or they could have just scaled back!

It just seems strange that you would want to discourage people from coming out to this event -because that’s exactly what they are doing with this walk-around entrance fee.

But we’ll see. It’s their party, they can charge if they want to. In the end, the proof of this little experiement will be in the pudding. Maybe they will have higher numbers of attendance and make more money than ever before…Some people don’t care too much what kind of value they get for their dollars. But we do, so we won’t be there.  Maybe we’ll ride our bikes to another park one of those evenings.

Our new plants, that we just dug up, hauled over to our house, removed all the mulch for, and planted are…gone! I came home from lunch today to see they were almost all taken! I was so upset. Some of the plants were left though. They were mainly the plants that we had had there before or that we had just got at the store and still had the price tag hanging from them. Therefore, all signs point to the neighbor who abandoned her property or else wouldn’t a random person have taken all of them and not been so selective?

This is all that’s left!

Argh. I really don’t know what to do! She probably assumed that we just stole her plants and so she was going to steal them back. Or she thought maybe that we had something to do with her getting the ticket about the noxious weeds even though we were just as surprised.

It is so weird though. They were there this morning, then they were gone at 2pm when I stopped by home after a lunch meeting. I asked all our neighbors and they didn’t see anything. Our roommate was home but just hanging out in the basement so didn’t see anything.

What would you do? Write a letter to her? Post a note on her house saying that we received permission to take the plants because they would have otherwise been mowed down? Post a “No Trespassing” sign on our yard?

All that hard work! And she lives in a rental where she can’t really do all that gardening, so what will happen to all those plants?

We could just leave it be and forget about it, or try and fill it with more plants from our backyard and greenhouse. Or just buy some more (I don’t think we’ll take any more from that yard -let them mow it for all I care now!). It’s weird because if she had wanted the plants, she could have just dug them up from her old yard. There are still plenty of plants! But I think she was sending us a message. I kept asking Britton if he thought she would be upset and he said, “She could care less. She has moved on and that is not her house anymore.” Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  I think she might have been the one to turn us in to the city for our chickens as well…neighbor drama.

Before we left for Puerto Rico almost a month ago already, Britton and I thought for sure we would come back with answers and a definite path. Unfortunately, we just have more questions than answers. No one at work knows what will happen after August. I’ve put my resume out there to a few places both here in Colorado and Puerto Rico but haven’t really heard back. Britton hasn’t heard too much about working remote in Puerto Rico even though I know he’d do great at that.

We are just kind of stuck. I am beginning to think maybe the larger place in Puerto Rico could work as a business/home, but we would still like a backup plan for income. If I didn’t lose my job in August and we worked for another 6-8 months we would be in better shape for that. We really just don’t know. And it’s frustrating. Because I like to move forward. I like to be busy and dream and make plans. And it is difficult when it could go any way, really. We could stay or go. We could go somewhere else. We made this video before we left, but it could just as easily be made today for all it’s helped us in our decision making process.

But I have to remember that I’ve been in this place before. It is not unusual. I didn’t know what to do after college, or after grad school, or after getting married. I worried about where my life was going. Sometimes I think you just got to keep trying but not worry so much. Things tend to work out as they should. My life has been great so far and with Britton in it, it has become even better. We balance each other. He pulls me down to earth when my head gets too lost in the clouds, and I pull him up when he is weighed down by the pressures of the “real world”. I think, and he helps to do. I think every team needs a little of both. A thinker and a doer. And a doer who occasionally does the thinking and a thinker who occasionally does the doing. A dreamer and a practical realist We are a team and I think in that way we don’t really have to worry too much. We will be just fine. Wherever this journey called life takes us.

***WARNING*** This post contains explicit descriptions and disturbing images.

Today as part of my Leadership Weld County class, we focused on economic development in the Weld County area. The largest employer and main reason for Greeley’s existence? JBS/Swift formerly known as ConAgra meats, formerly Monfort.

JBS is huge. They employ about 2000 people (mainly blue-collar unskilled labor). The Monfort family was one of the first to start the process of confined feeding operations (feedlots) and expanded into the slaughter. In the factory model, they made the raw product and then the finished one.

The Monfort family still lives in Greeley and are very influential. There is a Monfort School of Business at the University of Northern Colorado, a Monfort Family Clinic, birthing center, school, children’s clinic and many other areas with their name affixed. A local steakhouse is named after one of the early Monforts (Kenny’s). It was only fitting for us to visit JBS to see the economic and other impact on our community.

Our tour guide just happened to be an old family friend who has worked at Monfort/ConAgra/Swift/JBS for about 30 years! It was nice seeing him again and brought up all sorts of memories of my parents hanging out with them, playing softball and spending time together. It’s amazing he has worked there that long! I do not think I could last one day there. But it does show how the people in my community -my friends! rely on this to make a living (or is it a killing?!)

We went from “clean to dirty” as he put it, or the opposite of production. First we had to get all geared up with steel-toed boots, gators, hair nets (and beard nets for the boys), goggles, helmets, ear plugs, gloves and lab coats. Then we saw the packaging of the T-Bones, hamburger, ribeyes, trimming and all the other cuts. There were hundreds of people just hacking into the parts and sawing them in half and other not-so-fun jobs. Next we went to the carcass area where they were all cold and sliced directly in half vertically. I didn’t bring my camera in, but we did get one “group photo” in front of thousands of carcasses. Generally you take photos in front of something beautiful or visually stunning. This was stunning all right, but in a morbidly strange way. What do you think?

Can you find me? (Hint: I am short) Can you count how many dead cows? (Hint: They are more cows than people in this pic)

Next we went to the “Hot” area. It was very hot and pretty stinky. Every time we passed a doorway there was this sudsy soapy stuff we walked through -I am guessing to decrease tracking in stuff. This was the area immediately after the kill floor. We had to run between the huge swinging carcasses.  Luckily, I didn’t actually see a kill because I don’t think I could have stood to see one after another after another. They said they go through about 5,000 to 6,000 cows every DAY! Holy cow! That’s about 2,000,0000 (Two Million!) cows every year! Each 5,000 cows make about 30,000 boxes of 60 lbs of beef. We also learned that their primary customers are McDonald’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr and other fast food places, Sam’s, Costco and all the major big box grocery stores.

We did learn about how they killed them and saw the immediate after effects. First they use a knocker (like in the movie No Country for Old Men) to render them unconscious but not dead. They need the heart to continue pumping to get all the blood out, which is accomplished by slicing their neck. I watched cow after cow bleed out right in front of me. This, is the mental picture I cannot erase from my head. They tie up the cows by their back legs so the blood can drain out. Their tongues are wagging out and their eyes are open and scary looking. This is my mental image that I made into a drawing:

Disturbing! huh!?

I have to say that while it wasn’t pleasant (at all) I am still glad I went through and saw this. This is the backbone of our community (for better or for worse). I also know why I don’t eat much meat -especially red meat. We didn’t get a chance to see all the feedlots, but Britton and I have flown over them in a small private plane and they go on for miles and miles. Nothing but cows standing in “manure” to put it nicely. Not munching on grass or resting on pasture. Standing knee deep in crap two feet from the next cow that just crapped all over the other one.

And it’s not that I don’t eat meat at all. I am not a vegetarian, but I do try to limit the amount I eat, in order to lessen the demand for such entities like this. I try to support small-scale enterprises and eat pastured meat (and eggs, obviously). I understand economies of scale, but why do we humans try to make factories out of everything? Even living beings like these cows we measure by how many we can cram into a cardboard box.

Plus feedlots emit more greenhouse gases than cars, they introduce antibiotics into our bodies (because they have to give them to the cows or they would be too sick) creating a perfect petri dish for super-bugs, and are given hormones (to fatten them up faster than is normal) that ultimately affect our hormones. And while E. Coli is a naturally occurring bacteria, all the antibiotics and exposure to other sick cows from eating grain-based diets instead of grass creates super-E.Coli in huge amounts which are much more dangerous to people than the regular variety. These huge factories also condense all the waste and pollution into one place and make our backyard literally stink. It’s way worse than our 4 chickens every could possibly stink. Which makes me laugh that we would think a few backyard chickens are the bane of Greeley instead of the huge elephant -er- cow in the room.

So overall, I’d say I feel like this was something I had to see in order to be better educated personally, but now I am further committed to a limited-meat diet and want to give more support for those few independent and sustainable small-scale farmers and ranchers out there trying to compete with these huge factories. And another reminder -go see Food, Inc! It’s a primer on all this stuff, if this is news to you.