RS I hear ya'.
Up at the BOL there was a farmer selling his meat cattle for $1,000- a head and $200- to butcher, cut and wrap. If I had electricity at the BOL I would have bought one.
Up at the BOL it has been so wet many farmers lost their hay to it.
It seems to be feast or fammin.
Tyson bought out or shut down via regulation all the independent chicken houses around here years ago, now that they are in the beef business it's only a matter of time before they regulate cattle farmers out of business too. We can't fertilize our fields with chicken litter anymore (not that there's any fucking chickens left) we cant store more than 50 gallons of diesel (even if it's off-road) without a damn HAZMAT license (which costs money to get), im not going to get started. I hate this County.
So far I've been pretty lucky playing my hand at cattle. I'm not looking to get anymore and they seem to be doing ok moving around the different sections of pasture on their own - I just hope the ponds hold up until fall. I did make a good little profit this spring but I'm not holding my breath for fall. Chicken house wise we've still got a lot in this area - but Tyson did try that shit down here and the County Sheriff got mixed up in it and they gave up after he threatened to arrest some inspectors for trespassing.
The diesel problem? Same kind shit down here. We got around that by spreading the tanks out onto different tracts of land. Seems if you have an acre here and an acre there that are deeded separately then they can't touch you for it. Even the neighbors are letting some of the larger farmers put tanks on their land.
Here's one for ya - one of my neighbors was going through the process to get an irrigation well dug. It got through everyone else and then the EPA stopped it. He called and they asked him how he had irrigated for the previous two years - short answer he hadn't because there was no water available in that section. When they told him they couldn't approve his well permit because of that he asked how he was supposed to irrigate and they came back with some shit about using a well or hiring a water truck. Needless to say he was pretty pissed about all of it and we pretty much just said screw it and put in a well. .gov be damned.
Our Sheriff is pretty good at responding to a complaint about fed or state idiots fiddling with folks in his county. At this point people around here care little to none about regulations and knobdick bureaucrats.
