One of the things about our Farming Community.
Recently Brentwood California the heart of farming as been under seige by the fleeing of people loosing there houses. In Oakley/Brentwood the other day while trapping I found dogs that had been left in the backyard. I’m sure the owners were hoping someone would take refuge on them, but no they were just there no water, no food. I almost threw up when I saw this. Then as i drove to the next trap I was almost again brought to tears when I saw a young couple probably in there thirties with a 10 year old a 8 year old and 3 year old packing there subuaru wagon with everything they owned. On their drive-way there were all of their belongings that said “Take Free” these are the times I will remember, what has happen to America.
Not only have we lost the best part of this community to so called progress, we have now been left with the spoils of what looks like a war zone. I’m not saying that we have bullets flying but to see a community devastated because of greed makes me sick. Our institutions have let us down, our government has been so unaware that we are crumbling in on ourselves. Are we just going to let this happen? How do we change. I want to ponder this because as Miss Wendy and My Dad would have said, “If we are not part of the solution then we are part of the problem.” Lets not play the blame game, lets get our collective energies together.
In Brentwood we have an area called the Agricultural Core. It’s such a sham if you’re a small farmer you can’t make money on your farm. You are stuck with a piece of property to farm that you can’t make a living on. Say for example you want to have another type of business to make your farm profitable, that isn’t Agriculture but would help you to survive through the off season. You couldn’t get approval to do this because big business wouldn’t allow it. They would make sure that you couldn’t compete. You might have some of the worlds best Peaches on 10 arces but that couldn’t sustain you for all the hours and people you need to employee to maintain your crops. If you wanted to add a juice bar to your establishment and use the juice from your gleenings this would not fly you couldn’t get a permit. Even if you pass all the health codes and followed all the rules. This is a crazy thing to do to our farmers. We want pesticide free, raw fruit yet we don’t help local farmers make this happen. I believe the only way to make this happen is to talk about it. How can we help what is it that we do to make local farming a priority.
I would love to get some positive imput. I believe in local food and farming.
Thanks Lulu
