MN supports family farms????

[Guest guest]

What is up in Minn? I'm finding all sorts of " wonderful " things that are

obvious that the

state (and feds) are clearly opposed to small farms or even people attempting to

raise their

own foods. Did you know that you're actually suppose to claim the produce your

grow in

your own garden, in your backyard, for your own use as " income " ?

I also had a lovely talk with my local tax assessor, they want to change our

status from ag

to residential because we're no longer renting any land to the sod farmer and

instead grow

our own hay and pasture our goats and chickens. It's not farm because we're

have not

filed a schedule F. I guess only agribusiness is a real farm and not hay, goats

and

chickens. He kept citing a recent court case in Hennepin Co where someone

bought 20

acreas, built a nice house on 1 acre and grew oats/barley on the other 19 was

reclassified

as residential and that held up in court. And did you know that the definition

of a farm is

that it makes (not necessarily clears) at least $1000 worth of ag product a

year?

And then there's NAIS- National Animal Identification System, of course MN is

cited as a

wonderful example, but at least we're not as far along as Wis. This will really

put small

farms and homesteaders under. Anyone with any kind of farm animal, cow, pig,

horse,

goat, chicken, llama, alpaca... will be required to register their farm (with

gps coordinates).

Your animals must be tagged, by a vet, and they plan for the tags to be the

radio

frequency kind so they can be read from a distance. Then anytime an animal

leaves the

farm- trail ride, butcher, breeding, show, goes over to the neighbors... you're

suppose to

file this movement, of course there will be penalties (to be determined later)

if you do not

file. Of course this is for bio-security, although I don't know how many people

are eating

their alpacas.

This could easily put under the small farmers. Of course all that would be left

would be

the " big guys " who usually farm conventionally. Forget about getting your eggs

from your

neighbor's backyard flock or your milk from your uncle who decided to keep his

favorite

milk cow when he retired. It will even become harder to find the small family

farmer who

treats and respects his animals as individuals.

I'm not sure why there is such an attack on people's attempts to eat healthy or

live

independently and I'm not sure what to do about this, but it really scares me.

I'm trying to

talk to some assorted politicians, but that's been mostly worthless. Too bad

the framers

of the constitution never thought about a right to grow your own food, but they

could

never envision such a big brother.

Lynn

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

this just came through on another list I'm on, I'm gonna go check it out now,

but I bet it's something everyone here should do:

> Here's a link to the US NAIS: http://usaip.info/ http://usaip.info/

> >

> > Here's also a link to a group that someone on a goat board

> > created,

> > the more who join it, the louder our voices will be!!

> >

http://finance./group/Americans_Against_NAIS/

http://finance./group/Americans_Against_NAIS/

....few minutes later...

Right now the links are not blue, I hope they turn blue for you all.

Oh, this group was just formed on Jan 8 and already has 148 members (including

me as of 2 minutes ago)

Oster, MN

Isaiah 26:3

" I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has

risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see

everything else. "

--C. S.