Posted on 03/15/2012 4:06:09 PM PDT by Sopater
The evening was everything I had dreamed and hoped it would be. The weather was perfect, the farm was filled with friends and guests roaming around talking about organic, sustainable farming practices. Our guests were excited to spend an evening together. The food was prepared exquisitely. The long dinner table, under the direction of dear friends, was absolutely stunningly beautiful. The music was superb. The stars were bright and life was really good. And then, for a few moments, it felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath us and my wonderful world came crashing down. As guests were mingling, finishing tours of the farm, and while the first course of the meal was being prepared and ready to be sent out, a Southern Nevada Health District employee came for an inspection.
Because this was a gathering of people invited to our farm for dinner, I had no idea that the Health Department would become involved. I received a phone call from them two days before the event informing me that because this was a public event (I would like to know what is the definition of public and private) we would be required to apply for a special use permit. If we did not do so immediately, we would be charged a ridiculous fine. Stunned, we immediately complied.
We were in the middle of our harvest day for our CSA shares, a very busy time for us, but Monte immediately left to comply with the demand and filled out the required paper work and paid for the fee. (Did I mention that we live in Overton, nowhere near a Health Department office?) Paper work now in order, he was informed that we would not actually be given the permit until an inspector came to check it all out. She came literally while our guests were arriving! In order to overcome any trouble with the Health Department of cooking on the premises, most of the food was prepared in a certified kitchen in Las Vegas; and to further remove any doubt, we rented a certified kitchen trailer to be here on the farm for the preparation of the meals.
The inspector, Mary Oaks, clearly not the one in charge of the inspection as she was constantly on the phone with her superior Susan somebody who was calling all the shots from who knows where.
At this time Monte, trying to reason with Susan to find a possible solution for the problem, suggested turning this event from a public event to a private event by allowing the guests to become part of our farm club, thus eliminating any jurisdiction or responsibility on their part. This idea infuriated Susan and threatened that if we did not comply the police would be called and personally escort our guests off the property. This is not the vision of the evening we had in mind! So regretfully, again we complied.
I cant tell you how sick to my stomach I was watching that first dish of Mint Lamb Meatballs hit the bottom of the unsanitized trash can. Here we were with guests who had paid in advance and had come from long distances away anticipating a wonderful dining experience, waiting for dinner while we were behind the kitchen curtain throwing it away! I know of the hours and labor that went into the preparation of that food. We asked the inspector if we could save the food for a private family event that we were having the next day. (A personal family choice to use our own food.) We were denied and she was insulted that we would even consider endangering our families health. I assured her that I had complete faith and trust in Giovanni our chef and the food that was prepared, (obviously, or I wouldnt be wanting to serve it to our guests).
I then asked if we couldnt feed the food to our public guests or even to our private family, then at least let us feed it to our pigs. (I think it should be a criminal action to waste any resource of the land. Being dedicated to our organic farm, we are forever looking for good inputs into our compost and soil and good food that can be fed to our animals. The animals and compost pile always get our left over garden surplus and food. We truly are trying to be as sustainable as possible.) Again, a call to Susan and another negative response. Okay, so let me get this right. So the food that was raised here on our farm and selected and gathered from familiar local sources, cooked and prepared with skill and love was even unfit to feed to my pigs!?! Who gave them the right to tell me what I feed my animals? Not only were we denied the use of the food for any purpose, to ensure that it truly was unfit for feed of any kind we were again threatened with police action if we did not only throw the food in the trash, but then to add insult to injury, we were ordered to pour bleach on it.
Now the food is also unfit for compost as I would be negligent to allow any little critters to nibble on it while it was composting and ingest that bleach resulting in a horrible death. Literally hundreds of pounds of food was good for nothing but adding to our ever increasing land fill! At some point in all of this turmoil Monte reminded me that I had the emergency phone number for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) on our refrigerator. I put it there never really believing that I would ever have to use it. We became members of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund several years ago as a protection for us, but mostly to add support to other farmers battling against the oppressive legal actions taken against the small farmers trying to produce good wholesome food without government intrusion. The local, sustainable food battle is being waged all across America! May I mention that not one battle has been brought on because of any illness to the patrons of these farms! The battles are started by government officials swooping down on farms and farmers like SWAT teams confiscating not only the wholesome food items produced but even their farm equipment! Some of them actually wearing HAZMAT suits as if they were walking into a nuclear meltdown! I have personally listened to some of their heart wrenching stories and have continued to follow them through the FTCLDFs updates.
@The Center For Social Leadership Monticello College, Utah
But once you get a Zero-type in the White House, the lid’s off, and the local vermin come out of the woodwork, assuming they have carte blanche to do as they please. And if this story really WAS legit, they DID as they pleased, from extorting a permit fee out of the suckers, to ruining their soiree anyhow.
oh the power...the power.....
communism...its here.....the favored and the govt employed have been given carte blanche to do whatever they want to...
Welllll, Randy Weaver and the Ruby Ridge thing went down under GHW Bush; and I bet there are stories of food police pulling this sort of stunt when the Republicans were in charge in Washington, DC, too.
Just saying, local vermin are going to pop up from time to time, regardless of which big-government party is running the federal bureaucracies.
It's a small enough market that you have to treat small breeders (handful of rabbits changing hands each year) just like the large breeders.
I'm not sure if the rules protect the meat market all that well, but they do rope in folks who can't imagine they are major players.
Need to sue them as an agency and by name.
Yeah, damn them anyway.
Stereotype much? Not saying they aren't liberals, but other than the stereotype, I don't see any evidence. And the stereotype is dubious - I would enjoy living on a self-sustainable plot, and I'm no liberal, nor am I into communal living.
It was a bit of a consciousness-shifting event to sit in a banquet hall at the Tuscany in Las Vegas on Monday evening alongside some 95 county sheriffs and a handful of deputies -- most in full uniform with gleaming badges -- listening to and applauding speakers you'd more commonly associate with Libertarian Party gatherings or seminars sponsored by the Austrian economists of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.Raid turns Overton farmers into celebrities - Las Vegas Review-Journal, Feb 5, 2012One popular topic at the gathering was United Nations Agenda 21, which has given the schoolmarms of the fascist Left such popular euphemisms as "sustainable development," but which is actually about shoving rural folk off the land under any of a thousand "environmental" pretexts, the long-term goal being to cluster a sharply reduced remnant of mankind into urban tenement ghettos from which we can be shuttled to our state-assigned jobs in little solar-powered trolleys.
One local couple who spoke with the sheriffs Monday were Laura and Monte Bledsoe of Overton's Quail Hollow Farm. ...
What happens in NV stays in NV. Remember, the source you referenced sued FR.
Yes, it does meet my standards of identification.
“By Monte & Laura Bledsoe | November 18, 2011
On the evening of October 21, 2011 // “Farm to Fork Dinner” at Quail Hollow Farm, Southern Nevada”
There is no question about when, where or who.
I agree they got the shaft and I have spoken with more than one elected legislative official about the subject in the past few years. They need to see if they can get the local sheriff on their side of the problem.
That, I believe, is the origin of the title of “Hunger Games”. Don’t enter, you get executed. And you don’t get the food rations, either.
The local law enforcement was on their side, the night the health department wonder-woman called for them to destroy the fixing's for the planned meal.
Public sentiment is strongly against the health department on this one, as well. From what little I've read, Bledsoes are working with state and local legislatures on the general subject - so that overzealous enforcers don't even feel the urge to bust up an outdoor dinner party made with homegrown food.
Is somebody getting played due to their ignorance?
Restaurants maybe couldn’t stand the competition.
I admitted up front that they might be liberals, that is, your hunch might be right. All I was pointing out was that you jumped to the conclusion.
And in the end, we might well just end up arguing what it takes to qualify for "conservative" or "liberal" label, which I would find to be pointless pigeonholing.
Even if they are flaming liberals, I'd take their side against the local jackboot, in this one. And I stand in their camp against the UN zoning intentions.
I did read that Laura Bledsoe spends time in Africa, teaching farming, etc. Maybe she's a missionary of some sort. Seem to be decent, hardworking folk, to me.
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