Blackberry sunning herself with Dawn, one of our ducks catching a few rays herself
Ah lookie that face. Basically telling me to get lost. Alright I’ll leave you to sunbathe in peace
A few of the urban homestead’s chickens hanging out together.
Our Belgian Bantie – Estella.
Whatcha looking at?
Nap time for the duckies
Now preening time
Perching on an old chair but for how long…
Fairlight doesn’t like that she not in any of the photos yet. “Hey, lady what about me!”
Um, Fairlight I don’t think putting your head there is such a good idea. I know you want them off YOUR chair but….
Now that we had a bit of photo fun with the our menagerie of citified farm animals there some serious issues in the future of small farm animals. One one side we have the big M (Monsanto) taking over the seeds and then the USDA taking over the animals. Our future food security and sovereignty is at stake.
Stop NAIS
Via Organic Consumers Association
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been working for over five years to force a National Animal Identification System (NAIS) onto American animal owners. NAIS is designed to identify and track each and every individual livestock and poultry animal owned by family farmers, hobby farmers, homesteaders, and pet owners across the country.
USDA claims that NAIS is a disease tracking program, but has refused to provide any support for its claims.
In reality, NAIS will:
Create expensive and time-consuming tagging and reporting requirements for small farms. The requirements are particularly burdensome for those farmers raising sustainable livestock on pasture. Ultimately, this will reduce the availability of grass-fed meats, eggs, and milk.
Give factory confinement farms a loophole through the use of group identification, providing yet another unfair advantage for factory farms.
Not provide any information to the consumer, and does not improve food safety, because the tracking ends with the animal’s death.
Replace states’ existing, well-functioning disease response and brand inspection programs with an unproven, expensive, and unreliable system.
Impose high costs and government surveillance on every farmer and animal owner for no significant benefits, and will likely force many small producers out of business.
NAIS Threatens Access to Organic, Local and Sustainable Food
Under the current plans, each animal would have to be identified and physically tagged, in many cases with radio frequency tags or microchips. Factory farms would be able to identify whole groups of animals with one number, but most regular farmers, ranchers and individuals would have to identify each animal individually. “Events” in the animal’s life would required reporting to the database within 24 hours. The information in the database would be kept by state government or private companies, while the federal government would have the right to access this data as it deems necessary.
Comments(10)
Shirley says:
February 13, 2009 at 7:57 amJordanne’s children are so cute. And a proud aunt taking pictures. We are living in critical times hard to deal with. Man has not only dominated mankind to our injury but is right near ruining the earth entirely. A prophecy states if the days were not cut short there would be no flesh left. We can see that very well, can’t we?
You are doing a good job with the part of the earth and it’s inhabitants in your care.
Chris says:
February 13, 2009 at 9:36 amI hear the Amish are moving out of Michigan, because of the NAIS program. No monitoring for them. C
Diane says:
February 13, 2009 at 3:04 pmThank you so much for the animal pictures! Reading your posts is a highlight of my day.
Samuel says:
February 15, 2009 at 12:39 amAre your chickens free to roam about the back yard? If so, how do you stop them from digging up the veggies in your garden?
linda says:
February 15, 2009 at 8:20 amhow disturbing to read of Monsanto and the government monitoring of animals… GRRR to them!!!
louis says:
February 15, 2009 at 10:12 pmWhat are the dimensions of your animal enclosure? I have a very small yard, wondering if i have enough room….thanks!
Lily says:
February 16, 2009 at 3:14 amI already sent emails to my representatives to ask them to stop the implementation of NAIS and forwarded the information to my friends and family to encourage them to do the same. You can also do so easily by following Anais’s second link to the Organic Consumer’s Association article; they have several methods for action at the end of the article.
Margret says:
February 18, 2009 at 12:03 pmDo you have a small wading pool for the duckies to do their splashing? I’m thinking of getting a couple-three, but since I have no naturally occurring water on my place, I didn’t think they’d be happy.
Eve McCoy says:
February 21, 2009 at 4:49 pmVery informative website. I put it in my famvorits for future use. I want to build a backyard craft house. I’ve surfed the web and am over welmed by all the info. I could buy one but they are so expensice and I’m not to pleased with what I see. There are plans I could buy but I’m not good with diredtions. I can make things best by looking at pictures of them. I just want to keep it simple , with one window and put a small bench in it to work on. Some shelvs for my crafts. Any ideas or sugestions for me. Or websites I don’t know about.
Eve
Susan says:
June 26, 2009 at 6:17 pmhow do you get by city ordinances that dont allow farm/livestock?