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"For a Farmer, Every Day is Earth Day."

A good man is concerned for the welfare of his animals. - Proverbs 12:10

Onions grow south of Tulelake in the Panhandle, Road 111, south of Tulelake Basin. Photo Copyright Jacqui Krizo.

Farmers, the consumers' Bread & Butter!

"We may now be expected to go to war for America, little knowing if we will even have farms to come back to, because of the undue influence and pressure that is destroying our American custom and culture as resource providers due to the Endangered Species Act and the uninhibited lust that the non-governmental agencies (notably the Nature Conservancy and the Sierra Club among others) have for our lands. Almost one hundred years of 'sweat equity' are valued at as little as $28 per acre, and our wildlife refuge inhabitants are suffering, too, at the hands of those who profess to love wildlife, the 'environmentalists'" - Oregon farmer, commenting after the horrors of 9-11 that prompted those at the Klamath Falls, OR "A" Canal Headgates to break up camp and allow the federal agency employees to be better utilized elsewhere for national security.

'The salt of the earth' they are called. Their square-shaped hands are roughened yet tender as they coax a new lamb or calf to take a bottle of first milk, or encourage seedlings to sprout in a windowsill in March. Clad in the blue of honest living, they do not make the headlines of the major newspapers, nor are they seen on the evening television news. What we know about the farmers are what we see in the grocery stores as we shop. We see their efforts in the coatings on our medicines, the footwear that we don, the warm clothing that we need to protect us in the cold months. We take for granted the horn of plenty that keeps us dieting, that offers us almost instant gratification when the thought of hunger knocks. For hundreds of years, the sweat equity of the farmers and their families, unable to be
separated, just as their homes and their workplaces are one in the same place, has built America, one crop at a time.

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves, whether they are to have any property they can call their own, whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed and themselves confined to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die." -- General George Washington in an address to the Continental Army

"Food is Power! We use it to control behavior. Some may call it bribery. We do not apologize." - Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, speaking at the UN World Food Summit, Nov 1996.