Many of the things mentioned, are from previous safety failures in farm management. He considers his farm clean to process meat. Uninspected, unobserved, the animal and meat handling could be anything! I have seen home butchering done in the barn aisle, carcass dropped onto an old bloody sheet or canvas to cut up for packages. No washing of the butcher person, he is wearing his overalls, old muddy barn boots as he wrestles the half and other portions onto some boards across sawhorses to cut up. Open air, lots of flies on the meat, because it is a warm spring or fall day. Flies come on over from the paddocks of contained animals amd manure in them. Yep, I REALLY want to get my meat from him! Actually, I no longer accepted dinner invites from those folks after helping with some job or just visiting!! You would never know about that "handling method" as you buy those little meat packages. Whining writer could do as others do, sell the portions of animal. Then he will have animal processed at the butcher location, customers pick up the finished product from the Gov't. inspected, licensed facility. It is not going to cost him any more at all. Gov't. Inspected can mean a lot of things, they are not all equal. However the place and methods get looked at now and again, better than nothing. Hiring regulations are to protect the worker. If a farmer or his family members use tools that are elderly, questionable with no safety guards or bad wiring, that is a family choice. Hired help should not be forced to work under those conditions. Power tools, by their design, are not something you let small kids or younger kids use. They come with manuals of safety, handling instructions that no one reads, to protect the user. Do the farm employers take time to do safety training of these employees, to use the various tools? Not often, if at all. Everyone already "knows" how to do farm stuff!! Kids seldom will argue with an elder person if told to do a job. Kids do not have the experience to spot dangers or understand the problems that might occur in doing a job the wrong way. They don't often think, period! Kids want to earn money, are not going to worry about the dangers they place themselves in, while doing that job. Plus kids forget what you said, ignore the directions they were given before, THINK for themselves. Original thought by kids might add to the dangers!! Their "kid brains" just work that way! Part of growing up is brain development, which can't happen before brain is ready to grow that way. Actual body development may hinder kids in trying to do things, they have different visual fields, motor skills. They often can't help how they think and react, just an age thing. Each grows up at their own speed, should not be grouped by age in all cases. Big size or older age, is NOT mature in body or thinking!! Adult farm workers may not read well, or have used this kind of tool or machine before. They SHOULD be shown how to use it, have the guards and safeties in place to protect them. I can't believe how often the safety features are over-ridden or removed to make it easier to get hurt. Yet it happens ALL THE TIME. I guess you have to protect people from themselves because they will hurt and kill themselves if not supervised. I will agree there are many conflicting and peculiarly written laws in farming. Still were always written for a good, original reason. Farming is about the most dangerous occupation in the US. I think deep-sea fishing is number one. So many places and ways to get hurt in any farming operation. Even if just reading the laws makes you think about your lack of meeting the rules, you might CHANGE a couple things to be better/safer, for yourself. As we live in the setting, we lose our discerning eye for danger. No longer see the repaired cords, long extensions run to get power in a location, double plugs on an outlet, jury-rigging to keep a tractor running, instead of REALLY fixing it right. Just keep rounding up the loose animals, not fixing fence. Climbing the ladder with missing or cracked treads. Not turning off the tractor to unhitch the wagon by ourself, on the hill, with brakes we never repaired. Taking constant chances, which so far have not broken the odds of survival. Yet stuff like this IS a source of danger, we have become used to it or ignore the dangers. The Gov't. gets involved because this thinking is so prevailing, bad stuff never is fixed, endagers the hired help. Not acceptable as safety in Industry, or on the "old farm" either. People die with ignoring safety. The original writing is totally a rant, no one gets to do everything his own way, anyplace. Many nations are much more strict than the US. The food chain is very vulnerable anyplace in the length. It does need checking, to keep things somewhat safer than you would ever see with self-governing along the way.

Mercy me, lots to read this morning. And that's a treat because I have to go into work late this morning :( ! and this will amuse me until I departure time (7 AM). Count me as another admirer of that nifty wreath. Please tell me about the plant with the amazingly colorful buds/seed heads... is that color for real or a trick of the monitor? The baby jacket is wonderful; I am not a knitter but perhaps I'll give it a whirl as Mum was very accomplished and there are scads of pattern books (dating from the late '30s-early '90s) as well as countless sets of "knatting noodles". Cat names: Sir Thurston Bottomly, Sam, Fred (slept in the basinette with me), Thomasina, Tosca, Millicent Friendly (Millie), Oliver Orange (all over orange, Ollie), Nicolette, Salvatore, Floey (Florence Griffith Joyner), Robert E. Lee (Bobby Lee), Mr. Sleek (Junie, short for Junior), Polly, Spencer, Vera, and Minnie Pearl. Nick names are too numerous to recount without putting you all to sleep. Hey YOU asked! Smitten with kittens we are indeed. Wow, Drema, I had forgotten about your daily commute. I'd hasten a bet you won't miss that too much. I have between 15 and 25 minutes, depending on which route I take, but it's early in the morning and is unfettered by clogged roadways. Gas is just over $3/gallon and my usual route takes me by all the places I need to visit routinely, so I accomplish much "on the way home". I don't joyride much these days. I hope the impending "vacation" doesn't add too much stress to you life. Any thoughts on what you might do as a "second" career? Mary, have you ever heard of LAGQ, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (or quintet, never can remember)? I occasionally hear something by them when I'm allowed to listen to the classical program on NPR (workers generally veto that selection, sadly). Anyway, they're terrific, Deanne would probably like them, too. Bedbugs! uck... who would ever have thought we'd be revisiting those detestable creatures? Shudder. I'm not particularly squeamish, but they give me the creeps (ticks, leeches, included). OTOH, I have to confess to a certain grudging respect for their adapability... . Sounds like an intersting research project for you, Cindy. :) There have been a rash of grisly domestic violence incidents in our area over the past couple of years... the weirdest was the guy who killed his wife and entombed her fibreglass at a marina. What's up with THAT? I sympathize with the worries about friends/children and the loss of one's "space". Having had one dreadful room-mate some years ago, I know how it feels to come home and see their car in the driveway when you were hoping for some ALONE time. The best I can say for that idiot was that he paid off our mortgage for us! haven't seen him since and don't care if I ever lay eyes on him again. Hang in there, you guys. The seamless gutters were in place when I returned from work yesterday. The estimate for the drywall came in yesterday, too. I still don't understand how anyone can do that sort of work for that price. Sheetrocking and insulation rate as the most odious of home improvement tasks, at least to me. Rich will understand, huh, Martie? Rex has become quite a pest when I get home. He follows me everywhere, sitting directly in front of me and staring at me with imploring eyes... are we going out for a walkie, Mummy? WHEN, pleeeaaase? Jeez, I can even use the bathroom without him. He apparently missed the memo that I hate dogs. Time for the "rain locker" and raiment selection and then off to an interminable day at work. I'll probably be alone (mercifully) but will be faced with the final round of huge curtains for the largest of our commercial accounts. Greeaat. Hope your day is a fine one, everyone.

My older sister lives in an 1850s farmhouse which has a bath off the large kitchen. The door faces the basement entrance in a very small hallway which leads to a bedroom. It is full sized, but only about 8x10. Spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with them, and it really wasn't a problem. The other half of the kitchen serves as a dining room. If you want weird--my own house was built in 1907, with a pantry and small back porch--neither of which was converted to a bathroom. However, there is a full bath upstairs with original fixtures, and a half bath (well, a sink with a wooden counter, and a toilet enclosed with beadboard planks under the stairs), but the strangest of all--the only closet on the first floor--an alcove in the hall next to the kitchen, and facing the basement stairs and side door--had a toilet installed for the convenience of a previous elderly owner! No door either, just a curtain rod which had a shower curtain on it when I bought the place. My very first task: to remove the carpet from the hall floor, then remove that toilet and make it a closet again! Despite this being done 21 years ago, I still have the 6" drain hole in the floor, because my cats love to stick their heads through it to watch me do laundry in the basement! :)

ladyvixen84!! I'm in Iowa, too! I'm not too far from the MN border. Where are you at with the house purchase? When my carpenter handed me the square cut nails from my kitchen remodel nearly 2 years ago he created a monster! I have spent the last 5+ months investigating everyone on my abstract. The whole ancestry.com thing and corresponding with genealogy people and everything. There's some kind of 40 year rule......I think something about the first 40 years doesn't have to be included in the abstract?? I forget what the abstractor said. But anyway, I'm stalking these people who have been dead for over 100 years and getting involved in their lives as if they were my own family! The deeper I get into it I find it's all the same family. It's passed through the daughters so of course it's the husband's name "and wife" on the deed. I've traced partnerships, marriages, death, adoption and about anything else that happens to a family. I went to the courthouse and got those missing deeds and that's where the fun began. I may never get done. I've learned more Iowa history, American history and geography since March than I ever knew before that and I was really into that stuff. Read a revolting Spirit Lake Massacre article...they did NOT teach that version in 6th grade Iowa history! I ended up with 3 out of 160 original acres. That's what happened in 160 years. I'm making a book of what I've found out. The problem is what to leave in and what to leave out. I thought I'd add some history appropriate to the transaction date just for reference but now I'm at 150 pages and I'm not done. I hope the next owner appreciates all the information I will leave here.