Nerditorial: Jailhouses, Slaughterhouses, and Poorhouses

The December 4th Whatcom County Council meeting was quite interesting.

First there was a presentation on the future siting of the Jail.

The weirdest thing about the presentation is that the most recommended site of the jail is... Ferndale.

This is odd to me, because state law requires that the Sheriff's Office be located in the county seat. And that's not Ferndale.

I'm assuming that the Sheriff will somehow maintain an office in Bellingham. But it seems a reasonable assumption that the Sheriff's Office would be at the jail. How that circle is going to be squared remains a mystery to me... as the public record remains silent on the matter.

Then there is a name that popped up associated with the Ferndale site.

Ronald T Jepson.

Upon seeing his name, my political Spidey-Sense began tingling immediately.

Mr Jepson is kind of a polarizing figure in the County in the same sense that the Pope is kind of Catholic.

He is affiliated with a group calling itself Citizens for Rational Shoreline Planning. And by rational shoreline planning, they mean... as much development as possible as close to shorelines as technology will allow. Because, you know. Progress.

Once his name appeared under the map of the property, the enthusiasm for moving the jail outside of Bellingham came into new and sinister focus for me.

I have a bad feeling about anything associated with Mr. Jepson's name. It is a personal political bias, admittedly. I will let Latte Republic readers know more when I have something more substantive than just an intuitive feeling.

***

Then there was a hearing on a proposed ordinance on the matter of Slaughterhouses in the County.

Much has been written about this here and here and here.

At the hearing, on cue, a citizen stood up and testified on behalf of the farm community itself.

A portion of his comments are transcribed here:

...From a farmer's point of view... we're always dealing with regulations... there's a lot of things that you have... a lot of criteria that you have to meet... different government departments. So, I would appeal to the Council to look at this from... not just the aesthetic value of trees and bushes and smells... but also in terms of how farmers can make a living off these things...

This is the classic business owner's lament... I am regulated too much, and it makes it harder to do my business.

Not the first time anyone has heard this perspective... won't be the last...

...but, I was raised in the rural midwest. In South Dakota.

When you grow up in South Dakota, one of the unofficial requirements of living there is reading books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was the author of the Little House on the Prarie books that were the basis of the hit television series of the same name. The Ingalls Homestead, where many of the events that inspired the books took place, is located in De Smet, SD. When I was growing up, and where I was growing up, the Little House on the Prarie books were regionally what the Twilight and Harry Potter books are now globally.

Guess what I learned by reading those books?

It's really the only thing I remember vividly about the books, really. But it was powerfully instructive.

Farming is hard.

And it has always been hard. Always.

The phrase "feast or famine" was not just an expression to homestead farmers. It was a fact of life.

That's all I know about farming. But I will never forget it.

And the Ingalls family didn't have an excess of government regulations tripping them up. They had everything else tripping them up. In fact, it was the glorious absence of government that was arguably the biggest obstacle of all to the Ingalls, and their homesteading contemporaries.

Once upon a time, not as far back as you might think... farming was relatively unregulated. No where near as regulated as it is today.

And guess what?

It wasn't a paradise on earth for the ag community.

Take a look at this...

This is the dust bowl...

.. farming communities were devastated by this event. The loss of a mind bogglingly large amount of heartland topsoil had ecomonic impacts on the ag community for generations. And it wasn't because of overregulation.

Being a farmer sucked out loud, and it wasn't because of the heavy hand of government. It just wasn't.

So, when I hear a farmer lamenting about regulations... I assume that that farmer is under the impression that I don't know the history of farming. Because there is no way the farmer doesn't know. No one knows farming like farmers. But like many groups of knowledgeable professionals, they often take for granted that they can tell any narrative they see fit to those outside of their community.

Well, I may be a city boy... but I was raised in the rural midwest. And I know just enough to know that farming has always been tough. 

The oldest written words we have been able to find are not religious texts... but accounts of grain stores.

The Transliteration is... "We Need More Grain!!!"

The written history of the human race is not the history of war and peace... it is the history of agriculture.

And the thesis of that history can be summed up in one sentence.

Farming is hard.

It can't be regulated, or de-regulated, into an easy job.

One more thing. Most of the history of farming is a history of regulation.

This complaint probably dates back to Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Those two civilizations were all about farming, and irrigation, and there was always a regulation on the books (or the scrolls, if you will) to decide how these matters would be handled so everyone wouldn't starve when (not if) a bad year hit.

Point being... if farming is too hard for you... maybe it's not the government... maybe it's not the regulations... maybe... just maybe... it's you.

I don't remember Pa Ingalls (immortalized in everyone's mind as Michael Landon) complaining about the government much... either in the books or the TV show.

Just sayin'...