Duane Bozarth responds:
Consider yourself exceptionally fortunate. In the past 28 years, Bedford County has almost doubled in population, and is one of Virginia's fastest growing areas west of Charlottesville. I'm not at all sure there are many areas east of C'ville that are gobbling farm space as rapidly.
Charlie Self "It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable." Eric Hoffer
That's too bad...I haven't been back to Lynchburg for almost 15 years now...we lived in southwest end of Anderson County close to what was (then) the new golf course. Love Beford County as well...tried to buy a Civil War-vintage old plantation house just east of the Peak but the owner had cut off all the land except for a teeny-tiny triangle right up to the back porch and wouldn't negotiate 10 or so acres off in order to be able to make something of the place...I've forgotten the number of the road it was on, but was prime area. B&W was bought out by McDermott and internal R&D didn't look too promising and my former boss called from Oak Ridge starting a new consulting firm office at about that time so never did negotiate anything rural of our own while in VA...
It's a mixed bag...the farm economy plus oil/gas reserves are almost depleted here now have been so depressed that local economy is not at all healthy. If we didn't have the community college we'd be one of the
80% of counties I was speaking of earlier. I do like not having a high population density, I would like to see a more vibrant local economy such as we had during the post war era through about the mid-70s...Duane Bozarth notes:
Lynchburg, AKA Falwellville, is about 30 miles east of here.
My wife likes it. I prefer Roanoke, 30 miles west.
Charlie Self "It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable." Eric Hoffer
But cheating didn't bother her?
Didn't forget. Just never saw Sunoco gas. Saw lots of Conoco, Shell,
76, etc. Never saw any color that wasn't some shade of red. Guess it depends on what part of the country you live in.
You are probably not that wrong, just in statistics. The number of farms continues to drop and the size of farms continues to rise. So big corporation farms in terms of acres, continues to increase, but total numbers of farms also continues to decrease.
The family farm, as an institution, generally passed away long ago. There are lots of gentleman farms, but I would hardly call those family farms.
Anyway, farms are a business whether family or corporation owned. If you don't know how to run a business you fail, no matter how hard you may work. A lot of so called farmers don't seem to understand that.
I have to laugh everytime I hear about some poor guy and his wife losing the family farm because of the poor economy, government screw ups, or what have you. Usually it turns out that he owned it for only
5 years (not what most people envision as "the family farm") and that the guy really knew very little about farming or running a business. Another one of those "poor me, it's not my fault I failed."Don't get the idea I am running down "the family farm." Successful farms are still around, but the owners learned and adapted to the business requirements of today. More power to them.
"George E. Cawthon" wrote: ...
No, it has passed away as an institution in the historic farming areas...they family farm has certainly evolved,but it is every bit as much a way of life as ever.
That is true although other than the last sentence doesn't fit with the other two...
There may be some of those, but there certainly have been a large number of long term farm families that have not been able to make it over the last 20 years. Much of this is certainly exacerbated by inconsistent government policies to be polite. Remember the Carter grain embargoes and the (1st) Bush crackdown to lower the high bread prices? Both of those came after pleas to produce more for the export market which these policies immediately killed...the resulting collapse of the grain markets force many failures. That's a brief synopsis of a complex issue but certainly that part of it played a significant role.
I'm going to insult you, but I don't mean it...obtw, please continue to keep my food costs cheaper than anywhere else in the world... :(
...
Hard to believe today, but I'd never heard of the village painter's son before I got there. Lynchburg certainly was a culture shock to a KS farm boy right out of school to get to the "proper" behavior of The Old Dominion... :)
Roanoke was far bigger than Lynchburg back then ('68) although that was certainly far larger than where I came from, of course...never really spent any time in Roanoke. Drove by to get to Blacksburg or to/from KS when visiting is about all...
By the time we left, the influx of new hires by B&W and GE had diluted the originals to the point it was no longer the totally closed society it was when we arrived...
Overall, did enjoy our time there although I feel much more at home back here now.
Most people who lived through Prohibition and the Depression really don't give a damn what the government wants.
I think you missed the point. I assumed he was objecting to my use of "Hell" so I was tweaking his moral values--object to a swear/strong word but fraud.
Your comment seems to imply that to disagree and being a scofflaw are the same. Most of the people I know that went through the depression were law abiding whether or not they agreed with various laws and policies.
While we are at it maybe some definitions are needed. The depression was from 1930 to 1939, at least that's what my references indicate. Going through the depression means to me experiencing it in a meaningful way which means the person would need to be old enough to be aware of what was going on. I take that to mean that the person was born at least by 1924 and to really experience it they would have needed to be at least 15 by 1930 or born by 1915. Of course, a great number of people didn't experience the depression at all even though they were adults during the period. It depends on the geographic area, the jobs they held, and the social stratum they lived in.
Nonetheless, to imply that those born before 1915 generally approved and practiced fraud is a bit outrageous.
There were two overlapping events, Prohibition and the Depression. Note that I said "Prohibition and the Depression" not either/or.
To best of my knowledge, there's so little farm gasoline these
The color in diesel is to distinguish high sulfur - illegal in commerce - from low sulfur. Farm or any off-road use ok for high sulfur. You want to use Uncle's roads, you follow his rules on fuel.
Yeah, sorry I missed that addition of Prohibition. Always like it when some one adds an extraneous point in the middle of a discussion. But, the two didn't overlap much; prohibition was from 1919 to 1933. So the overlap was only
3 years. Prohibition was undoubtedly one of the stupidest laws in U.S. history and resulted in the establishment of a large criminal group and a huge crime wave. Nonetheless, I differ with your viewpoint. I'm rather thankful that I grew were people were generally honest, law abiding, and generally didn't defraud their fellow man.Prohibition was undoubtedly one of the stupidest
Revisionist History at its best. The gangs were there before, they were there after "the great experiment." Booze just provided a good source of quick money above the gambling, prostitution and extortion which preceded it, and the racketeering and drugs which followed.
I'm seeing a lot of "Indian" cigarettes around now that we're the second or third highest tax state in the US. More casinos, too. Did the laws cause the tribes, or just the tribe's corruption problems?
The other weird thing about these rural North Carolina farming towns is you drive in, and are greeted by a big sign that says "Bienvenido a Sometown, NC. Población 1280." Then every other building has a Western Union billboard on it, also in Spanish, and most of the downtown stores have names like "El Mariachi Gordo" and such.
That's not unique to NC, either...it is, of course, symptomatic of the large poultry and/or hog production facilities everywhere they exist. National Beef (packing) is the largest employer in the county here by far and in-town population here is also now majority non-Caucasian. National started out in the 60's w/ SE Asian refugees, now is more Mexican. While there are some problems, don't want the job(s) they're doing, and I'd say most are doing their best to make a place for themselves and their families. I'll also give National credit for not being a major violator of green card reg's, etc. The first-generation Vietnamese, Laotions, etc., for the most part sent their kids off to school and they either became local tradespeople, etc., or left the area for other types of employment as do a majority of Caucasians young people because there aren't sufficient other opportunites, unfortunately. The Mexican traditions aren't so strong in that regard so a major task is to get them to begin to become assimilated. I'm on board of local Community College Foundation and various other ways we are beginning to make such changes visible--enrollment is up, ESL classes are popular, many small businesses are becoming quite successful and these individuals are becoming more involved in C of C, civic clubs, etc.
, these workers are farmers and representative of the general actual farm-resident population. I don't know of a single one who has gone into farming/ranching in the county on his own. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the high initial cost and the limited availability of sufficient land -- the entrance for a non-farm Caucasian would be almost as stiff a hurdle.
In Alberta up until 1969 (when I left) There was an official whom we called "Purple Charlie". He roamed the country checking every town and village for purple gas. He'd start at one end of the street with a large syringe with a rubber tube and check every gas tank. Farmers were allowed to use "purple" in farm work vehicles but not their cars. The fine was quite heavy. Farm gas was ordinary gas with purple dye added and was less costly, hence the fine.
Yep booze provide the money to power "organized crime." Wonder why it was not called "organized crime" before that?
Too far off topic to continue. Indian cigarettes are a minor problem in the "Indian problem." Too bad Congress never had the guts to straighten things out.
Cotton too. Or hell, tobacco, apples, strawberries, basically everything. Not peaches that I've noticed. I wonder why?
Yeah, that's a bit of a sticky thing there. They do jobs nobody wants, for less money than anybody else would work for. It's almost a slave culture. On the one hand, we can't exactly put them all in college and turn them into the next generation of CEOs, but OTOH it's really not fair to keep an entire population stuck doing scut work, and living in abject poverty in grossly overcrowded conditions forever. It's really an ugly thing no matter how you look at it.
Hard workers though. Damn hard workers. I find that they're generally good and decent people just trying to make a living any way they can, who have come here to escape abject poverty and perpetual unemployment. So that's why it really sucks that they're stuck perpetually doing scut work. But then, OTOH, the alternative is pretty scary too. Next they'll want to do
*my* job for 1/3 or less what I make.I don't know what to do about it. I don't want to be seen as offering an opinion one way or the other. I am merely making observations about how I see the situation.
I've thought about getting into farming myself many times. It just seems like an honest way to make a living, and it's an important job that most people have gotten too good in their own minds to do. But you can't just go buy a farm and start farming. It takes massive capital reserves. Land is expensive, equipment is expensive, everything is expensive, and there's the inevitable learning curve that guarantees the break-even point will be many years in the future, if ever. It's a difficult proposition all around. It's really hard to get into if it's not a family legacy thing.
Yeah, but their children tend to do a whole lot better. At least here in Arizona it's the classic immigrant pattern. It's very rare for the immigrants' children to become day laborers and dishwashers.
I think that's one of the major driving forces for the (mostly) Mexican immigrants who have families here: A better life with more opportunity for their children.
--RC
"Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells 'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets fly with a club. -- John W. Cambell Jr.
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