![Pasture and Haylands of New York [Expires September 29 2025]](https://andyarthur.org//data/photo_018502_large.jpg)
My Gadsen Flag
As much as horrifies my liberal friends I really love my Gadsden flag.
You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to own my own Don’t Tread on Me Flag but was too embarrassed to spend the $8 to buy it.
I’m a life long liberal Democrat who loves guns and burning things that government is involved in too much in our private lives. I’ve always kind of liked the Tea Party message of defending the second amendment, individual empowerment and less government interference with the lives of private citizens.Government shouldn’t regulate individuals like it does large corporations. You might say my views are closer to Malcom X and Huey Newton then Donald Trump or Paul Ryan but I couldn’t find an inexpensive Black Panther flag that I liked. Moreover, nobody knows what the meaning of the Black Panthers is anymore. The Panthers flag just isn’t that nice color wise, especially next to my Blue Marble Earth Flag or now my Rainbow Flag. I thought about getting a Molon Labe flag but I didn’t like the colors or the military undertones. I’m not a war monger but I believe in citizen empowerment and the right of self-defense and self-reliance.
I’ve long flirted with the Tea Party because I love the Man (lol!) and his aerial highway patrols as much as the next person, but I also think that Obamacare has helped a lot of people even if I think that the subsidies should have been a lot more generous for middle class families. Why can’t government help people get healthcare and an affordable college education without spying on our emails or beating up on the farmers just trying to do their jobs? Animal rights and environmental extremists have gotten much too much control in our society today. People who are ill informed and act only emotion, have no role in our governing. I’m more concerned with air pollution from coal power plants and large landfills then marginal farmers in the mountains grazing cattle and rednecks burning trash and riding quads in the woods. Not every acre of land should be declared wilderness. We can have public lands with great backcountry camping and trails, hunting and fishing but we can also have logging and mineral production to help pay for upkeep of the land.
I believe we can have a government that works for the people and promote the common good without treading on people’s rights.
That craving for the hills I get some times … 😍
I am a country boy at heart. I might live in the city, work downtown and take the bus every day but that’s not where my heart is.
Seeing those mountains in the distance, the forested hills and the little farms and homesteads carved out of the mountains just touches something inside me. The rundown trailers, the old tractors, the pigs, goats and cattle. The rusting away junk cars, the burn barrels and the brush / debris pile some day soon to be burned.
A lot of people call them ignorant hicks and hillbillies. But I don’t know, I think anybody who can scrape together a living either partially or entirety off the land is pretty damn smart and educated, even if it’s not through traditional channels.
They call it rural poverty. A lack of material stuff. Although I don’t think one can really call homesteading cheap when you look at the cost of machinery and feed. And many of rural people live a life much richer than city folk.
Milk and the dairy business
After my tiresome hike this weekend, I came back to my truck and opened the cooler got out a paper cup and poured myself a nice glass of milk. It was refreshing although maybe a little bit sticky on the lips. But I was super thirsty and that’s what I had.
I’ve always been a big milk drinker, typically buying two gallons of milk per week from Stewart’s. They have the best price and it’s right down the street from my apartment. I’ve always had an interest in the mostly docile large animals that make milk production a reality, how dairy farmers work their land to raise food for their cows and manage their production. They’re really is a lot that goes into a dairy.
![Untitled [Expires September 16 2024]](https://andyarthur.org//data/photo_017005_large.jpg)
YouTube has given me and the public at least a unique ability to see and learn much about the farm life from tractors to preparing the soil, planting and harvesting crops. It’s also shown the goings on in the tie stall barn from feeding to milking to raising and pulling calves. To artificial insemination and real bulls on ranches to preg testing cattle. Yeap, they have special plastic gloves for reaching up the anus and birth canal to check on the development of calves in the womb. I’ve learned more about the business decisions made every day and craft and science behind the milk business. Or even inside a milk processing plant that takes raw milk, processes it and pasteurizes it into many good products.
Really kind of fascinating stuff. Its interesting to know what’s going on in the field and in the barnyard as I travel the backcountry roads on my trips and travels. To make sense of smells of small town America to know what the various buildings on the farm represent. While I doubt I’ll ever get into the dairy business – my parents had dairy goats for a while, it’s interesting to learn more. While when I own my off grid cabin in the future I will likely do some homesteading, maybe so heritage hogs and chickens for meat, dairy is a tough thing to do with all the constant need to breed and bring the animals around for milking.