action on the state and local levels

It is time for us to go to our county and state governments and pass ordinances (which carry more weight than resolutions) that the federal government shall not conduct any searches or seizures or otherwise enforce any action on individuals, small farms or homesteaders producing food only for interstate sales, direct to the consumer. The 10th Amendment of the Constitution states the Federal Government has no authority to interfere with interstate commerce. We need to remind our local governments that the money promised to them by the feds to carry out surveillance on small farms will fall short of their expenditures, that such plans as NAIS and HR2749 will cause great distress to their constituents and also that by shutting the Feds out of where they do not belong, local governments are morally doing the right thing. We need to enact as many ordinances as possible before this type of bill is passed in the Senate.

My immediate goals are: go to Portland, screen Fresh, talk to as many people as I can and go to Douglas County commissioners, all by the end of September. In February, Patrick and I plan to host a feed your legislator day at the Oregon General Assembly building in Salem. I've helped host similar events in Virginia and at the Nation's Capitol and they are wildly successful. The gist is this: legislators need to see that we are real people, normal families who will be devastated by such plans. We feed them fabulous home grown and produced foods, provide information and generally be friendly. I started making posters with pictures of Oregon farm families and had to stop for lack of submissions (I can't just pull 'em off the internet!) but maybe readers of this blog will submit more photos, even if I have to print them. Or you can mail them to OCFA c/o Localvore, 115 E. Central Ave, Sutherlin, Or. 97479.

Hopefully by mid summer of 2010 we will have an Oregon version of Farm Food Voices, where we rent a school cafeteria or some similar large place in a central area like Eugene, invite well-known farm rights and nutrition speakers, have a lot of home grown and produced food again and then invite the public for FREE. We will accept donations, will sell raffle tickets and will have a book table and OCFA membership table. Again, I helped host the first two of these in Virginia and they were wildly successful.

Naturally, I will be looking for volunteers... !