Annual Hay Rack Ride and Raw Milk Issues continued

Every year we have a hay rack ride. A great excuse to bundle up, slow down, eat treats and hang with family.This year we were very short on adult females as daughter and both daughter-in-laws were all working. That's what you get when you all work in heath care, a weekend schedule.

So with lots of drinks and snacks and blankets on board we headed out to the wilds of rural Chatsworth

Giggling girls probably had the best time

But young men and little boys enjoyed the ever popular and oh so high tech rock-scissors-paper game

Youngest son Kyle and our youngest grandson Wes
(son of daughter Raven, the night shift nurse)

The highlight of the ride is always tricking someone into getting off the wagon and then leaving them behind

Oldest son Colton demonstrates that turning 30 has not affected his ability
to chase a speeding hay wagon one bit. Puff-Huff-Puff-Puff

Getting family, especially MEN to pose for pics is always fun. You would think they would learn to just  pose and smile as the more they argue the longer it takes. You would think. Getting blogger to work so I can load photos in less than one hour each would be nice too. You would think. Therefore end of family hay rack ride photos you lucky people you.

Raw Milk Advertising in Illinois Continued

Michael Schmidt is on day 25 of his hunger strike. So, as promised, today was was Monday and I started making phone calls. This time around I am working from the top down. My reasoning being when I reach someone on the local level who tells me an untruth I will have the date and source and individuals name at the top levels to back me up. Well, its a theory anyway.

I started with NASDA, an organization brand new to me I am sad to admit. But then again the layers of  US government are so deep its hard to know what you know and what you don't know. NASDA is The National State Department of Agriculture, not to be confused with the plain old Department of Agriculture. NASDA's mission is

"to represent the state departments of agriculture in the development, implementation, and communication of sound public policy and programs which support and promote the American agricultural industry, while protecting consumers and the environment."

Apparently in July 2011 NASDA sent a Raw Milk survey to every state in the US. The survey had 9 very interesting questions which each state then returned to NASDA. The summarized results were published but I wanted to specifically see the exact responses made by Illinois and I wanted to see the individuals name who answered the survey. NASDA's web site would not allow me to open the survey in its entirety. So I called NASDA. A very nice woman felt confident I could indeed see the results but was unable to do so herself when she got on NASDA's web site.

She gave me a contact name, Bob,  to call "tomorrow." And I will.

Next I called the Illinois Department of Agriculture to see if I could get the answers to the raw milk survey which they gave to NASDA, from that direction. Several transfers got me to Steve who was pleasant but stated it would take him a little time to find those answers his department sent to NASDA. He said he would email them to me "tomorrow."

Stay tuned as I work my way through the US law layers looking for answers to my questions about why its illegal to advertise raw milk sales and how, pray tell, might I go about changing that law?  Something tells me I am going to discover so much more on this little road trip of mine then I bargained for.