A post in which I wax on without much eloquence, but feel better afterwards...

So yesterday I stayed home from the Truck Repair shop, where I’ve been filling in for my recuperating friend, Sharice. The purpose of this “day off” was to catch up on my responsibilities with revising the Good Agricultural Practices policy book that we are required to have.

My dear sis, Erin, has done a yeoman’s job of creating this, and now I need to adapt it to our farming operation. I was supposed to accomplish this while she was gone on her South African safaris…but it didn’t happen.

And by the way, she and Larry had a wonderful time! They acquired (PC way of saying they shot) many trophies. I’m proud to say that my sis got her zebra with one shot, and not only a zebra! Wildebeest, blue & black, blesbok – or something like that…so many ____boks in that country, and eland and kudu and duiker and everything except a warthog, which just seems wise to me -- Who wants a warthog on their wall? And when I say trophies, I’m meaning all the animals they will have mounted for display – but, in actual fact, they got some animals that were of exceptional size and quality, and would be considered record-breaking and therefore true trophies! Apparently, Larry & Erin are not just hunters; they are skilled marksmen! We’ve heard some of their stories, but I think we’ll be hearing many more in the next months. I love hearing them – and am so proud that I have a brave sis, who thoroughly enjoyed the excitement – and some danger – of this trip.

But I digress – and really, in the best way this time because what I say about them is probably a lot more interesting than the rest of this missive.

I would stop – but, you know I won’t.

Anyway, I spent the whole day saving, copying, deleting, revising, and generally getting eyestrain because we have to have a manual that is supposed to be a substitute for common sense.

Common sense has become so rare that it’s not a given in business anymore -- same for personal responsibility. Everyone/everything is suspect, and so we have to prove that we are responsible, and have common sense by lining out each action we will take to ensure that the berries we grow and process are indeed edible, and that we are not, by neglect of common sense, poisoning anyone.

Okay – I have a bad attitude about it. I could take the viewpoint that we are showing people how careful we are with the food that they will give their families…and giving proof of how we aim to achieve best quality…

But, I find it tedious in the extreme, and more than a little confining that we have to document that we have told our workers to wash their hands after using the bathroom, and to sing the ABC song while doing it to guarantee the germs are gone. Didn’t they learn that in kindergarten? And then we must also put a poster on the restroom with the instructions in case they forget what we have told them.

Or that we have to document, every time we have a flat tire in the field, that we have assessed the risk factors for fruit contamination, and addressed them…and explain the 6 steps that we took to accomplish this, as well as what tools we used to fix it, and whether we put them anyplace that the fruit might touch, and that we retrieved every one (the numbers must be documented) before we started the machine again.

It reminds me of my brother-in-laws query whenever my sisters or I start telling a story: “Is this going to take longer to tell than it did to live it?”

Pretty soon, that’s how it will be! It will take us so long to describe all the responsibility and common sense we exercise that we won’t be able to actually do the deed.

Our country seems to be bent on becoming The Land of No Risk, which I think is dumb, not to mention impossible. I know it is all part of the quest to insure equal outcomes for everyone, which I also think is dumb and impossible.

And yesterday, The Land of No Risk invaded our farm, and my life, and I wonder just how nonsensical life in The Land of No Risk is going to become…It’s already pretty nonsensical. Our Congress is spending way too much time trying to make laws that protect us from people who don’t obey them anyway. They are also trying to portray that our system will fall apart because now they will not get as big an increase in funds for the next fiscal year. You made it last year on less – why won’t that work again? And in the meantime, they are brushing off the threats of a deranged dictator bent on sending a missile our way…

It is already the Age of Non-Reason…

But, never fear, I have a manual that will teach non-reasonable people how to use common sense when they grow and pick raspberries.

I’m pretty sure that those who need a manual for common sense aren’t going to have much success with it anyway…

God Bless America.