As the month of February draws to a close it sounds like our winter drought is also coming to a close. Last week we got 3 or 4 inches of snowfall, the first I needed to plow for the season. Last night a band of snow just missed us to the north by about 40 miles where they got several inches of the “white plague”.
Now the National Weather Service (NOA) is saying we have another storm coming from Tuesday into Wednesday. This one they have upgraded from a “Winter Storm” to a “Blizzard” warning. I am not certain where they get the “blizzard” business from, I assume it takes into account strong winds verses simply heavy snow. According to what they predict now, we sit right in the middle of the road on this one, but I see the possibility (being the weather expert I am J ) that this storm could pass just to the south of us and we “might” be spared the worst of it. Then again, we might get “hammered”!
MN is known for winter weather, but the truth is we rarely get over a foot of snowfall in one storm. That “pleasure” is reserved for those who live along the great lakes where they can get several feet of snow in one storm, or those out west in the mountains who get a similar burial when the conditions are right. From what I heard tonight they are talking a total of around 15 inches for our area between Tuesday and Wednesday. I have a hard time believing that, I don’t know why, other than we have had it so easy this winter we are “off guard” and don’t really expect it.
Traditionally March is the snowiest month of the year in our state. While the “old country” where I grew up (Ohio) is thinking of spring and beginning to have spring rains, in MN we don’t dare hope for spring until after mid-April. In fact, the worst snowstorm in my recent memory was in April a couple or three years ago. I remember it so well because it came with a double hit. That is when we get 8 or 10 inches of snow one day and two days later repeat the process. While trying to dig out of the first wave, the clutch went out of my tractor, so I was ‘up the creek’ when the 2nd storm hit two days later. That time I managed to get our old snow-blower running enough to get a path to the road open, but had to wait until the tractor was repaired to get the place properly cleaned up.
What makes our situation more difficult for snow removal is that we need more than just a open trail to the road. Having my lumber business here requires that I keep a lot of area open and cleaned up in order to operate properly. Such are the consequences of having a small one man business in the great state of MN.
Speaking of our great state. Last week I got a visit from our county “Conservation and Land Management” people. I used to think that the USA was a “free country” and “personal property rights” was a foundation of a free society. Property rights might still be the foundation of a free people, but we are only deceiving ourselves if we think this applies to the state of MN and I am assuming other states are not a lot different.
The strange part about this visit was that the two gentlemen that got out of the county car and came to my door, one with a camera in his hands, were not in the least bit interested in me or my property when they found out that I was not Amish. This farm used to belong to an Amish family before we bought it, so they assumed it still did. Never mind that they parked right beside my electric pole, something you won’t find at an Amish house, and I met them outside the back door dressed like anything but an Amish. They still ask me if I belonged to the local Amish community. I told them no, then they wanted to know if I ran a sawmill “too”, as if everyone that had some lumber setting around must run a sawmill. I did not bother to explain to them that I did have a small sawmill in one of my sheds, but since my business is not running a sawmill, I figured this was none of their business.
I explained to them that I kiln dry lumber, which would explain my piles of lumber they could plainly see. I did not want to pry into their business with the Amish anymore than I wanted them to pry into my business, but I could not help wondering why they would approach what they thought to be an Amish residence with a camera in their hands. By way of explanation, Amish do not want their picture taken, by anyone. It is one of those things that is hard for the rest of us to understand, like a lot of their ways. I do understand some of their thinking since I deal with a lot of them on a regular basis, but when people press me to explain why Amish think they way they do I am hard pressed to get a coherent explanation, that is because their ‘thinking’ is so foreign to the average person. My general statement is that “you would have to be Amish to understand the way they think”, at least to make any common sense of it.
The Amish and their ways is not the point of this blog post. My point is about the way “government”, all the way from the Feds to the local level has turned American foundational values on its head. There was a time when an American who owned a piece of property could consider that land and its use “sacred” in that the ‘owner’ had the full right to use and live on his land ever how he wanted to. But, as it commonly the ‘excuse’, in the name of “protecting the public” the government now takes the liberty to not only confiscate your property if they want to, for the greater good of course, but they now consider it their “lawful responsibility” to tell me what I can do with my property, where, or if, I can build an outbuilding, how big that building can be and they consider it their ‘sacred right’ to know everything I do with or on my small chunk of the “American Dream”.
Finally, these county fellows happen to mention what they were looking for, at least what they “said” they were doing. They were looking for any place that had more than one residence. Many of the Amish, (all the ones I know of) do not take social security from the government, when they get too old to earn enough money to live on, some of their family will build them a house next door so they can assist them in their old age. Our “dictators” evidently don’t like that some parts of our society choose to care for their older family members in this manner. So they have passed ‘zoning laws’ and one of those limit how many residential houses can be on a piece of property.
What bothers me is this. Many ‘normal people’ don’t understand the Amish ways and can’t figure out how the Amish think because they chose to live in a way that was “normal” a couple hundred years ago, without electricity etc. But the part that I can’t figure out is: “Who gave the government the ‘right’ to dictate to me or anyone else, that one cannot have more than one dwelling on their own piece of property? Our government is bankrupt, are they wanting mom & pop to move to town where the bankrupt government can care for them? Or is it that they just simply are desperate for money and want to ‘extort’ some from the Amish because they know most Amish would rather pay for whatever “permits” they are forced to purchase than be at odds with the local government?
I am hard pressed to know the answer. I only know what I have observed over the last year or two. Last summer the Amish had a co-op set up in our nearest village. Here they sold farm produce like eggs, jams etc. Right around harvest time our county “officials” walked it and shut the co-op down, saying they did not have the proper “permits” to sale produce. The same produce that I can buy off the back of a pick-up truck parked along side the road. I don’t always understand how Amish ‘think’, but for the life of me, I can’t understand how our government thinks either. It seems they are doggedly determined to undermine every traditional way for people to earn money from their small farms or land. While at the same time, this government is bankrupt! One would think that local, state and federal leaders would try to help people earn what little money they could by whatever honest means they could, but no, we have reached the point when for whatever convoluted reasoning the ‘dictators’ use, they are taking away all commonly understood rights of normal American people. But if you happen to have ‘slipped’ across the border into Texas under the wire, our beloved government will give you free medical care and a college education! Something is upside down folks.
Such are the thoughts of Ernie’s World.
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