Come and take it... (now that'll be $4 please)

So my beautiful Bride and I decided we were going to try our hand at bestowing some of her AMAZING jam as well as some of our yard eggs upon the citizens of this Great State in exchange for a small amount of their legal tender. We had a wonderful plan; prepare the jams a day before the Farmer’s Market so they would be the freshest and store the eggs at a perfect 40 degrees so they would match the jam in freshness and thus avoid that nasty botulism or salmonella. Why this was genius at its best! Do something we love to do AND maybe turn a small profit to boot. Our excitement was every bit equal to that of a 5 year old on Christmas morning and in our minds we were already the next Mrs. Fields, selling our wares across the country and putting smiles on the faces of our customers world-wide.  The only thing left to do was to look into getting the permit from the county to sell such succulent consumables to the starving masses. I jumped onto the computer right away and took a left onto the information super highway we know as the internet and…BAM, there it was. A detour sign immediately followed by a roadblock of tanks and men with machine guns. Ok, that may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but read on!

I spent literally hours on the computer reading through State and Federal food service laws (including some laws that I’m not entirely certain are even directed toward the human race) all to learn that any person is welcome to sell their food products, all you have to do is follow ten simple steps. Did I say ten? I meant ten thousand. The number of hoops that have to be jumped through to sell food would have made Evel Kneiveil quit his career as a stunt man and take up factory work.  And that’s not the worst part; in order to make jam, we would have to use a commercial kitchen to prepare it.  Now if you know my Darling wife, she is a bit of an obsessive cleaner. I personally love her for it because I get to live in a sterile environment, but apparently that is not nearly good enough for the federal government. I mean seriously, one inspection of her kitchen and the Mayo Clinic would send their brain surgeons to her to learn how to clean.  I find it humorous that a kitchen as well cared for as hers isn’t good enough to prepare small batches of heaven to share with the community, but the large restaurants (who, by the way have paid thousands of dollars to our favorite Uncle…Sam) can get away with cockroach parts in their prepared foods as long as it is under a specified “parts-per-thousand”.  Me personally, I am not ok with ANY insect parts in my food, and would sell food with that in mind.

I watched a documentary the other night called “Farmageddon” and unfairly assessed it as people who were trying to bypass their responsibilities to the public. It is actually interesting to watch, regardless of your opinion of the people shown, in that one can really see how much the federal government is willing to squash small farmers in the interest of the large production farms. There was one question asked during the show that now really stands out to me; Is it really fair to hold small farms, especially small organic farms, to the same standards as the larger, more industrial (read: filthy) farms. I completely agree that food safety is a must, no matter who the producer is, but it is so much easier to track where your food comes from when you buy it from Farmer Joe who lives next door than when you buy it from a large chain grocery store whose products change hands ten times before making its way into your cart.  Thankfully the Great State of Texas has the answer, essentially telling the Federal Government once again where to stash its restricting rules on production. It's known as the Cottage Foods Act  and was passed August 2011. In this act, Texas made it legal to sell certain non-perishable foods (baked good, jams, jellies, and seeds) at your residence as long as it is a face to face transaction. So, although it is not what we had in mind, the Rocking PMH Ranch is still in the business of selling the canned ambrosia we call jam. Typical of most real Texans, tell us we can't do something and we'll find another way to do it, and do it better!

 

Until next time,