Black Unemployment Rate at Record Low

[The Grand Nudger]

@MA

LOL, in janes defense, she hasn't been here long enough to see the pictures of me aimlessly wandering around my vertical stacks, grinning like an idiot..or showing off my fucking mutant zucchs the size of a small child, lol.  I actually get that response from people, in person, in my capacity with the extension, or when they bus a bunch of tobacco farmers into demo site.  

"You don't know what you're talking about, I grew up on a farm, my daddy didn't do it that way".Yes, yes, we know, but your daddy lost the farm, now didn't he?
(we're not allowed to actually say that, ofc, lol)

My favorite, though....by far...is ...... "you aint from around here" - as if I'd have to have grown up nextdoor...baling hay and hanging burley, in order to show them how people who actually do make money do it, as opposed to their failing grass farms that can't even survive on subsidy.   

Most of the old hats around here are hardcore trumphumpers themselves, and they seem to resent the suggestion that there is no longer a viable route to profitability for farms between 5 and 50 acres that doesn't involve some sort of direct marketing, agritourism, or research cooperation.  They certainly don't want to rearrange their operations to consumers expectations of local, sustainable, or ......:gasp:.......organic produce.  More than anything, they don't want to have to interact with their customers, the only ones who can keep their operations solvent being a bunch liberal commies who babble about how they're doing their part to save the earth.  


In what might be the saddest aspect of the entire thing, they're so entrenched in their politics and nostalgia for dead production methodologies that they waste their own money, taxpayers money, and disregard the advice of the people who have been deployed to assist them.  Like the coal miners who they live with and around..they're attached at the hip to an industry that no longer has any space for them.

For example.  We had an older gentleman whose sons had convinced him to dig about seven acres of paddlefish as part of an initiative for Kentucky to elbow it's way in on the  14 billion dollar seafood import industry.... and this being a landlocked state..not knowing anything about raising fish, some "coastal liberal" (me, lol) was tasked with assisting him in establishing a profitable stock.  His fish, you see, kept dying.  He was convinced that this was because he'd received poor advice from know nothing biologists @ UK.  Run a few tests on the water, capture a few juveniles and send them back for labs.  Easy stuff.  Except we didn't have to wait for the labs to know what was wrong with his fish.  Protozoa.  Simple fix.....very -very- small addition of salt.  It'd kill the parasites, but wouldn't harm the fish.   Imagine our surprise when we get another call to come out...this guy is cussing at us over the phone...48 hours later all he;s fish are dead.  Says iot;s our fault, that he should have known better than to ask "the godamned university" for advice.  We're mortified.  So..back out I go.  Took me all of 30 seconds to figure out what was wrong..because all of his fish had yellow gills.  Table salt.  Iodized salt.   This fuckin asshole thought that we had some sort of partner agreement with suppliers, and that he didn;t have to buy "that expensive shit you guys are trying to sell".

Good job, proceed directly to bankruptcy, just like daddy did.

(before anyone starts to worry that the world is full of people like this asshole above -lol-..most producers..even though they're dismissive and resistant in the beginning, only need to be shown the money and they suddenly become huge boosters for what we do, and even for all of the otherwise "liberal" causes that add value to their farm operations. )