Rebuild Blog Fodder in 2007 and the Lessons They Teach

This blog would not be nearly as much fun to maintain without people and events that make me laugh. I admit in advance that some of this isn’t necessarily funny to everyone reading this blog. My apologies.

The Vander Eyk Once-Organic Dairy
This was one of those situations where history was being made before my eyes and it took nine years to realize it. Those black-and-white cattle grazing near my house since about 1998 belonged to the notorious and now defunct Vander Eyk Organic Dairy. When its decertification was made public in June, I was actually planning a flight over the pasture areas. An organic farmer agreed to pilot, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter agreed to cover the story. This “cow census” that never was is perhaps why this blog slowed down in May. If you have managed to miss the video eulogy to the dairy, you should take a look at it now.

Lessons:

Look around. You never know what might be there.
When you find it, make an event of it.
Get a good video camera if you are going to make a video. (For the record, I intended to rent a very good one for the exposé that never was.)

Alex Avery

Alex Avery founded the “Milk is Milk Campaign.” “Why pay more for organic milk?” he asks. What’s inside that carton is the same. He leads research with such conclusions as organic foods contribute more to global warming than foods grown with conventional fertilizer. You can check out the fine books by he and is pop here.

Avery erected billboards here in Central California to publicize his campaign. Central California is where most of those “California cows” live that make that California milk. It is also home to the largest raw milk dairy on the globe.

Raw milk consumer pay a premium for their milk. Many have personal health testimonials that relate to that milk. Of all types of milk drinkers, the raw milk band is most likely to oppose Avery’s message.

It should be no surprise then that it was raw milk drinkers who responded to Avery’s billboard with the billboard tagging I wrote about one year ago. Avery discovered the tagging about a month after it happened and issued a press release in which he stated:

We have reported the defacement to the billboard company, as well as to the local police.

Since that time I can report with confidence that not only is there no Pixley Police Department (a fact I mentioned in Part I of the Rambling Raw Milk Series of the three part billboard story), but also that Avery did not submit a report to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department, the appropriate legal authority in this instance.

Lessons:

Keep your eyes open. Even events in Pixley, California can provide hours of entertainment.
If you put it in a press release, make sure it’s true. If it’s not, it could end up as Part 1 of a three-part (an growing) series.

(By the way, there is breaking news on this story. Stay tuned.)

My Husband
A great guy (but I’m biased) who is like a fish out of water here in the Sequoia National Forest. He would make the blog much more if he didn’t insist “I Better Not See it on the Blog.” I noted earlier in the year our shock over his desire to learn to shoot. In December he was wrongly accused of not knowing the difference between a Holstein and a cross-bred beef cow.

Lessons:

It’s best to get used to laughing at yourself if you live in this house. That’s how the rest of us survive since, in fact, we do ridiculous things just about every day.

Pamela Anderson
Poor Pamela Anderson is just trying to save the chickens in her Kentucky Fried Cruelty video. But her phrase “Their weak legs cannot support their heavy chests," is an unfortunate. It does, however, make excellent blog fodder.

The Kentucky Fried Cruelty video came up in the context of Henny the Huge, a chick in our hen house who turned out to be a meat hen rather than a layer. That post sends dozens of visitors to this website looking for content on “Triple D Breasts.”

Sorry guys.

Lessons:

Get a good editor, particularly if you are speaking about breasts. Even I got a comment on that post about my own cleavage which suggests that perhaps I too need a good editor.
Be careful what you title your posts. You could get traffic from Google you hadn’t counted on.

That's the top fodder for 2007. If you have some for 2008, be sure to send it my way. :)