Farming comprises less than three percent of American labor force that feeds 307 million Americans and many other millions around the world yet government regulations are making it harder and harder for small farms to operate and bring wholesome foods to the market.

Why should farmers be subjected to “annual property monitoring visits and inspections” by environmental groups, environmental councils, and local supervisors beholden to international agencies, groups that have no idea how their food gets to the table nor do they care?
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Sonny was running back and forth in the wet snow, barking furiously in the direction of the back yard fence. Scott Lingamfelter’s yellow lab was normally quiet, he rarely barked. Something must have really attracted his curiosity.
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A new battle is waging in Virginia involving the restriction of land use in rural areas. The protagonists are the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) with its “comprehensive planning” of Virginia’s rural areas and Donald Trump with his proposed Trump National Golf Club in Albemarle County near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump Virginia Acquisitions, LLC, bought Patricia Kluge’s Estate Winery and Vineyard in 2011, a 1,200-acre property with a dormant nine-hole golf course designed by Arnold Palmer. Trump’s proposed golf course, expanded to 18-holes, will take up 480 acres, 216 which were placed under “conservation easement” by Patricia Kluge in 2006.
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It’s five a.m. and the bright full moon is casting dancing shadows in the hawkish wind. The dense, tall trees are creaking in the back yard forest with giant limbs swaying. The air is cold and dry; it has not rained in several days.

It’s a far cry from the balmy Florida yesterday. We got up at 6:30 a.m. to watch the sunrise over the ocean. Joan’s cottage is five minutes from the beach. In the salty damp warm air, the street greeted us with pitch blackness. The island has no street lights. The only ambient light comes from the moon and the stars and they were not providing much brightness. Our eyes adjusted to the dark and we walked in silence. I could hear the small geckos scatter in front of our feet. They were everywhere, like tiny beige Velociraptors. The lush tropical vegetation, especially the clustered and dense palm trees secluded any possible light coming from homes nearby. Many were shuttered for the winter season.
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Washington, D.C. and its surrounding suburbs are interesting places to visit. Populated by over two hundred different nationalities, legal and illegal, it is a hodge-podge of humanity stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on most days and nights.

One of the most densely policed places in the world, it is easy to lose yourself in the many purposefully narrowed streets to make them difficult to vehicular traffic, the roads with double names, one name before it crosses a major highway and another name on the other side, the barricaded buildings, the check points, and the unmarked police cars and menacingly-looking plain-clothed police armed for urban assault.
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