Shortly over a year ago I wrote a piece about officious bureaucrats shutting down two little girls selling chicken eggs in Texas. The girls were trying to help people out and make a few bucks after the crazy ice storm massively disrupted Texan supply lines.
Since then, I’ve obtained a source to bring farm fresh eggs to my home on an as-needed basis; it’s one of many small blessings for which I am thankful. With food prices even higher than they were a year ago, free eggs is a huge boon.
I ended this post with the admonishment “The time to start growing and raising our own food is now.” But even yours portly has largely ignored his own advice.
Let’s work on changing that in 2022.
With that, here is 30 April 2021’s “Egged Off“:
An unfortunately perennial story that always gets traction here on the Right goes something like this: precocious youngsters, hoping to engage in some earnest enterprise, start selling lemonade or the like from a roadside stand. The kids are doing well and making good money (for kids), until an overzealous local health board official sends in the cops to bust up the lemonade stand. Like Treasury Department revenuers smashing up a yokel’s still, these local officials destroy children’s dreams—and sometimes slap them with a fine.
It’s a story that guarantees outrage, and highlights the clueless, stringent rule-following of bureaucracies. Yes, yes—technically you’re not supposed to sell lemonade and hot dogs without some kind of license, and the health department is supposed make sure your establishment is clean. But these are kids, selling stuff on the side of the road. Why bother? Let them have fun and make a little money.
The latest such story involves two young ladies selling eggs in their town in Texas. The Lone Star State has been reeling since the major winter storm hit a month or so back, and food supplies have been disrupted. Having some backyard eggs for sale surely helped out some locals.
Unbeknownst to the girls—but beknownst to some overweening Karen, no doubt—a local ordinance prohibits the selling of eggs, though it permits the raising of chickens on one’s property. That’s asinine. Why can’t people sell eggs in a small town in Texas?
I’m sure the local government would argue it’s to protect the safety of consumers—a convenient cover. Chances are it’s an effort to keep the local poultry plant or egg farm dominant; at a more sinister level, it could be an attempt to prevent people from enjoying self-sufficiency.
That might sound conspiratorial, but consider: Oregon’s State Legislature is considering a law that would ban the raising of livestock and other animals for food. Under the guise of preventing animal cruelty and abuse, this law would effectively destroy the livestock industry in Oregon.
Perhaps even more importantly, it would deprive Oregonians of the opportunity to raise their own cattle or other animals for food. The self-sufficiency homesteading movement is enjoying a revival lately, with many Americans seeking to limit their reliance on “The Grid” in favor of sustainable, small-scale agriculture. That presents a direct threat to overly powerful local and State governments, not to mention the federal government: if people are growing their own food, they’re much more difficult to control.
These kind of liberty-killing ordinances and State laws must be resisted and repealed at every turn. There are few reasons, much less good ones, for why people shouldn’t be able to grow their own food. Sure, I can see some problems with a person living on a half-acre lot raising a cow in a densely-packed neighborhood, but what’s wrong with keeping a few chickens and eating or selling the eggs?
The time to start growing and raising our own food is now.
The Portly Politico 
In most ways, the local authorities should have been cheerleading those little girls. After all, what starts as selling a few lemonades or eggs on the streets could flourish into something more. Those girls were learning business and that would have been an excellent educational progression, something which the state should be keen on promulgating to children. As it was, it wasn’t only a case of the authorities being killjoys. It was a case of them stamping on the dreams of a youthful venture into enterprise.
Regarding Oregon’s proposed new law, that sounds like the Green agenda, which believes that the methane coming from animals is one of the main reasons the climate is so bad. Absolute guff, of course, but that tiny fringe movement has its grubby hands in an awful lot of halls of power. I hope that law never comes to pass.
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I think you’re right re: Oregon’s new law. But I think the green agenda is also a cover: it offers a convenient sop to left-wing environmentalists, while also protecting the poultry/beef/swine industry’s interests in the State. It also serves the interests of the progressive Oregon government, which can use climate change as a pretext to deprive individuals of another avenue of self-sufficiency.
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I use a lot of eggs and buy direct from a lovely lady who has a small flock of thirty hens. I refrigerate my eggs and have been doing so for years. Eggs are not washed pre sale here because of the natural protective coating, in fact I think it is illegal to do so. Duck eggs are a different matter because ducks are mucky creatures so if I do ever get my mitts on a duck egg or two I do wash them prior to cracking. Duck eggs make great omelettes and cakes because of the bigger proportiom of yolk to white compared to hen eggs.
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Yes, I had to learn from my supplier that I need to wash the eggs before eating. I guess I got a little extra “protein” in my first batch of scrambled eggs—oops! I would love to try one of your duck egg omelettes, Alys. I imagine they are divine!
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I had a very delicious cheese and green onion omelette for my luncheon today – hen eggs.
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That sounds scrumptious.
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Off topic, another musical recommendation today, Tyler. It’s sunny and warm here which means, to me anyway, East Los FM (if you ever type that into Youtube, you’ll get GTA 5’s Spanish music channel and there’s some good music).
This one in particular. Tina and I love it.
La Sonora Dinamita – Se Me Perdio La Cadenita. A jolly tune for a gorgeous day. 🙂
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I will check it out—thanks for the recommendation, Ponty! GTA games always have excellent music, too.
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I love to point out to people what letting the government run your lives looks like
It is the cops scaring little kids in Gerigia away from selling lemonade near a golf tournament.
It is also lettling empty storefronts pile up instead of letting things be re-zoned.
Stay classy, you statist egg hating schmucks!
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Amen, Matt! You said better in four lines what I spent paragraphs bloviating about.
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*Georgia
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