Another farm under siege article

[Red_Barn]

[QUOTE=betonbill;8636563]
I think the farm owner clearly wanted to have his cake and eat it too. I looked at the website and didn’t see anything clearly stated that this was also a working farm. It IS presented as a fun way to spend a day or a weekend petting baby animals or planting vegetables.

I think we can talk till the cows come home about how ignorant city/town people are these days about where our food comes from, but the emphasis from the webpage definitely was NOT about trying to explain sustainable farming to its visitors. Instead, it was come out and have fun petting baby animals, winding ribbons around a Maypole, and other rural fun things.

After looking at the website, I can see how some of the visitors might feel betrayed or misled. This in no way, shape, or form justifies threats to the farmer, but I would agree that the language used by the website was misleading and in no way reflected the circle of life and death of a working farm/ranch.[/QUOTE]
I know, right?

This continued insistence that a phoney-assed theme park is actually a “working farm” is just getting weirder and weirder. And the idea that this blatant tourist trap exists solely to educate stoopit city folks about the realities of food production . . . well. How old are these people?

If I hadn’t been following this crazy and wonderful thread for days on end, I’d surely have assumed that Benner’s weepy defenders were themselves a bunch of oddly gullible middle schoolers, and his critics the only people who’d actually visited the real world.

[RodeoFTW]

Did you even look at the website? It’s more tourist attraction than working farm. The guy running it obviously makes a living attracting the public to do “country things” and pet baby animals, not in growing food and livestock.

He’s being put out of business because people don’t like his business model. If he’d just been doing tours, I’m sure he wouldn’t have had as many issues because the animals would have been presented more like a product and less like a family friend/petting zoo.

[RodeoFTW]

You’d get more reality from going to a dude ranch and city people love dude ranches.

[D_BaldStockings]

[QUOTE=RodeoFTW;8636685]
No, I’m not. I’m comparing public believes one reality and the business plays out another. It’s only considered a bad thing to us because we don’t consider horses food.[/QUOTE]

Yet your original comment was ‘would you want to ride there’.
The death of the horse is going to occur. The humane method of that death is what is at issue.

Choosing to believe that slaughter of meat animals in plants designed specifically to handle that or on farm in their own environment is comparable to selling a horse into days/weeks/months of travel, poor feed, injury… before it is eventually killed? is inaccurate at best.

I do know of several large production farms that are grass fed that do not allow visitors for bio-security reasons. They have websites and follow their animals from birth to ‘plate’. Their animals never return to the farm alive.
And their animals are named.
People vicariously enjoy following their lives on line. They enjoy learning of the tasty recipes, too.

[Red_Barn]

[QUOTE=RodeoFTW;8636727]
You’d get more reality from going to a dude ranch and city people love dude ranches.[/QUOTE]
True enough.

Or you might say that it’s kinda like housewives from Akron insisting that yes, they really were shown the glamorous hangouts of movie stars and mobsters on that five dollar bus tour of downtown LA.

One born every minute, no doubt.

[D_BaldStockings]

[QUOTE=RodeoFTW;8636727]
You’d get more reality from going to a dude ranch and city people love dude ranches.[/QUOTE]

Dude ranches are hardly a day trip from the city for a family. Especially people unfamiliar with horses.

And ranchers are usually not branding and castrating, moving bulls, loading cattle for market or shooting the ‘chuck’ steer or the cow that breaks her leg or shreds herself on barbwire. Or the blind cow that can’t keep up with the herd.
Nor are they shooting feral dogs or coyotes harassing calves…

• with elementary school age visitors, and certainly not handing them the knife or gun.

Eggs come out of chicken butts. Meat happens when animals are killed.
Sorry, that is reality.

[Mosey_2003]

Redbarn and RodeoFTW, if I didn’t know better I’d believe you were both Richard From the Bar*.

I’ve noticed this a few times, but I just don’t understand it. Why is it some ‘farmers’ have this absolute ZEAL for mocking and picking apart what are considered ‘hobby farmers’? Does someone having a few of this and a few of that and doing community outreach really hurt you? Is someone less interested in agriculture because they don’t have more than 100 head of any given animal?

You seriously can’t lay off after multiple people have specified the man does NOT advertise as a petting zoo?

HE’S COMMITTING FRAUD???

Does it make you feel warm and fuzzy inside to continually call ‘city people’ idiots and stupid? What great ambassadors of agriculture… :rolleyes:

What the heck is your problem???

*Richard is someone I know at a local bar that funnily enough shares the same views as the above mentioned posters, so much so that it’s uncanny.

[myhorse]

What does it matter how the farm website is presented? It is their farm. They have a right in the free USA to run their website and their farm as they seem fit. They have a right to change their minds, or plans as well for any animal on their farm. Just like people who buy a horse and believe it will be with them forever, then find at some point they must sell it. it is their right!

RodeoFTW, should the local rodeos that have the child calf scramble be threatened as well. I mean here are all these cute little calves that the children are interacting with. How shocking it must be to peoples fragile emotions, when they discover those sweet, cute calves eventually end up on a plate.

[myhorse]

oh and, I have a cow. I bottle fed her, nursed her back to health. She has a name, and is halter broke. She comes when called and loves attention. I regularly post pics, and updates on facebook. I will also eat her at a later date. My daughter calls her " my child". She too has put a lot of care into her. My cow believes she is a dog. My daughter will be the first to tell you that she would rather eat her buddy, then a commercially raised one. My cow has been raised with kindness, and love. I will be thankful for her meat.

[RodeoFTW]

I wouldn’t know anything about local rodeos or their policies because, you know, I don’t rodeo. I don’t even go watch rodeos.

Again, I nor anyone else has a problem with someone eating meat. It was about how he presented his ‘farm’ that isn’t really actually a farm but a tourist trap. People are boycotting/petitioning/whatever against it and because of it, his main source of income is gone. Why? Because he wasn’t making money off of animals and produce (like an actual working farm does) but from this Homestead™ heritage thing that wasn’t 100% transparent about what the animals on the farm were bred for. If he wanted to be more clear about it, he could have put more out there about production breeds, slaughtering process, etc but he didn’t.

I’m sure a lot of people would be interested in a class on how to butcher z,y,z kind of animal, but that wasn’t being advertised. Wouldn’t that be an educational thing for people to learn about?

That’s why it appears to some of us that the man was trying to hide his true intentions of what the animals were for. If people would have known, I’m sure a lot less paying visitors would have come there.

People have the right to boycott whatever they want. Some people are vegetarian, some people are vegan, whatever. It’s their prerogative.

He has the right to eat his cow, too.

His customers don’t have to like it, though, especially when they’ve become attached to said cow.

[Anne_FS]

[QUOTE=RodeoFTW;8636680]
If he was smart, he wouldn’t have allowed people to become attached and invested in his future steak dinner.[/QUOTE]

Yet again, No.

That was the point: most people eat animals. We eat animals. Here is how a responsible steward raises and treats the animals that sustain his family.

The entire point of the whole place is how this family sustains itself on the acreage that they have. That was the whole point: to show how they’re doing it.

[Red_Barn]

@Mosey_2003;8636780

Redbarn and RodeoFTW, if I didn’t know better I’d believe you were both Richard From the Bar*.

I’ve noticed this a few times, but I just don’t understand it. Why is it some ‘farmers’ have this absolute ZEAL for mocking and picking apart what are considered ‘hobby farmers’? Does someone having a few of this and a few of that and doing community outreach really hurt you? Is someone less interested in agriculture because they don’t have more than 100 head of any given animal?

You seriously can’t lay off after multiple people have specified the man does NOT advertise as a petting zoo?

HE’S COMMITTING FRAUD???

Does it make you feel warm and fuzzy inside to continually call ‘city people’ idiots and stupid? What great ambassadors of agriculture… :rolleyes:

What the heck is your problem???

What on earth are you talking about? I live on a small, organic “hobby” farm myself, and I don’t think I’ve called city people stupid even once.

My “problem” is with lying - especially to kids. I happen to believe that this is exactly what Mr Benner is doing with his phony “farm”, and I’m fully convinced that the entire Minnie Debacle was caused by this business’s complete lack of honesty and forthrightness.

You wanna talk about craptastic Ambassadors for Agriculture? Well, gee. I’d put any agritainment enterprise that somehow manages to piss off 6,000 petitioners right at the tippy-top that particular list - wouldn’t you?

[Mosey_2003]

They’re not boycotting, they’re threatening. They’re making nasty phonecalls and advising others to do the same. They’re protesting outside his gates. That’s not a boycott.

[Mosey_2003]

[QUOTE=Red Barn;8636822]
You wanna to talk about craptastic Ambassadors for Agriculture? Well, gee. I’d put any agritainment enterprise that somehow manages to piss off 6,000 petitioners right at the tippy-top that particular list, wouldn’t you?[/QUOTE]
He pissed off one special snowflake, that incited a mob of 6,000. A little difference there…

[RodeoFTW]

[QUOTE=Anne FS;8636817]
Yet again, No.

That was the point: most people eat animals. We eat animals. Here is how a responsible steward raises and treats the animals that sustain his family.

The entire point of the whole place is how this family sustains itself on the acreage that they have. That was the whole point: to show how they’re doing it.[/QUOTE]

Uhhh haha the problem is they aren’t showing how they do it. They are showing people cute baby animals and keeping the inconvenient truth out of it to prevent people from not going there.

Why show only the nice part of it and not any of the bad? Again, if they wanted to be real about it, why not how people how to butcher a goat? How to judge meat quality? Meat animal conformation?

I don’t see anything about that on their website but a lot about ‘come pet the cute baby animals!’

I eat animals, too. So what?

[QUOTE=Red Barn;8636822]What on earth are you talking about? I live on a small, organic “hobby” farm myself, and I don’t think I’ve called city people stupid even once.

My “problem” is with lying - especially to kids. I happen to believe that this is exactly what Mr Benner is doing with his phony “farm”, and I’m fully convinced that the entire Minnie Debacle was caused by this business’s complete lack of honesty and forthrightness.

You wanna to talk about craptastic Ambassadors for Agriculture? Well, gee. I’d put any agritainment enterprise that somehow manages to piss off 6,000 petitioners right at the tippy-top that particular list, wouldn’t you?[/QUOTE]

Exactly.

I used to do hands on lessons with kids about farm animals (dairy calves, pigs, ducks, chickens, goats, llama, rabbits) so I’m not ignorant about what livestock are for. The pretentiousness here is astounding.

[RodeoFTW]

[QUOTE=Red Barn;8636822]
What on earth are you talking about? I live on a small, organic “hobby” farm myself, and I don’t think I’ve called city people stupid even once.

My “problem” is with lying - especially to kids. I happen to believe that this is exactly what Mr Benner is doing with his phony “farm”, and I’m fully convinced that the entire Minnie Debacle was caused by this business’s complete lack of honesty and forthrightness.

You wanna to talk about craptastic Ambassadors for Agriculture? Well, gee. I’d put any agritainment enterprise that somehow manages to piss off 6,000 petitioners right at the tippy-top that particular list, wouldn’t you?[/QUOTE]

Exactly.

I used to do hands on lessons with kids about farm animals (dairy calves, pigs, ducks, chickens, goats, llama, rabbits) so I’m not ignorant about what livestock are for. The pretentiousness here is astounding.

[Mosey_2003]

[QUOTE=RodeoFTW;8636828]
I used to do hands on lessons with kids about farm animals (dairy calves, pigs, ducks, chickens, goats, llama, rabbits) so I’m not ignorant about what livestock are for. The pretentiousness here is astounding.[/QUOTE]

I agree.

[myhorse]

Seriously, why does he have to show the entire process? Again, you are trying to decide how he should run his business.

[RodeoFTW]

[QUOTE=myhorse;8636842]
Seriously, why does he have to show the entire process? Again, you are trying to decide how he should run his business.[/QUOTE]

For transparency and education. True education.

Clearly he only wants to show one side of the coin. The cute side. It’s taking advantage of people and their expectations and making him a lot of money. Now it’s not working because people found out the truth and are upset.

Boo hoo for him.

[Red_Barn]

[QUOTE=Mosey_2003;8636827]
He pissed off one special snowflake, that incited a mob of 6,000. A little difference there…[/QUOTE]
What difference?

I read the petition, looked into the “farm”'s public profile, and decided that the snowflake actually had a point: misleading paying customers is not nice.

What’s really so amazing about this? If we were talking about a dishonest car salesman or a crappy tennis camp, none of these Daydream Believers would be batting an eye.