The USDA (and one of their associates at the state health department) have egg on their faces

Last month Brambleberry B&B was featured in the Wisconsin Bed and Breakfast Association's electronic monthly newsletter called Ezine. The topic was B&Bs that serve slow and organic foods -- and people were paying attention -- in particular, an overzealous employee at the health department in Madison.
This woman was ALARMED to see that we serve our own farm fresh eggs to guests. (So do most other farm B&Bs, which is what guests want and expect from us.) She used a microscope to further examine our web site and contacted our local restaurant and B&B inspector to interrogate her. She was forced to call us and ask all the same questions she asked at our routine inspection a few months ago. The Madison inspector pointed out that it is ILLEGAL to serve anything other than USDA inspected eggs to guests. How ridiculous is that!!! Ironically, I can legally sell up to $5,000 worth of those same farm fresh eggs without a permit. Some guests suggested I sell them each an egg and they could have me cook it for them. The inspector also became concerned when she saw we were serving our own high-quality, natural, homegrown pork (which is slaughtered in a state-inspected plant), she perused our dinner menu and saw there was turkey on it! And chicken! (Yes, those are acquired from the grocery store, and are placed in an ice-filled cooler for the trip home.)
We simply don't have the volume of business (or the money) doing our weekend dinners to warrant hiring an expensive restaurant supply company to deliver the small amounts of food needed for a weekend dinner party.
"I see you have sheep." Yes, we do. But I don't serve lamb to our guests. I don't care for sheep meat myself, so I think it's not possible for me to prepare it to someone elses's liking either. And I love my sheep. They are all pets, but I do sell their male offspring (which I don't name) for other people to eat if they so choose. If I did have my own lambs slaughtered, it would be in a state-inspected plant. In the future we will do the same with our beef.
Fortunately, they're not concerned with our fruit and vegetables -- yet.
In short, they're mostly concerned that our eggs are the only thing on our menu that aren't "inspected and approved" by someone from the USDA wearing a white lab coat. But what meaning do those words have anyway? Absolutely none!
My local inspector said she may be calling us the following week to say the inspector in Madison won't allow us to use our own eggs. That was weeks ago, and we still haven't heard anything in light of the recent contaminated egg fiasco/recall going on involving -- you guessed it -- "USDA inspected and approved eggs."
My farm-fresh eggs are not inspected by USDA inspectors. Guess what? Neither are MOST of the eggs that carry that very label. Only occasionally does an inspector visit a plant. According to an Aug. 19 report on the CBS Evening News "Most eggs growers routinely inspect themselves."!!!
According to Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute (a farm policy research group) 95 percent of all laying hens in the U.S. are owned by only 13 corporations. Of them, 192 companies have more than 75,000 birds in one facility! That's potentially a serious problem for everyone who eats USDA so-called inspected eggs. Chickens defecate from the same vent eggs roll out of. Sick birds and lots of chicken poop piling up lead to salmonella poisoning. When several thousand birds are kept in contained, cramped quarters as they are in the commercial egg-laying and chicken-slaughtering industries, animals are going to get sick and spread germs. And chicken poop is going to pile up fast. Some USDA commercial growers are not all that concerned about sanitation either.
We've got about 30 to 35 chickens here. Only about 20 of them lay eggs anymore. The rest are too old, and they are Chris's mother's pets. We do wash, sterilize and store our eggs per USDA standards. (I suppose I could don the white lab coat I still have from my days spent as a skin care specialist and a hair stylist when I do it.) Our eggs are safer and cleaner than what you can buy in the store -- no question about it. They are never undercooked either.
It's too bad an anal retentive inspector in Madison wants to stop us from doing what we do well -- giving our guests a pleasurable experience while enjoying pesticide free, preservative free, organic, safe, wholesome, healthy, REAL food grown here on site. It's one of the things guests most love about our B&B.
So let's get cracking people. Speak up! Don't let these jerks tell you what you can't eat.

A bumper crop of blackberries

Our bed and breakfast is named after brambleberries, which is what the Scottish call blackberries or any berries with briars.

Not that we’re superstitious or anything, but in summer of 2007 which was our first year of business, there was a huge blackberry crop failure. We couldn’t help wonder if that was an omen.

This year, we’re happy to report, that we’ve never seen a more prolific crop of rubus allegheniensis, otherwise known as the blackberries. We’ve had lots of rain this season, resulting in plenty of moisture for the wild crop. And like every other crop this year, the season started about two weeks ahead of schedule and as of this writing, Aug. 1, we guess the crop has already peaked, but there are a few weeks of picking left.

This prolific plant covers our hardwood forests; particularly where livestock aren't as prevalent and where timber logging has left openings. We harvest the berries to eat fresh, make jams and also wines. We have a port-style blackberry wine that was bottled earlier this spring that shows exceptional promise.

Here are some recollections from Chris about blackberry picking:

The challenge in hunting blackberries comes not as much from the chase but in conquering the tangled mass of thorns and briars in the quest to find the juicy, purplish-black berries. And best of all, they're absolutely free.

Summers on the farm are always a busy time, with plenty of hay to harvest and other chores to be completed. But growing up here, we always found time for at least a day or two of serious blackberry picking, usually sandwiched between the second and third cuttings of hay.

The premium berry patch when I was a kid some 35 years ago was on a homestead plot owned by my great aunt and uncle. Much of the 160 acres was woodland that was overrun by blackberries, but the premium patch was on the property's border, accessible only by an overgrown logging road through the woods.

We had an old Jeep that could make the journey, but we also had a '55 Ford or something in that vintage. All I remember was big tail fins, a musty interior, no exhaust and no brakes. We rode in style.

Supposedly blackberry vines can live for 25 years or more. This patch had towering vines, many that were at least an inch thick. It was a dense thicket of both pain and pleasure, as one had to battle the sharp briars in order to get at the berries, which were the size of my thumb.

Dressed in thick jeans and long-sleeved flannel shirts and armed with empty ice cream pails, we tromped into the patch to do battle. As a young kid I ate way more berries than what went into the bottom of the pail, as was evidenced by the stain of purple around my mouth.

My grandfather Keith made a harness out of twine that put his berry bucket about chest high, freeing up both hands to pick. Grandpa was a berry picking machine and would return often to the car, emptying his pail into the smaller quart-size berry baskets, stopping long enough for a swig of water before heading back into the patch.

By that time I had long grown tired of berry picking and would take a nap in the car or sit under a nearby shade tree. The time would pass painfully slow, as it always does when you're young, and I'd wait as patiently as I could for the rest of the crew to finish for the day. How I long for those long days now when the seasons and the years seem to pass too quickly.

Eventually the pails would be full or arms and fingers would be too sore or scratched to continue and we'd call it a day. The patch never seemed empty though and sometimes we'd return a couple of days later to harvest more of the berries, as they sweetened under the hot summer sun.

There are still berries on that farm, but the patch has become a memory, like many of the pickers I loved so well. Every blackberry season brings back fond memories of those pickers, the old Ford and what seemed like simpler times.

Sherry has made almost daily trips in to the woods to pick berries, which are served fresh to our guests. The time for eating fresh berries is waning, but we’ll look forward to blackberry jam or a sip of blackberry wine in the cold of the winter to remind us of the summer days in the berry patch.

We hope this year’s bountiful blackberry harvest is a sign of good times to come!