The Boondocks blog, No. 38 for the week starting September 10, 2007.
Associated Press On Selling Development Rights
Consolidation of the Cattle Auction Houses
Energy looks at high energy prices and our future.
Enviroman looks at man and the environment.
Hayseeds looks at politics and life in our nation.
Individual looks at myself and how I'm changing
Outblog is all about my outdoor experiences.
Transit looks at the changing ways we get around.
Truck gives you stories and trips in my Ford Ranger.
NPR had an interesting story about in the Cowtown Rodeo in New Jersey.
When you think of rodeo, you may think of Texas or Wyoming. But for decades, a New Jersey family has run a popular rodeo at a place called Cowtown. In fact, it's just a few miles from Exit 1 on the turnpike.
Grant Harris and his family have been staging the Cowtown Rodeo every Saturday night during the summer since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. The rodeo sits off of a two-lane road that runs past sod farms, cornfields and livestock and feels more like a patch of Iowa than New Jersey.
Harris said people are always surprised to learn about Cowtown.
"So many people have a very skewed conception of New Jersey," Harris said. "They think of Jersey as 'Joisey.' If you ride around Salem and Cumberland County, it's mostly all open farmland, beef and dairy, vegetable farming, grain farming."
It's an interesting story. People think of New Jersey as largely urban, but it has a lot of beautiful rural areas like Upstate New York. We always focus on the cities, and forget about the other regions of our country, even when they are only a short distance from the cities.
That's not say that in many areas rural life is threatened by the approaching cities:
Harris does wonder about his future — not because fans aren't packing the stands but because Cowtown is so close to cities [being within 20 miles of Philadelphia]. Real estate agents say the value of the land has soared over the years. Harris says developers routinely make offers. He's sitting on 1,200 acres.
"When you get up over $25 million, you start getting my attention, and it's been over that before," Harris said.
The cultural loss of the threat of development is so great. Your never going to get anything close Cowtown with suburban sprawl housing and urban streets.
See a Map of Cowtown and Cowtown Rodeo.com.
There is an interesting article in the AP about one farm in Chazy selling development rights in exchange for a cash payment from the federal government.
Marinus “Dutch” Rovers himself, taking a few minutes from cutting alfalfa in a sweeter- smelling field farther east, stepped down from the glass cab of the large mower to discuss the $2.36 million he was paid this year to keep this farm as perpetual as the grass.
“I think it’s an excellent program because farming and urbanization doesn’t work,” Rovers said. “You want to spray and spread manure behind all these houses you’re going to have a big headache.”
The first farmland conservation easement in Clinton County was approved in 2003 and closed in April for these 1,600 acres near Lake Champlain, including 1,100 feet of lakefront next to a wildlife management area. In return for about 85 percent of the appraised market value, Rovers gave up most development rights. He can’t sell it off in pieces to builders should he ever need the money, though he can put up some more farm buildings.
Parts of Clinton County have some really awsome farmland. On the other hand, development pressures, outside of the Town of Plattsburgh is pretty limited compared to downstate. Yet it's still good to see more land protected forever and farmed.
Our friends over at the Daily Younger blog have an interesting article about consolidation at (or actually of) the auction block where there are fewer and fewer livestock auctions, forcing farmers to both pay more and have to travel farther.
Why is this article not suprising to anybody whose been watching? What about the avaliablity of local slaughterhouses in most communities? We are bless in having one in Voorheesville in our county, but in Clinton County, the closest one is over 80 miles from Plattsburgh in Vermont outside of Burlington.
As many of you know he is having a primary next Tuesday for the seat in the County Legislature. How many of you know about his truly amazing record in the County Legislature?
If your representive is not Sandy Gordon—ask yourself has he or she done this many things in the past:
And that's just his legislative record, to say nothing of his farm, his various other contributions to the community, or the many other great things he does. He will be awsome leader when he wins re-elections.
See the Altamont Enterprise for their scoop on both Sandy and Kevin Crosier.
