So to the Neighbor who Hates our Chicken Houses,
It would be very easy for me to be angry at you. I instantly feel hurt and anger and to be honest a bit of betrayal after the confrontation where you exposed your feelings about our farm. But instead of anger and hurt, I'm choosing grace and understanding and education.
I know that like with so many other agriculture commodities, you honestly just don't understand. You see, and smell, all the things that come with farming and raising animals specifically. You see us hauling off dead birds to be incinerated or composted. You smell liter as we clean out houses to prepare for a new flock of birds. You see feed trucks driving past your house at all hours of the day and night, and every couple of months you see semi trucks carrying birds back to the processing plant in the middle of the night. You see my dad leave for work early in the morning and get home at 4 and you think he doesn't have time to work and farm at the same time. You see all these things going on at our farm and then you see Facebook posts about how cruel "factory farming" is towards the animal and how we pump our birds full of antibiotics and hormones just to make a profit. You see that there are over 20 poultry farms in the miles surrounding your house and you take all the negatives and multiply them. You see all these things and you get a bad taste in your mouth for our farm.
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14 comments:
They should be more tolerant neighbors, I grew up in Siloam just part of Wicomico County now referred to as Riverside Drive Extd. We were surrounded by chicken farms, yes there could be an odor worse in summer. We never complained and when they had a lot of chickens die from heat or storms we helped dig the trenches and buried them. I live in the city of Salisbury now trust me life can always be worse. It's how you grow with change that makes a difference, good neighbors look for the good.
Waste of time arguing with these people
They think chicken comes from the grocery market.
I like dark meat the best! Chicken is a wonderful food! Thank you all for making that happen in my grocery stores!
I commend all the farmers in this day and time when farming is not popular or politically correct. But these liberal progressive idiots should realize without farmers and farms you could not eat three times a day as most people are used to doing. Believe it or not milk comes from cows and eggs come from chickens. They don't just magically appear at the grocery store. Also your vegetables also have to be grown on farms. So you should thank the farmer that does the work to provide these things for you. And if you don't like the smell of the farm you should move and let the farmer do his job.
Those that come here from 'cities' and find this rural agriculture area is offensive; GO BACK!!! We didn't ask you to come here. This was your choice. Delmarva's people grew up in this area and we understand it. We live with it. And more importantly, we appreciate our farmers and watermen. ALL of them.
Again; Go back where you came from and stop making yourself miserable.
This type of person is so intolerant they need to follow their progressive / liberal population plans which is attempting to force people into cities and close living . The more the merrier into as little a space as possible. So they should sell out and move to a government commune.
Most retirees against any development are come heres who try to change our way of life here.
The chicken houses are fine if you farmers would keep them clean, the stink is what none of us like!
Anonymous Norm said...
The chicken houses are fine if you farmers would keep them clean, the stink is what none of us like!
January 24, 2017 at 8:12 PM
lmao. did you not read anything? or do you just cannot understand what is explained to you?
The chicken farmer's who built the shore are being dropped for the new chicken factory farm. The farms going up now are mostly from out of town folks.
What this author/ farmer fails to include in her article is the millions of dollars in tax dollars that subsidize poultry farmers. MD paid 1 million dollars to transport chicken manure last year. The State also pays for the concrete pads and manure sheds at these poultry farms. And the smell from poultry houses isn't just a bad smell. The air coming out of tunnel fans has been proven to have harmful pathogens and is hazardous to our health. If it wasnt harmful, why are poultry farms be exempt from the Clean Air Act? Again, the air quality coming from those poultry houses would not pass air emission regulations. Poultry farmers are not feeding America. They are trying to feed China and other foreign countries. An enormous amount of poultry is shipped overseas. If we look at new chicken houses being built on the Eastern Shore, they aren't being built by our family farmer that we claim we want to protect. These house aren't being built to supplement a farmer's struggling income. They are being built as no land CAFOs and are not being built by locals, but people from out of state or even from other countries. Is the Eastern Shore really only good enough to raise chickens? Are we not capable of bringing other industries into the area? I haven't meet a person who works in the chicken industry, other than inside of an office, that enjoys working in the industry. Let's bring jobs and businesses to the area that people can actually like doing. Support our farmers by buying local produce and shopping at farmer's markets for meats and other products because we do love our "family farmers."
It is a conservative principal to value individual property rights. I value poultry growers right to go into debt and raise chickens on their own/banks property, simple turn off the fans and keep the pollution on their own land. The only problem is liberal poultry growers believe "their industry" not farm has more rights than their neighbors have for the peaceful enjoyment of their property. New poultry houses have 18 fans per house blowing on their neighbors. When the right of any industry has more rights than an individual we are in serious trouble. Think eminent domain. Conservatives respect the right of the individual more than a man blowing pollution onto their neighbors property so he can make a dollar. Simple turn off the fans and keep the pollution associated with your operation on your property.
Irony....all the Vietnamese on the shore run factory farms and employ Latinos to catch the birds.Equal opportunity for one minority to stay subserviant to another.
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