Open For Business

Some weeks I want to turn off the droning on and on about the same issues that come up year after year as our politicians quibble back and forth holding the nation hostage  to their partisan demands over paying the government’s bills, namely the federal workers’ salaries. Something is seriously wrong when major news outlets publish articles about which bills to pay and how to talk to lenders when paychecks get held up in Congress.

It’s the ol’  if-I-don’t-get-what-I-want-I’ll-make-everyone-suffer routine. Federal offices will shutter, including Social Security, Environmental and Food Inspection, IRS, and Health and Human Services. National Parks will all close right as fall colors and autumn hiking seasons begin.

Could you imagine if the folks who fed everyone pulled this kind of manure?

When federal employees are furloughed under a government shutdown they are not allowed to work and will receive all their back pay once the impasse  abates. Oh, and the elected officials causing this mess are still paid during the government shutdown.

At first I thought to myself, clearly I’m in the wrong business where I don’t get paid while people who are getting paid fight over how much to pay those not getting paid who will eventually get paid. After sitting with these convoluted thoughts for a while I realized I was going down the wrong row of corn.

I am a farmer and I feed the people who help to keep this country functioning as federal employees. Central Farm Markets’ customers routinely show up in the NY Times, Washington Post, The Economist and Time magazine. They’ve got .gov, .mil, and .edu email addresses. Some shop with a security detail. There’s ambassadors and elected officials, military officers, and medical researchers. I’ve got customers at the FAA, DOJ, FBI, CIA, NTSB, the Pentagon and Secret Service. If you come to market wearing federal agency swag you better believe I’m going to ask you who you are and what you do. That’s what makes going to market in the Washington, DC area so darn interesting.

But federal employees are also everyday people. They’re parents with kids, people with hobbies, folks who come to the markets week after week sharing a bit of their life, not some faceless government worker mentioned in the media.

Even in the face of a global pandemic that killed millions of people, farmers continued to show up, all of us putting in extra efforts for online ordering, curbside, and delivery. We show up in the bitter cold and the brutal heat. Last week we stood in the pouring rain. And yes, we show up during government shutdown.

During the last government shutdown that lasted for 34 days there were customers who curtailed their spending, saving as much on hand as possible for their mortgages, rents, and loan payments in the face of uncertainty. Some  who shopped weekly lamented their reluctance to spend money on the basics. You know what? Farmers made certain they got fed.

There was a time when this country was lead by farmers. Why do you think they take a break for the entire month of August during prime harvest and planting seasons depending on the crops. Farmers have always been a group that can agree to disagree agreeably. I may not agree with other farmers agricultural practices but that doesn’t mean I’m going to withhold food or the ability to do business from everyone else. What passes for politics today is nothing less than schoolyard bullying. Somehow all this bloviated frenzy reminds me of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but maybe that’s only because I live on one.