The Chicken or the Egg?

As I was organizing my thoughts for this week’s article I was made aware of a situation on the Eastern end of my district that has caused a great deal of consternation for both sides who are involved in the issue. First, let me diagram the situation for you. On one side we have a three generation family farm who has been farming land Southeast of Lawton for many years. One farm that’s currently in wheat is right across the road from a neighborhood. The issue is that on this particular wheat farm the geese have moved in, as they do this time of year, and have begun the process of stripping the lush, green wheat pasture down to where it resembles a parking lot. Now, any of you who grow wheat in Southwest Oklahoma understand the goose problem all too well. It seems like a goose can eat more wheat than a 500 pound steer ever thought about. As a matter of fact, just by virtue of the way their beaks are set up they actually destroy the plant, unlike cattle that just bite off the green tops leaving the root system in tact so the plant can later produce a grain crop as well as providing forage through the winter. The bottom line is, as pretty as they are, geese cause a tremendous amount of economic damage to the area wheat crop. So far you’re probably reading this thinking what’s the big deal? Well, the big deal is the method this three generation farm family has found to save thousands of dollars worth of wheat and no, it’s not a scarecrow. It’s a goose cannon and I’ll bet some of you are already caught up and you know where we’re going next. The three generation farm family sets the propane cannon to go off every twenty minutes and viola, no more geese, cheap enough. A little ol’ five gallon tank of propane every week or so and problem solved, right? No, wrong. Everything’s good until the neighbors start complaining, and complain they do. So in a nut shell there’s the issue. Who was there first and does the landowner have the right to protect their crop from the destructive geese? I think we can all agree that if they were way out in the country it probably wouldn’t be an issue but where neighbors come into play it gets ugly fast. The classic battle lines are drawn and off we go. Someone in the neighborhood calls the police department and threatens to press charges if the cannon doesn’t stop.

Was the farm there before the neighborhood, probably? Who’s right, well I don’t know. It’s a pretty hard call but it’s not a new dilemma. Many times as municipal areas encroach on the farming areas somebody will sell a quarter or an eighty to a developer who will lay out streets and water lines and start building houses. Next thing ya’ know, people start moving to those developments to get away from traffic or crowded neighborhoods or a host of other things that people want to escape and move out to the peaceful country side where they can see something besides their neighbors fence. Never giving a thought to the fact that the reason they can see is because their next door neighbor is a farm. Many times that farmer may run a tractor well into the night and not only is there noise from that tractor as he makes his way around that field but there’s also dust and down here in this dry corner of the State there can be a lot of it. That’s usually the first complaint we get from new developments out in the country is, “what Mr. Farmer are you gonna’ do about the dust?” There in lies the rub. Who was there first? The farmer or the neighborhood and who’s right? I’m not sure if I’m smart enough to tell ya’ but I know it’s a problem. Dust and noise and some of those things that we know are just part of the process don’t bother me in the least. In fact, my wife Dede dreads weaning time because when we pin calves to wean them off their mothers I guarantee you calves will bawl for at least three nights. In fact she calls it “the bawling of the calves.” I can tell ya’ within a two or three mile radius of our place when somebody has weaned a set of calves. It kinda’ reminds me of the old saying about feed lots if you’ve ever been to the panhandle of Texas or Oklahoma the standard line if a city slicker asks “what’s that smell?” Some old timer will invariably say “it smells like money.” So I don’t know who wins this game of blink but I know it can manifest itself in many different forms and I know it’s a fight we’ll referee for many years to come.

If you would like to contact me at the Capitol, please do not hesitate to call 1-800-522-8502 or email me at donarmes@okhouse.gov

And here’s something to think about as you go down the road:
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. ~Frederic Bastiat