The latest news out of Ventura Thursday evening was that a California judge reduced Sharon Palmer’s bail to $500,000 (from $2 million) and James Stewart’s to $100,000 (from $1 million).
Before the end of the evening, Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. had put up collateral to cover the Rawesome owner’s bail, and Stewart was expected to leave jail any time. Family and friends of Palmer were at work trying to arrange for the posting of bail for her, presumably trying to determine whether they needed involve bail agents and how much might be put up in cash and/or pledging of property.
Regardless of the timing and outcome of this process, I want to say that for me, personally, this has been a very difficult affair to observe. I know I am not alone. It has created controversy and pain and dissension within a community of passionate supporters of sustainable and nutrient-dense food in Los Angeles and Ventura County.
FarmtoTable eloquently makes the case for Palmer on behalf of those close to her, following my previous post: “She is the most generous person I sincerely have ever met, that is why I am standing up for her along with the hundreds of customers that come to my booth every week that have been to the farm and always comment ‘this is the best chicken, pork, eggs….I have ever had.’ Many of these other market owners have been to her farm and have her still selling because of what they have seen.”
A truck loaded dairy equipment being removed from Sharon Palmer’s Healthy Family Farms barn two weeks ago. Of course, there have been many doubters as well, and they have been outspoken on this blog and elsewhere.
The dissension had taken such a toll on Palmer that the week before she was hauled out of Los Angeles County Court last Friday and thrown into a Ventura County jail, she had emailed around some photos of the dismantling of her dairy barn, with the comment, “This has been the saddest week of my life. The dairy is being dismantled today and tomorrow. The end of a wonderful natural place on this god-forsaken earth. The children in Ventura and surrounding communities will never know how it feels to milk a loving goat,or where butter and ice cream come from.The members of Rawesome will never experience fresh,local milk from their own animals.”
When I inquired as to why she felt compelled to dismantle the dairy when she wasn’t actually selling any milk, she responded, “Every week I have to deal with undercover agents, USDA investigators. Last month the DA actually asked my attorney how many animals I was still milking. I closed my dairy in 2010…two years ago and they are still looking for the milk…My family just cannot bear this abusive way of life.”
I don’t want to be an apologist for Sharon Palmer. I don’t know the extent of her guilt in alleged mortgage fraud and tax evasion–if, indeed, there is any at all–as well as outsourcing of food (which she has admitted occurred on a very limited basis), but at a minimum, she definitely used very poor judgment at various points since she acquired her farm in 2008. It’s been disconcerting, as well, to see her not take more responsibility for potentially misguided actions.
As a result, the entire Rawesome situation has turned terribly painful for any number of people in addition to Palmer, beginning with James Stewart, who has long been passionate about helping people access the best possible nutrient-dense foods.
The situation has also opened the door to the enemies of food freedom to go to town, and claim Palmer and Stewart are indicative of a corrupt movement. At which point, it’s essential to point out that while Palmer and Stewart may have shown poor judgment, they aren’t anywhere close, in even a worst-case scenario, to a criminal level necessitating bails of $1 million and $2 million. Those are bail levels for serious drug dealers, or for murderers and rapists.
Now, I can complain all I want about the various injustices here, but I’m not sure that’s what’s needed right now. More important may be compassion for any number of those involved in this affair. And more important than that may be focusing on a couple of important lessons to be learned:
1. It seems as if it should go without saying, but if you are going to supply food directly to consumers, you need to be completely and totally honest and ethical in how you go about doing that. Maybe the big boys can get away with quietly doctoring their ground beef with “pink slime” to increase profits, but small direct-to-consumer farmers and other food producers shouldn’t even be thinking about doing anything even slightly different than what they have committed to providing their customers or food club members.
2. If you are going to be in the business of raising or distributing nutrient-dense food, you better clean up any skeletons in your closet, and make your business transparent. First and foremost in that respect is paying your taxes. Whatever reservations you might have about how tax money is used, it’s essential to just suck it up and do what must be done. As Gordon Watson pointed out following a previous post, once the government comes after you on tax evasion, you are in serious trouble. Few juries or judges will let you off on that one. And the reality is that they are after small farmers providing good food, and will look for any excuse possible to trip them up.
One of Vernon Hershberger’s big advantages is that he has run an honest and transparent operation. That has forced the authorities to challenge him on the food distribution issues, and there the case is much less of a slam dunk. Supporters have felt free to come to his aid. Yes, low-level judges have ruled against farmers, but the issue hasn’t yet been appealed to a federal court on Constitutional grounds.
The authorities would much rather come after a farmer on the basis of tax evasion or fraud. It’s much easier to convince a jury, and much more difficult for the farmer’s supporters to muster outrage.
In the meantime, the Rawesome situation will continue its march through the courts. I worry that it is so painful that lots of people have just tuned it out.
As the growing pains in the sector of the local food movement represented in this Blog, primarily nutrient dense mineralized food that is restricted in some fashion, moves forward, it would be good to remember it is on the forefront of how all people in the future will value food and move away from what is its cost or how it was produced.
Within that value assessment is the 200 or so years of mining to soil and expediential growth and the current cost to rebuild the ability to produce the quality level of food we are currently thinking we are getting from our small local farmers and the broad and vast undertaking that process entails.
Simply put, the cost of the food form our local producers has yet to factor in the replacement cost of the minerals and organisms mined over the past two centuries, the competition for land which is not being manufactured anymore, the taxes that go along with the severely limited space to actually grow food coupled with the current popular understanding that production from our corporate model is our zenith and cannot be taken past that level.
My point is that if we truly want sustainable access to the food we know we need in order to reverse or prohibit the degradation our society considers normal, all costs have to be factored, and a cooperative effort of who was in the past was considered a consumer must be transferred over to partner and a group effort of detailing the actual costs of this sustainability must be undertaken in order to fully understand how underpriced our food currently is, the societal pressures that force us to think it is supposed to be cheap and what measures producers use to take on their own in order to fulfill those perceptions of cost and availability.
As the movement progresses we will come across those who are not up for the challenge of the larger picture, and we will come across those who get it and will be on the receiving end of enforcement actions that challenge the very system we need to audit and change in order to retool our society and begin to regain what we thought we had all along.
What we see with the Rawesome case is a combination of both aspects detailed above and the beginning of the understanding of how a cooperative effort will learn from this early stage or resistance to the norm. Nothing happens in a vacuum, while it is most unpleasant for those involved personally with the actions of the state, it will serve to bring forth a better understanding of our own shortcomings as consumers, but allow the path to be laid for more cooperation and skin in the game, to assure our rights as a free and health society.
The phase we see now is gathering at the courthouses, what I would like to see and am working towards is gatherings on the farm to bring the tools of a prosperous nation back to the soil, to begin to assess the real costs of our hopes for our children, work with our producers and organizers in a collaborative fashion, to resolve our lack of knowledge and the gap that still exists between our food and that which makes it so.
The end result of our coming together has yet to be determined, and each area and collaborative effort will have its own realities to contend with. As we move forward we will begin to take in account our choices and its effect it has had in our ability to attain the food we need to repair and thrive as a society.
Changes in priorities will be made, but if done in group fashion we are no longer alone, and neither is the producer or organizer who at one time made decisions on their own for what was thought to be for the good of the many, will have support and due diligence on the best plan of action forward.
Not all group decisions will be the final and best choice, but it will allow the reduction of costly mistakes, and review with multiple perspectives will create a fluid and prosperous management which in the end will allow true sustainability and structure against multiple opposing forces.
Tim Wightman
President
Farm-to-Consumer Foundation
This reaction is to be expected when people believe that they have been, or may have been a victim of fraud.
"if you are going to supply food directly to consumers, you need to be completely and totally honest and ethical in how you go about doing that. "
Very true.
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/mar/08/judge-reduces-bail-for-santa-paula-farmer-with/?print=1
"About eight supporters of the defendants showed up in court."
Not a good showing….
"Palmer is accused of stealing more than $1.1 million from Rabobank and more than $450,000 from investors, including an elderly person,"
Isn't this a repeat of the previous fraud she pulled?
I can not speak for Sharon. I can speak for James. For four years James did what ever it took to deliver OPDC products to an ever growing list of Socal stores. He was the voice of raw milk and my distributor. He did a good job. He was ethical. He tasted all of the products and protested when it was not perfect. James is a very good man. He has never ever cheated me. Ever. His heart is in the right place. His Karma point list is deep and long. The abuse he is enduring is emblematic of the the paradigm in power lashing out.
I have been extremely careful to make sure that as OP serves our consumers, every single one of the OP T's are crossed and our I's are dotted. When pioneering you can only take on one battle at a time. James is a friend of raw milk….. And last night when the call came on the decision was easy for me to make. You hang together or surely you will
Hang one by one. Talk is cheap …. A true friend acts. I owe James much for his efforts and guidance years ago. All CA raw milk consumers owe him much. He picked up the ball after Alta Dena left the field. He is the foundational reason that OP is what it is today. He mentored me. Last night it was my turn ( and my wires as well ) to help him.
Sorry about the edits.
Today we learn that James is being subjected to a special 1275 clause of the law. This clause allows the refusal of bail that is posted using illecite funds.
When friends of James paid the fee last night…those fees are now subject to verification by the court to assure that they did not come from some illegal source.
This is how the prosecutors get blood….this is criminal activity by the prosecutors. Raw milk sales are not drug sales. Crazy….Crazy…Crazy….
What has this world come to??? Looks like even though the bail has been posted, James must go back before the court to have court versify that his bail funds are legitimate. Laws that are used to attach drug cartels and now used and abused to attack our food!!!!!! and those that provide it. I call this over reaching, prosecutorial, punitive fascism!!
Mark
at this link, below, is information published by her lawyer, about Sharon Palmer's case on Natural News
http://www.naturalnews.com/035186_Sharon_Palmer_Rawesome_Foods_arrest.html
Instead of focusing on the negative why dont we start to celebrate the history and goodness of real food? One of Vernons members put a video on you tube from the rally in Wisconsin (search raise your glass raw milk). You may not be drawn to the music yourselfbut it is so upbeat and happy, I was there, everyone was happy and excited, this type of message appeals to young people and pop culture. If we are to change the direction and perceptions of society we must use every tool we can; art mimicking life has the potential to reach those in society who dont yet understand what is wrong with the industrial food machine. View this video and share it on face book, twitter etc. A picture speaks a thousand words
Mark, thank you for your unfailing committment to raw milk and real food.
http://www.unhealthyfamilyfarm.com/images/HFF_Fraud_-_History_Facts_Basis.pdf
http://www.unhealthyfamilyfarm.com/images/Healthy_Family_Farms_Fraud-photos_.pdf
That site has been linked to any number of times. From all I can tell, it is riddled with questionable information, including the authenticity of the photos and the reliability of of the tests.
David
It is a shame that supporters of the real food movement would not understand how deeply frustrating and anger making fraud feels.
When you are someone who watched Food Inc., reads up on food politics, was a card-carrying member of WAPF, who bought raw milk, who deeply deeply cares about real whole and healthy food for her family…and then you read that your suspicions are confined by the DAs office, you tell me how you would feel? Add to that that this person you once trusted to provide MY family with meat and eggs is now accused of being up to her old antics Real estate fraud and now again with an elder?
Would you not lose faith in your leaders and be suspicious of EVERYONE? Wouldn't you dispair if your friends who are good intentioned people and who gave money to Sharon "don't want to get political". Thus creates dispersion and distance in a well meaning community!!!
David, I really like your two points and I hope to god people stop defending, deflecting, justifying and explaining. I hope that they heed your words and live cleanly and do right.
What, then, were Aajanus' motives in posting the website?
What do you make of the fact that this comes from a person who has committed his life (be it naive or self serving) to source the purest and cleanest food for himself and his patients?
Why would he come out with such accusations publicly and risk slander?
Do you believe Sharon's story that Larry Otting (now a defendent) and Aajanus conspired to try to ruin her business and take her farm?
Whom do you believe?
Kristen
http://www.hoards.com/sites/default/files/Fewer%20dairy%20farms%20left%20the%20business.pdf
I don't pretend to know all that motivated Aajonus Vonderplanitz to put up that site. I'm sure he felt he was sincere, but to my way of thinking, putting up a public web site trashing an individual supplier wasn't an appropriate way to settle an internal disagreement within a private food club. Indeed, if the club is truly private, and I like to think it was, then settle your disagreements privately, among the members. Similarly, I can't begin to speculate on what's behind the disagreements between Otting and Palmer, except to sense it is all pretty complicated.
David
1) James, my friend, is not ethical. One story I am abliged to discuss publicly has already been told by Gumpert: James' gorilla tactics in damaging his former employers (Claravales) market share by telling Market owners that they had gone out of business so as to put his new employer (OPDC) in their place. Claravale really had to scramble there to regain their markets and not go belly up. Nice ethical business practices!
2) James is not ethical point number two: when he and Sharon Palmer conspired to sell outsourced eggs, did he tell Rawesome members about it? No. Only until he was outed by Aajanus did he fess up. Fool me once, shame on me…fool me twice, shame on you.
3) Mark, didn't James kick you out of Rawesome when you were found to be outsourcing your milk from the likes of Van Echt dairy… The only dairy to have lost its organic certification to my knowledge? Cross your eyes and dot your teeth???
4) Mark has been dying to get back in James' pocketbook, I mean good graces. Good on you for trying to buy him back!
5) Mark comes on here to tell anyone who listens about his heroism: to look like such a good guy… A regular raw milk hero!
Sounds like a bunch of raw milk good 'ole boys to me!!!
As much as W.D. Hoard and his legacy is responsible for the modern US dairy industry (and certainly for Wisconsin's status as "America's Dairyland")… Hoard's Dairyman has become the most destructive force to the US dairy industry today. Consolidation, corporatization, more inputs, the destruction of small farms, etc, etc…
When we speak of a "Hegelian dialectic", THIS is what we are talking about — creative destruction, as Hoard (and his legacy) so wonderfully illustrates. The dialectic is caused not by socialists, but by the forces of corporate capital. W.D. Hoard, if you've studied his biography, was insistant upon commercialization of the dairy industry, and compelling farmers to adopt "business logic" in their farming.
Weather or not you believe this is a good thing is another matter. I'm ambivilent, personally. Corporate capital will do its thing, we just need to do what is best for the people. I believe that creating sanitary standards for shipping raw milk into urban population centers will benefit small farms. I also agree with you, Barney, that convincing more consumers to tend their own animals on a small scale is a good thing. Even in the middle of the city, I practice organic gardening. I don't have enough room for animals, unfortunately.
I did not tell anyone that I posted James bail collateral. That news came from others. I am sorry you feel the way you do.
I would like you to visit OPDC soon. I will give you a personal tour.
and Show you absolutely everything. Then I will drive you to Claravale so you can attempt to tour them. Guaranteed you will be unwelcome. They do not welcome tours and will not show you their facilities. I know….people try to visit Claravale and they can not get a return phone call and if they show up, they are not welcomed. ask Claravale to see their purchase receipts for all that certified organic alfalfa they claim to feed. Ask Claravale to see there bacteria counts? I am just sick of you bashing OPDC based on some weird bias that is entirely unfounded. I have never purchased a drop of outside raw milk and bottled it. That is a fact. On what basis do you claim otherwise? The Vanderyke deal was for pure organic colostrum from pastured ( yes the heifers were from mountain pasture lands….Amanda Rose has the pictures of the heifers on mountain pastures ) heifers that had just come fresh.
I spoke with James last night just after his release. He was suffering. He had been kept in solitary confinement for the last seven days and not provided any blankets or extra clothing. All he was provided was a thin single layer of jail uniform he told me it was as cold as hell and less than 60 degrees. He said "he had been tortured".
Extra ordinary rendition for raw milk sellers…..it is here….right now. The World of Raw Milk is filled with real people and courageous Leaders. It also has some of the most confused, bullshit filled, all talk, no action people I have ever seen. Do not ever think the act of bailing Out James was self serving….I will act when I know that suffering of a true friend of raw milk is occurring. James is an unsong hero of CA raw milk. I owe him much….we all owe him much. When he would drive all night long just so fresh raw milk and cream was in stores for people he did not know…that is an act of love for all.
Kristin….I still remember the big fat kiss and thank you, that you gave me at the first Rally for the Rawesome three. Please come tour OPDC…bring your kids, bring your friends. We would love to have you. Your own eyes will show you the truth…then you can write of it.
Knock off the negative crap.
It appears there is all sorts of deceit in the raw milk movement. So much for being better than food produced by large companies.
I completely disagree that it is unethical to buy milk from a certified organic dairy and make cheese from it ….if this is disclosed . It was disclosed. It was never a secret.
Rock throwers, negative bashers….use of labels like 'unethical' when they are unfounded unjust and just plain lies is really ridiculous and destructive. I guess that is why some people do it. Very sad.
if the club is truly private
What does this mean, private? What does public mean?
Perhaps private means that the common slaves are not allowed to participate.
In my opinion a slave-like mentality has been widely inculcated, to the point where we barely notice (nay, probably are unable to sense) its qualities in our behavior and habits of thought and of expression.
A neutral evaluation of our physical environment (the land, the animals, the technical tools to hand) would, I believe, be hugely encouraging to all of us.
[A man I know that grew up in Sudan almost cries when he thinks of Sudan. Ingvar, he told me, that one country could feed the African continent. What prevents that? It is no defect in the land that prevents that. It is human thought, human habit that prevents that.]
A neutral evaluation of the environment between our ears is another story entirely it is not so encouraging in my opinion.
The not-free mentality is one where instructions are issued downward, and followed, and one where needs/wants are addressed upwards to the authorities who then make the decisions/arrangements, which are then promulgated downward, and followed. There is in this a sort of dialog, but the dialog is between the ones who have each abdicated their own mantle of freedom and corresponding responsibilities and duties and the ones who have assumed those mantles.
The question in my mind is: do we have the heart to change? And by change I mean to put aside the weak and weakening habits of the not-free and accept freedom. We are made to be free but lapse into other states for various reasons. I know that life is terminal and that if I had a perfect diet of nutrient-dense foods &c, &c, I will still some day die. I get that. Yet, given a rock and an egg and my hunger, I will eat the egg. There is no point, in my opinion, in choosing inferior, even deleterious stuffs to eat.
Getting back to the start of my comment if there is a private club and Aajonus, say, takes this action of posting information in a publicly accessible arena (described in earlier comments of Lola, David, and Kristen), does his taking that action dissolve the private club?
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
By he way…I have no opinion about Sharon. I do not know her. I consider James an entirely different set of facts and circumstances. I know James.
The idea that it is possible to rip off RaboBank is a joke. Years ago we had a loan with VIB bank before it merged with RABO. When this merger occurred, RABO systematically went about the destruction of OPDC. They disregarded the covenants of our loan agreements with VIB. This happened 10 years ago. We barely escaped with our necks. They were unethical, unfair and just plain mean people. If RABO bank was fooled….then they deserved everything they lost. The banks are big boys and if they fail in their "due diligence" that is their very own problem. A bank is a selfish greedy institution of rules and regulations, mathematical calculations, theoretical qualifications, loan and credit approval boards etc….I find it very hard to believe that RABO was cheated out of anything. They take little risk. They take extreme care in documentation and in securing their collateral lien positions. If they were fooled….They had it coming.
I don't really know how to respond?
I've been feverish and tired and a bit out of it today. That may be why I read your comments as humor?
Mr. Darcy once said in the earshot of Elizabeth Bennett that, "my good opinion, once lost, is lost forever." This is no love story, however. I'd like to say, no love gained, no love lost.
I don't care to drink raw milk at the moment, but if I am tempted in the future I'll be sure to visit you. I don't know if it will help me either way though. Someone who outsources just a wee bit here and admits to the non-illegal part of it (outsourcing colostrum but really also outsourcing cream for bottling and cream for your butter as well…Sharon also admitted to outsourcing that one little time at Rawesome but would never admit to doing it at FM's where she knew she'd be kicked out) well, my question is how do you regain that trust lost?
I enjoy reading your history rewrites. Quite good, really.
James is the victim in your ever present drama triangle? Alright, but he's still a perp in my book.
And to be just as hostile and paternalistic: Banks are banks: deal with it. Cut the cry me a river part, Mark.
Mark McAfee said: "The Vanderyke deal was for pure organic colostrum from pastured ( yes the heifers were from mountain pasture lands….Amanda Rose has the pictures of the heifers on mountain pastures ) heifers that had just come fresh."
FTR, I live about ten miles from the pasture lands in question and some of you may know me from providing documentation of the Vander Eyk dairy when it lost its certification. It had no cows grazing, only heifers. This was a key reason it lost certification. The heifers were brought to the 10K dairy as springers and birthed there. When they were milking, then, they were not actually on grass. The Vander Eyks simply did not have the infrastructure to milk pastured cows. There is simply no way that the outsourced colostrum could have come from cows on grass. It's not possible. The rest of it gets into he-said-she-said, but like I said, I like right near all of this nonsense and there simply isn't the infrastructure to set aside colostrum in this way from a specific group of new cows (even if the grass was possible). Given some of the local shock to the whole issue, the smart money said the "colostrum" was all bought through a broker.
It's also relevant to point out that the heifers only grazed on these lands from about January to April of each year and the outsourced colostrum in question was implicated in the Sep 2006 recall for e coli. Even if a heifer were pulled off the pasture in late April, it would have been at least four months off grass by the time of the recall. They would have also been producing colostrum for four months at that point which would have been a miracle in itself.
Funny thing, when I was documenting this, Mark was going to fly a SF Chronicle reporter and I over these lands. He knew of all of the certification problems and was buying from them anyway. Though he says none of this has ever been a secret, he did not disclose his business dealings with Vander Eyk (or Horizon) to me or to the reporter at the time.
I'm pretty strongly in the "get a goat" camp at this point.
Amanda Rose
aka "Foxy"
Supreme Court rulings supporting sovereign "terrorists".
1. sovereigns to be subject to statutes. See
US Supreme Court in Wilson v. Omaha Indian Tribe, 442 US 653, 667 (1979):"In common usage, the term 'person' does not include the sovereign, and statutes employing the word are ordinarily construed to exclude it."
US Supreme Court in U.S. v. Cooper, 312 US 600,604, 61 S.Ct 742 (1941): "Since in common usage the term `person' does not include the sovereign, statutes employing that term are ordinarily construed to exclude it."
US Supreme Court in U.S. v. United Mine Workers of America, 330 U.S. 258 67 SCt677 (1947):"In common usage, the term `person' does not include the sovereign and statutes employing it will ordinarily not be construed to do so."
US Supreme Court in US v. Fox, 94 US 315:"Since in common usage, the term `person' does not include the sovereign, statutes employing the phrase are ordinarily construed to exclude it."
U.S. v. General Motors Corporation, D.C. Ill, 2 F.R.D. 528, 530:"In common usage the word `person' does not include the sovereign, and statutes employing the word are generally construed to exclude the sovereign."
YOU DECIDE, but be warned self thinkers are probably a threat also.