My journey on the East Coast continues. After harvest, it seems meetings and trade shows take up a good portion of a farmer’s time.

And so here I am in Nashville, visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and other fabulous music venues with other farm wives and husbands across the country while our spouses are in bank meetings.

I’ve recently become a Swiftie, and the Taylor Swift educational center in one of the museum’s wings is a must-visit experience. Along with her NYU graduation robe as the 2022 commencement speaker, there is a full display case with her Midnights music video clothing and props, along with original music she wrote, scribbled using her signature left-leaning penmanship.

This month’s exhibition features Eric Church, who was actually fired as the opening act for Rascal Flatts in 2006. In the display case, Swift’s first gold record with a personal thank you to Church, written in black Sharpie, stands out amongst the memorabilia. Apparently, the then 16-year-old was chosen to replace Eric Church as the opening act for Rascal Flatts that year, and the rest is history in the making.

“Songwriting is still the purest part of my job,” reads a giant wall in the venue with a photo of Swift. “It can get complicated on every other level, but songwriting is still the same process as it was when I was writing songs in my bedroom at 12 years old.”

Giving Tuesday

It’s not a November column without mentioning Giving Tuesday, which was two days ago. My annual gift always goes to the California FFA program, called the Gift of Blue, where money is raised to purchase the signature corduroy blue jackets worn by the more than 103,000 members of California’s Future Farmers of America program, even though ‘farmer’ is not really emphasized anymore.

It’s more like, ‘future scientists, doctors, biologists, water experts,’ and so on. Sadly, a farmer is no longer politically correct so a rebranding of sorts had to take place to draw in the non-production future agriculturalists, whom we so desperately need in our industry.

Blue Diamond Growers, the almond cooperative, participated in Giving Tuesday by matching the donations of its grower members. I am beyond proud to be a member of Blue Diamond and alumni of the FFA organization, even if people say tree farmers use too much water.

While visiting Franklin, Tenn., on Wednesday, I was fortunate to sit next to two cattlewomen from Colorado at lunch, who lamented about their water problems. With urban sprawl reaching cattle country in Colorado, springs are drying up, and water for their corn and millet are becoming scarce due to development.

I shared with these women the same plight in Tehama County, where citizens from other areas of California have moved in and are changing the course of agriculture despite their lack of expertise regarding our locally grown commodities. I explained how some of our newly-elected local governing boards have no interest in protecting our county’s ag economy. Instead, water is for drinking, not food, which is almost absurd. They have the same issue in northeastern Colorado.

This brings me to the subject of our sudden 180-degree turn by three of our board of supervisors, who on July 17 of this year, voted to oust groundwater commissioner Bart Fleharty because he wasn’t from District 3. Supervisor Pati Nolan motioned to remove him and supervisor Candy Carlson seconded, saying ‘more than one member should represent no agency or district.’

Even supervisor Matt Hansen agreed, stating the perception is that the groundwater commission is stacked with the greatest users of groundwater.

This perception only lies in the minds of folks who don’t like agriculture because the reality is that 11 people serve on the groundwater commission, and only 5 of them represent supervisorial districts.

Thankfully, four of the five supervisors needed to vote to oust Flaherty, and two were smart enough to realize that would be a mistake.

While we farmers had our heads stuck in harvest sand, these three supervisors decided to change their minds quietly and now have no problem appointing people to represent their district, even if they don’t live or own property there.

Hmm. Why the change of tune with these three?  Maybe they realized there weren’t enough potential anti-ag ‘water experts’ residing in their district for them to appoint.

Either way, this careless decision-making (flopping) is unfair to the groundwater commissioners who’ve spent countless volunteer hours studying and researching SGMA rules and regulations and their GSAs.

I predict some interesting applicants and bizarre appointments will come out of this. Stay tuned and pay attention, especially as farmers, whose livelihoods depend on sound decision-making from our elected officials.