Dairy Valley was part of an agricultural belt which once stretched from Compton to Buena Park. Cattle had been raised there since Spanish colonial days, but the dairy business really began in earnest in the 1930’s when many people migrated to the area from Holland, where they had been dairy farmers.

But then property taxes and land value began to rise. The post-WWII Southern California urban sprawl surrounded the little community of farmers. Agriculture became unprofitable and difficult. In 1963, large-scale residential development was approved.  A few years later, the city’s name was changed to Cerritos and the dairy farmers were on their way out.

Their way out, was to San Bernardino County, east of Chino.

Having learned their lesson in Los Angeles County, the dairy community had a plan.  They prevailed on the San Bernardino County government to create an agricultural preserve. It would be illegal to do anything except agriculture in this large chunk of the Inland Empire.  The area, informally known as the “Chino Ag Preserve” was created in 1968 and became the new home of the primarily Dutch dairy community where they could live happily ever after.

And the Ag Preserve was a happy place. Within the 17,000 acre preserve, 200 farms and 200,000 cows produced most of Southern California’s milk. Only two other California counties produced more dairy products. None of that scary residential development was allowed.

Hay was consumed and cows were milked for twenty-five years.  Then the farmers noticed something. All around them the Inland Empire was booming. Real estate prices were going sky-high. Their land had become extremely valuable.

There was only one small problem. They couldn't sell it.

Actually, there were several problems.  

The farmers went to the county to get the special status of the Ag Preserve revoked, but many of them had signed up under the Williamson Act - a conservation law that granted substantial property-tax breaks to land owners who agreed to restrict their land to agricultural use for ten years. Delays.

There was also the Acquisition and Preservation Program of the California Wildlife, Coastal and Parkland Conservation Act which gave funds to the county to keep agricultural land intact. Delays.

Then there were law suits by the Sierra Club and the Endangered Habitats League who wanted the area preserved as open space. Delays.

Many of the dairies began to leave, anyway. Some went to the San Joaquin Valley, but most went out of state to New Mexico and Wisconsin where environmental laws were not as strict.

It took about ten years, but eventually the Ag Preserve was no more and the land had been split up between the cities of Chino and Ontario.  At last, the government no longer stood between the farmers and selling their land for big profits.

There was just one problem.  The real estate market had crashed (that was the government’s fault, too, but that’s another tale.)

So kids, what's the moral of our story? As you drive down Euclid Avenue under the gaze of the now not-so-contented cows, remember: Be very careful when you ask the government to restrict your economic freedom. The government will probably do what you want, but it’s a lot easier to get such laws passed, than it is to get them repealed.

And without Freedom, there is no happily ever after.

The pressure on this Earthling is just too much. Faced with imminent economic disaster, potential food and power shortages, and massive unemployment, he had to make a decision.  Cut federal spending or save the northern Nevada Cowboy Poetry Festival. Good job, Harry.  I hope you can figure out something that rhymes with "rioting and looting."  Here's your t-shirt, Earthlings.

http://www.cafepress.com/leoofmars/1858713

What does it take to get a hamburger handed to you through the window in the drive-through lane?

Someone has to decide to be a rancher. The rancher buys or inherits property. If he's lucky his father taught him how to ranch, but he may have gone off to Texas A&M to get a degree anyway. He raises cattle. That involves feeding, protecting, nurturing and culling a lot of big obnoxious animals. He must hire ranch hands, veterinarians, and reproductive management services (and you thought cows just "did it"). He negotiates with packing houses, the USDA, and his neighbors who complain about the smell. Finally a certain select group of cattle go off to a processing facility to emerge as steaks and other miscellaneous parts. The rancher decides which and how many cattle go to whom based on his experience, with input from his accountant and admonishments from his banker.

A meat wholesaler processes those miscellaneous parts into ground beef. Based on contracts negotiated by his lawyer with the fast-food chain he delivers it by truck to the person running the grill. The USDA gets involved again.

But wait. What did those cattle eat before they were ready to be eaten? They ate grain and or hay which had to come from a farmer. The farmer decides what to grow and how much, going through many of the same agra-business challenges as the rancher. Ultimately he delivers hay and grain on a truck at the proper time and location in the proper amounts to keep the cows all chubbed up. (We're going to skip the part where the rancher sells the cattle manure back to the farmer — just hum "Circle of Life" to yourself in the background.)

But the farmer wasn't done. Before that pimply-faced high school kid can shove your lunch into that re-cycled paper bag, he needs lettuce and plastic encased doses of relish, ketchup and mustard. The farmer grows cucumbers, tomatoes and brassica juncea plants. A condiments manufacturer takes those veggies and mixes them with spices and vinegar.

Vinegar? Where does that come from? This time a vintner dedicates part of his grape production not to fine tasting wines but to creating a sour, acidic food preservative. Just as complicated, if not more, than the work of the rancher and the farmer.

And that's the high-level, simplistic version of how a hamburger gets to you. Shall we now consider how an electroencephalogram gets to you so the doctor can tell if you have brain cancer?

Let's not.

The hamburger gets to you because free people, taking risks, making choices and making profits along the way. do things that benefit their fellow man. And they didn't need the government to tell them to do it. In fact, the more the government interferes, beyond enforcing contracts, the harder it becomes to get that hamburger.

I wouldn't trust the government to be in charge of producing hamburgers. Do you really want to trust them with health care?

Last Friday, I was probably the only person in the country mowing their lawn and thinking about the Roman Emperor Justinian and the German historian Oswald Spengler. (OK, I was probably the only person in the world, mowing their lawn and thinking thusly.)

For those of you with the good sense not to have been history majors in college, here's a brief. Most people think that when the Roman Empire fell (insert sound effect of big crashing noise) in 476, it was all Germanic barbarians, all the time. In fact, a large chunk of the empire, ruled from Constantinople, continued to survive till it fell to jihadists in 1453. And, for a period in the 500's, Justinian, the Emperor at Constantinople, beat back the barbarians, reestablishing imperial rule over North Africa, Italy and parts of Spain. Justinian also revived the arts, public works, reformed public administration and laid the ground work for keeping the empire going for the next thousand years. He was called "The Emperor who Never Slept".

So where does the German professor come in? Oswald Spengler, best known for his work "Decline of the West", posited that civilization was not, as you may have learned in high school, one long progression from Sumeria to Egypt to Greece to Rome to Liberalism. Rather, civilizations are a life form, born and evolving through phases - spring, summer, fall and winter - blooming and dying like flowers in a field. The key to understanding what is possible politically and socially, according to Spengler, is to grasp into what phase of a civilization you are born.

Modern Spenglerians, such as Henry Kissinger, suggest that we are in the fall or winter of Western Civilization. We cannot recreate, through a sheer act of will, the England of the 1850's nor the America of the 1950's. We can, however, find a leader who can grab us by the scruff of the neck, and like Justinian, kick us - and especially the bureaucracy - in the behind so we will get up and do what is right, and rebuild an America which can lead the world in a quest for freedom for another century or two at least.

Here's the want ad:

Desperately Seeking Justinian. Need leader for Western Civilization. Must believe in freedom, human potential, and the dignity of the individual. Willing to abolish the welfare state, to build a military to crush tyranny and to remove the obstacles to American creativity and productivity. Apply with the American people. No experience required. We'll know you when we see you.

Any ideas for additional qualifications to put in the ad? Let me know.

Well, the grass is getting long again and I've got some thinking to do.