Fryer Fee Folly

by Kathleen O’Shaunessy – This is a note I sent to one of our legislators over 20 years ago when the legislature suddenly enacted a new bill restricting small farmers from directly selling pastured poultry to customers and assessing a new fee to these small farmers.

One of the amendments to HB1754 requires processors of 1000 or fewer chickens to pay a $75.00 fee each season. While some might consider this chicken feed, many small farmers are just trying to scratch out a living and consider it unfair, especially since huge processors such as Foster Farms pay the poultry sum of $55.00. No one seems to know where this amendment came from. Of course, there are many layers involved in the legislative process. Those legislators are all cooped up with one another day after day. They may have been bored or perhaps it was someone’s idea of a yolk. If so, whoever it was may end up with egg on his face. Such things do come home to roost. If we find the culprit, we have no intention of coddling him. We refuse to walk on egg shells. In fact, if anything, a person as hard-boiled as this should be roasted. Perhaps we’ll never know who proposed this amendment. Oh well, it’s certainly not worth brooding over.

While it is not my intention to ruffle any legislative feathers, it does seem that the thinking behind the proposed fee is quite fowled up. Since we all know how difficult it is for small farmers to eek out a living let alone to build a small nest egg, $75.00 does seem eggsessive. Perhaps a dozen dollars would be a more appropriate fee – easy to remember, not too much to shell out for. We have yet to hear a peep out of whoever proposed the fee. Not that he has anything to crow about and not that he need heed our advice, but if I were him bantying about such numbers, I would be willing to accept some cochin. What do you think, small poulty farmers of Washington? Perhaps that is the last straw. We should not let him chicken out. What if we all flocked together to egg on whoever proposed this fee? Sometimes it pays off to just keep pecking away at things. Why should we sit by silently? Together we might just flush him out and pullet off.

Kackling Kathleen

Kathleen O’Shaunessy grew up in a matriarchal household in Buffalo, NY, the only child of a single, unmarried mother. Though she attended Catholic elementary school, high school and college, she rejected Catholicism at age 14. As a psychology graduate student in the mid-sixties, she became more socially and politically conscious. Her Quaker roots began then when she was married under the care of a Quaker Meeting. After completing her doctorate, she taught at Earlham College, William James College (Grand Valley State University) and The Evergreen State College.

Kathleen has been a clinical psychologist and mediator in private practice in Olympia, Washington for more than forty years. During this time, she and her partner were co-owners of Oyster Bay Farm, a diversified, organic forty-acre farm on Totton Inlet.

When not wearing her professional or farming hat, she enjoys spending time in nature, traveling, hiking, biking, birding, floral arranging, and playing Scrabble. She is a peace and social justice activist and is involved in several humanitarian projects in Uganda. While she does not consider herself a writer or poet, she occasionally takes to pen and paper, not to her computer.

Kathleen’s poem, The Dimming of the Light, was published in Mud Flat Verse (an anthology) in 2023.