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Dare I say it? A piece fell into place today. I’m afraid of jinxing this little bit of good luck by typing it out loud, but with the run of bad luck we’ve had… Let’s just say I will not be surprised if the minute I submit this post the hounds of hell show up on our doorstep looking for us to throw them a bone. I shouldn’t complain about the bad luck, when we’re surrounded by beauty and life and good fortune. I’ll try to stop. After all, the tornados that went through our county today didn’t smite us.

By now you’re expecting me to share something dramatic, aren’t you? Well here it is: liability insurance. Kind of let down now, aren’t you? But I can’t tell you how happy this makes me and how well I will sleep tonight.

We are working towards being able to sell frozen meat and poultry right here at the farm. The meat and poultry will be state inspected, processed and packaged by our local locker. We simply bring it home and put it in our freezer. This requires an inspection of our freezer, approved labels and a Food Warehouse License. Technically it doesn’t require liability insurance, but if someone gets sick from eating our meat…there goes the farm.

I’ve been trepidatious about venturing into the world of farm product liability insurance, after a good share of horror stories from my classmates. And my experience last week pretty much ranked right up there with theirs. Our current insurance agent came back to me with, “If you insist on pushing it I can probably get you the coverage for about $500 a year. But we really don’t even want to touch it.” Those weren’t his exact words, just my boiled down version.

So I went to see the Farm Bureau agent. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Judging from my classmates’ stories, not all FB agents are created equal. But this one knew exactly what we wanted to do and exactly what insurance we needed – commercial liability, which includes product liability. He assured me this insurance would only cost us a couple hundred dollars a year. Better yet, he later told me we don’t even need the commericial/product liability insurance if our sales are under $20k. Our farm policy will cover us for that small amount of sales. He probably thinks I’m obsessive, because I asked him “are you sure” multiple times over the last couple of days.

So I can proceed with The Plan, with a few less worries. And I got a new customer out of the deal.

Uh-oh…I think I just heard something barking outside.