Well that was interesting

This morning I received a surprise visit from a compliance officer with the Meat & Poultry Inspection division of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS). Whew, that’s a mouthful!

Very nice guy but, wow, he drove all the way up here from Des Moines just to check up on little old us.

“Someone gave me your farm’s order form…”

Which immediately set me to wondering why someone gave it him. Because they thought he might want to buy some meat? I can’t imagine. Does someone think we should be shut down? If so, who? Just a concerned citizen, or someone whose business we’re cutting into? Oh, the conspiracy theories.

It took him all of 5 minutes to see that we’ve jumped through all the hoops we’re supposed to jump through. Freezer inspected by the Department of Health. Scale inspected by the Department of Weights and Measures. Licenses obtained and properly displayed. Meat & poultry state inspected. Packages officially and properly labeled.

But it made me feel good that all of my i’s were dotted, my t’s crossed. I did a lot of research and made a lot of phone calls when we started this business, to be sure we were in compliance and 100% legal. Hope he didn’t make the 2 1/2 hour (one-way) trip just for us.

So now that we’re even more officially official, we’ll return to farm updates with the final County Fair report to come later today…

Hee hee, I feel like including that in our advertising: “Now with more official officialness!”