BIO
Jim Boggs – a self-professed “refugee” from corporate America who came to Woodford County to make a living operating a diversified farm raising sheep and vegetables. He sees development as “interfering with my livelihood.”
ON ACTIVISM
"Basically, the thing about this issue that aroused me and made me want to come out of my hiding was that their development interfered with my livelihood. I want to leave them alone and they leave me alone and everybody is cool. But they didn’t leave me alone, because if a development builds up next to my farm or even close to my farm.....There are two things that every development has in common, one is children and the other is dogs, both of which interfere with my farming. The dogs kill my sheep, the children leave my gates open, they fall in my pond, and on and on and on, so that I have legal liabilities. So I just didn’t want them close to me. And when they start talking about opening up for development, then, I’m opposed to that not only because I don’t think it’s good. I personally don’t think growth is good, I can see no reason for growth. I can see only bad things coming out of growth, but I’ve been attacked and probably rightfully so for that position. But more than that, this actually was cutting into my income. If I had planned to be in the sheep business, I couldn’t have dog coming in and wiping out my sheep, and so I wanted to stop as much development as I could, for that reason as well as others."
FARMS AND DEVELOPMENT
"The people come out and they park here and what they want is five acres with a pristine farm around them. They don’t want to see any blood. They don’t want to see death. They don’t want to smell manure. They want it like it is in the movies. Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. There’s blood and there’s stink, and there’s a lot of things that you accept as farmers, but the people who come out here don’t want. They want to turn the children loose. They think, why, I’ve watched Lassie. I’ve watched all these movies. Everything is pretty and pristine, so my children can romp across the little pastures. They don’t realize that the pond doesn’t have a bottom in it; that horses kick; that cows run over children and don’t care one bit about it. And when that happens, they come to the farmer and say, hey, you owe us for this child, you know now all we got to do is figure how much it’s worth. And it’s harder to figure what they’re worth because there’s no stockyard price on them you know."
THE FARMING LIFE
"I myself, many years ago was the one who was working at a 9 to 5 job in middle America, trying to save up enough money to move out into the country to a five acre plot with a big lawn mower and roto tiller, two dogs and turn them loose. I was that person. When I got here, though, I found it is not like it looked from the other side. There is a lot more to living in the country than meets the eye.....But as long as you have that Friday paycheck it’s still entirely different than when you come and don’t have the Friday paycheck and must depend on things coming off of that farm or land to take care of your expenses, then life takes on a totally different aspect."
If you agree with Jim explore these links:
The Heartland Institute
www.heartland.org/
The Independent Institute
www.independent.org/
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
www.lincolninst.edu
PERC - Property and Environment Research Center: Improving environmental quality through markets
www.perc.org/
Sustainable Development Institute
www.susdev.org
Urban Land Institute
www.uli.org
