I'm so excited - I have found a farm practically right around the corner from us, where we can get really fresh meats:  Springfield Farm

Springfield Farm is no ordinary place, and the Smith, Lafferty and Webb families are by no means traditional farmers. Three generations work and live on this beautiful, natural farm just north of Baltimore, Maryland.

Sustainable agricultural methods are practiced where the animals are given nothing which is not natural - no hormones, antibiotics, chemicals, etc. All animals are offered free-range during the grass growing season. In addition to chicken eggs, seasonal duck eggs and seasonal goose eggs, chicken, turkey, duck and seasonal goose are raised for meat. Beef (grass-fed and natural), grass-fed lamb, pork and rabbit are also available. All animals are treated humanely, allowed to associate with each other and cared for when sick using homeopathic remedies first.

All Springfield Farm marketing is direct to the user via personal visits and the website. Products are processed under inspection, but the most important inspectors are our customers whom we encourage to roam the farm freely.  

Springfield Farm has been in David Smith's family since the 1600's. The farm is some 67 acres of rolling countryside in northern Baltimore County, Maryland with four natural streams and untold springs bubbling up everywhere (hence the name). There is also a pond dominated by our flock of pet ducks, geese (Mother and Grim, of course), and watched over by our peafowl. Visitors are welcome, (We ask that you check in with us at the store before venturing out around the farm).

In a healthy family relationship, there's no question that the parents would be involved in a decision as momentous as whether to have an abortion, and no government intervention would be necessary to ensure it takes place.  The question is whether government should mandate parental consent even in a highly dysfunctional family contest.  The pregnancy could be the result of incest, for example.

Our bodies have not kept pace with our longer life-spans; with people living into their 70's and 80's - instead of their 30's and 40's - we really don't need our reproductive systems to mature when we are 11 or 12, before our brains have not matured to where we are more capable of  making better decisions.  

So, 12 and 13 and 14 year olds can get pregnant, at an age when we can't help but still think of them as children - because mentally, they pretty much are - children with poor impulse control and raging hormones.

But it doesn't change the fact that whatever you want to call what is growing in your daughter's uterus - a baby, a fetus, a blastocyst - it isn't your property, it doesn't belong to you; it's her child, which makes it her choice.

It may be my daughter's body; but until she's 18, I'm paying for it. That's my child and my choice

You don't get to go in the delivery room with your daughter, unless she wants you there, even if she's a minor.

By the end, it was pretty clear that the judges thought Adam should win but Chris deserved his spot on the final two stage.

As I said on Popleft.com, no one can predict the pre-teen, text-message obsessed vote and even the judges aren't sure who will win. But Simon said to Adam after his third song that what they look for all season is someone who could be a world-wide star, and Adam is it. He then added his congratulations.