Party Vibe

His behaviour wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in Europe – although you cannot re-sell the foraged produce without the usual food safety licenses foraging in itself is not an offence; and wouldn’t attract cops unless someone had trespassed on private land and been really obvious about it.

3 cornered hats are also European; popular especially in coastal areas where chaps may not have much hair on their head and there is harsh weather. (Beards are also often grown for this same reason)

My hat it has three corners; three corners has my hat; And had it not three corners, it would not be my hat!
Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken; drei Ecken hat mein Hut; Und hätt’ er nicht drei Ecken, so wár es nicht mein Hut!
Mijn hoed, die heeft drie hoeken; drie hoeken heeft mein hoed; En had hij niet drie hoeken, dan was het niet mijn hoed!

I didn’t realise until today that the kids song about the hats is apparently German in origin although the hats were popular throughout Europe (to be fair the Germans know a decent hat when they see one)

@Digital Buddha 569962 wrote:

to be fair alot of the money they collect from the license fees goes to stocking ponds and creeks and trying to prevent overfishing. but yeah kind of odd that from 12:00am july 4th to 11:59 pm in the celebration of freedom you don’t have to pay to fish.

@Digital Buddha 569963 wrote:

there are alot of weirder laws out there. that one is pretty sane by our standards, makes perfect logic in some sort of american way.

we have all those laws too in Europe (also in the UK there is a peculiar hobby of hauling out fish to look at; take photos of and weigh and then put back alive into the water; which confuses other foreign visitors as they just catch them and eat them (although being careful to ensure they don’t over fish the waters). The differfence between Europe and the USA is there is a greater consensus between ordinary people, govt and business about the laws – they try and avoid conflicts of this level involving uniformed services by seeming stricter about supposedly “petty” regulations and explaining in detail why they are there.

A few years ago I used to work for Britain’s Environment Ministry at their main information gathering centre where they counted every living creature and where they were and shared the info with Europe (which is how I know about obscure natural history facts in spite of having grown up in cities and towns for most of my life).

But there’s no way the cops anywhere in EU would arrest some old grandad for foraging or growing his own food like that. They may have a quiet chat with him just to be sure he’s not inadvertantly harvesting anything endangered or that could be poisonous/make folk ill if they ate it without being accustomed to it; but they’d be more likely to just give him the contact details of the Environment Ministry folk (and if he was dressed like that would want to know where they could get a similar hat).

Some friends of mine have a entire eco friendly farm; they do have to deal with some paperwork and to buy the produce you also have to take a part share in the farm and do some work there (which gets round the “commercial sale”); similar ones exist in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark etc; what is strange to us Europeans is that it is these farms which get all the hassle.