By Dave Thompson
Bismarck, ND – Most North Dakota Farmers Union members who were in Washington, D.C. last week to lobby for a new farm bill returned home via bus.
But Dale Enerson of Stanley got home another way.
"I got a plane ticket and got out of Baltimore Saturday afternoon and got back to Minot Saturday night."
Enerson was scheduled to return home Wednesday -- but the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington disrupted air service. He says most of the other Farmers Union members chartered a bus to get back to North Dakota.
Enerson says all plans for meetings with members of Congress were canceled...but the Farmers Union members did pay courtesy visits to Congressional offices Wednesday and dropped off packets of information.
"You know, we understand that there are other issues that you're working on but when the discussion of the farm bill comes up, here's our position on these sorts of things. so I guess we made sort of an effort to get the information up there but quite frankly the mood in Washington was that you know we were talking about national defense, the terrorist type of thing and the farm issues were certainly on the back burner."
Enerson says it will be a while before there's any further discussion in Congress about farm policy.