A Shower!

After all the baby showers we have a spring rain shower! Just enough to wet the ground this morning and dampen the garden and activate the fertilizer and chemicals that have been put on this week.

Got the soil tests back from the new farm, little lower than we would have liked to have seen and there is not enough room in the budget to start fixing all the problems in one year. At least I know what to concentrate on now, Calcium, Sulfur, Zinc, Manganese and Boron.

One of the neighbor's has been putting on chicken litter from Mercer County all week. He has his GPS set up and spreading every 40 foot with his new spreader. One ton of chicken litter for $30 plus hauling is pretty much what he needs to raise a 200 bushel corn crop.

He has been working for years to put this all together and it finally has come together for him. I took Sable over to watch and her nose was sniffing those composted chicken feathers. She sure has been sniffing around a lot with the spring weather and dug a few nice holes in the yard chasing moles. She had a brown nose last night from digging in a water line repair so we called her Brown Nose.

Then we went over to see the little girls and she was very well behaved. We took her over to her breeder Sunday and the young couple was happy to see her. So much has changed in Sable's short life she acted almost like she had never lived there. Again, she was very well behaved. It made us both proud of the progress we have made with her. The young man said "It is good to see one finally turned out right!" meaning we have done a good job with her. She is part of the family now for sure.

LuAnn is working with her network to provide a community garden for the displaced workers around Hillsboro and she and Scott pulled the soil sample yesterday. I had her draw a map and showed her where I wanted the samples pulled. Beautiful soil, they should have a good first year garden. I have to send that off and some MolySoyAlive to a client in Indiana this morning before I take mom to the dentist. Yuck, I know neither one of us are looking forward to that.

I put my first post of the spring on Crop Tech Tour for AgOnline. Those people have been good to me so I try and help them out whenever I can. It is another web place for farmers to see what is going on around the country during the crop year. It is going to be another exciting one, no doubt. There is so much uncertainty in the weather, the economy and its effect on agriculture.

Facebook has been busy too. It seems like many of us aggie types are just catching on to it. I use it to get a more personal view of many of my friends and family who use it.

Tomorrow I get to meet with a group of farmers in North Central Ohio. I am not looking forward to the drive up and back but I am looking forward to meeting some new friends and exchanging ideas in farming. Friday is a local farm auction where a local farmer is retiring with almost all new equipment. I am looking forward to getting out of the house while LuAnn writes a grant for one of her clients. You can't distract someone when they are focusing on writing.

Hopefully Saturday and Sunday we can rest a bit. We want to go look for new apple trees, one for each grandchild like Phil and Betty did. Hurricane Ike took down Liam's favorite Jonathon apple tree and it is in the brush pile and firewood stack. I even burned some of it with the dry wood I have.

Everyone has piles of firewood around here. Looks like we are all going back to the basics with gardens and firewood.
Country folks will survive!

Ed Winkle