Pa Trip

Just got home from our another trip to Pennsylvania. We got to Maryland, Delaware and New York. The crops look good.

The dairymen are really hurting in Pa, heard it time and again. They need more stable prices for their product. The average dairyman gets a dollar a gallon for milk and all they do is package it and haul it to us. What do you pay for milk?

Lancaster County is like the garden of Eden to us every time we visit. The fields and flowers and landscape is so beautiful, breath taking. They are in a very special area of soils and climate and they use it to the max.

Got home and my test plot is tasseling depending on hybrid. 30 hybrids replicated in one 50 acre field. It is absolutley gorgeous though I think 2004 will turn out to be a bit better but who knows.

One of the coolest stops was the Milton Hershey School I wrote about. 10,000 acre school where Milton Hershey had the dream of teaching kids how to grow up by way of a farm. He has been very successful.

I met so many nice farmers this week, I can't quote them all. My first farm was a dairyman with all IH tractors and his dad's original IH 806. I told him I had fond memories of pulling one just like it and the ball got rolling.

Another farm had all White's and Olivers. We hit it off at the beginning. So much to talk about. He was raised just like I was.

Another farm I was so embarrassed, the farmer through open the cab door on his IH rotary combine cutting wheat for me to get it. We started talking and in a few feet it died. He had pulled in a gob of of wet wheat. He said sorry but I was more embarrassed than he could ever have been. LuAnn was sitting in the car and saw and said Oh No.

Pennsylvania leads the nation now in no-till acres and I know why.

What a beautiful week and trip.

Ed Winkle