Pa Pastures

We saw a lot of Pennsylvania pastures this week. We travelled two thousand miles through valleys, hills and mountains. Now you see why some cows have longer legs on one side of their body!

This fellow had lots of cows and pigs and a butcher shop. Pennsyvlania has a mix of everything but they now have more livestock than Ohio does. Ours went west when the Worker's Compensation rates got so high a few decades ago.

We still have scenes like this I don't have to travel that far to see them, either. Livestock is still big business in Ohio but not like it used to be. Livestock sure hit the news with HSUS bombing us last year and then the cow video this summer. It got farmers real riled up and it should. That connection from farm to food has expanded beyond common sense.

It was sad to see three workers killed this week in the high winds Wednesday. Two at Ohio Egg, formerly Buckeye Egg Farms and one again near Edgerton where the tornado hit a month or so ago. All three were working on structures when the winds hit and toppled the buildings on top of them.

Two boys were also killed in Illinois last week in a large grain bin. I hate to hear the bad news of the hazards of agriculture come to place. Farm safety is a never ending topic and education. You have to think through every thing you do and not take anything for granted.

The crops were all over the board in Pennsylvania but mostly green on the west side of the state. The worse corn we saw was 12 around and 16 kernals long, down there in crop insurance claim territory. A farmer would rather have a total disaster than almost enough to claim crop insurance.

I see they are tightening up crop insurance for next year, too. The big money spenders say we have to operate leaner. I don't know how lean we can get but the margins are and have always been slim. Farmers may look wealthy and they are in spirit. But they are asset rich at best and cash poor as dad always said.

I will show you more of what I learned this week in later ventures but Monday is spoken for, it's a special day, numerically speaking.

Ed