11.11.11

Some are making a big deal of 11.11.11, today's date expressed digitally. This is the first time in history most people connect 11.11.11 with a date in history. I don't even use dots or periods in dates, I use dashes or hyphens when I write the date that way.

11 November or 11 Nov is more like how this date has been written over the centuries. And remember, most people could not even write until very recently in the past 2000 years.

It is an important date to me though as we honor American Veterans today. I would not have the freedom to write this blog today without the sacrifice of millions of soldiers the past 235 years. I don't take that lightly and that is the primary reason I voted Tuesday. I want to keep these freedoms for my children and grandchildren and generations beyond.

It is also a significant day for LuAnn and I. 12 years ago today she made her first trip to my home and we started dating every weekend until we were married June 22, 2001. Happy Anniversary, LuAnn! She has been in Phoenix all week with her mother for her brothers 60th birtday.

So I have been "baching" it all week and trying to leave the place better than she left it Saturday. I think I did pretty well except that big wind blew the smoke out of the chimney into the house and it smells like woodfire inside the house. A friend helped me clean the house yesterday so it doesn't look like the house she first saw in 1999.

It's 29 degrees outside with a breeze so it is really chilly. It was 18 degrees in 1973 and 76 degrees just a few years ago so you can see the highs and lows in this area this time of year.

Election day is over thank goodness and Drew Hastings is now the Mayor of Hillsboro so everything is right in the world(sarcasm intended.)

We hope to finish soybeans today or tomorrow and concentrate on corn. I need to get a picture of two soybeans I saw, one loaded with marestail that probably cost 20 bushels or near half the yield. The other has some marestail in it and shows the problem worsening over clean fields to the tune of around 5 bushels loss per acre.

It looks like the heavily infested field only had glyphosate on it and perhaps the lesser infested field had 2,4-D sprayed this spring or a residual chemical at planting time.

Neither one is acceptable and it confounds me why some farmers keep using the RR soybean system when glyphosate no longer controls their weed problem.

That's the way it is Martinsville, Ohio, November 11, 2011.

Thank you veterans, sincerely, I can never repay your particular sacrifice but I can do my part.

Ed Winkle