National Agriculture Week In Martinsville

The week of spring each year marks National Agriculture Week.  I love these promotions so much I have written about them.  The 18th is not only my mother's birthday, it is National Agriculture Day.  Each year agricultural groups put on all kinds of activities and all kinds of effort to support our most important industry, agriculture.

I never knew much about this celebration until I became an agricultural educator and our FFA Chapter participated in these activities.  Over 30 years, we put on all kinds of activities and promotions for students, parents, schools, boards, any good audience we good educate!

It's easy to take agriculture for granted.  It is so successfully quiet we only hear about the bad news, whether it's manure in the creek or a tragic grain bin accident.  The media is so far removed from farming, they don't even know which questions to ask.  The public media doesn't pick up on ag media as much as it could.

Yesterday I signed up for the 2015 Farm Bill..  For me it was a "piece of cake" because I've had all this time to work on it.  I signed up everything in ARC County because it calculated as well with my known risks as well as any other choice.

I had to smile when she showed me the numbers, my yields were all nearly double what they were when we moved here.  Bases don't change much but mine are strong in corn and wheat thanks to our crop rotation.  I told Brenda gee, I didn't do too bad and she just smiled.  I was in and out of there in 10 minutes and most of that was document copy time.

Now the public media would focus on how much money our government spends or "wastes" on agriculture programs.  Ag media would take you through the computations and the myriad of outcomes you could get one one farm like ours.  The public doesn't learn a thing about Agriculture Week, let alone the new Farm Bill.  It's all Greek to them and your neighbors know how well you are doing by just observing.

It's been a quiet week here for National Agriculture Week.  I am enjoying it except for the pains and weakness I can see are going to recover slowly.  I still have enough nerve pain that chemo week scares me.  I do like the 12 hour pain tabs over the 4 hour doses because 4 hours just goes so fast.  It seems to release in waves though, I will have no pain and then do something more strenuous and it's like I don't have pain medicine at all.

St. Patrick's Day was very sad as we lost a 67 year old family member.  That was shocking and hit very hard.  Some of our grand children lost a grandpa when the worry has been about me the last 3 months.  That wiped out any joy our family could have today on National Agriculture Day.

I do wish my mother happy birthday as she as fought and clawed for 88 years.  She still cares for animals and livestock at her age, now that is an agriculture story right there.  That is something to shout about and her next great grand children are almost here.

I wish you all a good day and a good week.  The sunshine this week has made it one to remember.

Ed Winkle