Monday, April 6, 2009

Sable Speaks!


Hi, I am Sable, the famous Germand Shepherd you heard about. My master went to get his haircut and forgot to lock the door again! Ha ha, I know how to get in!


I watch him typing on this keyboard so it can't be too hard.


Boy, I got lucky when he and my other Master, I think he calls her Monk picked me up on January 18. He got her all these flowers the next day, I wondered which one was dying!


Oh well, neither one did, good for me. They spoil me rotten. If Monk knew what he lets me get away with when she goes to work, we would both be in Big Trouble! I hate that word trouble when they say it because then they are mad at me. I don't even know what I did, I am just a pup!


I am a pretty big pup though and the doctor said I weighed 54 lbs. Bet I weigh over 60 now, I am growing fast. Sorry, the picture doesn't do me justice, I am much bigger, just come and look!


Silly Ed lost his camera in Louisville so now he is using this antique from Eric. Better some pictures then none I guess.


They don't see how I am getting so big since I don't like that stupid Puppy Chow so at night I just get in the fridge and chow down. They don't even know its missing!


The other day he took me to the seed house. I got out and started sniffing around this strange place but he saw me and put me back in the truck. When he walked away, this dumb little dog came up barking at me like the little pest he is. I just listened awhile then stuck my head out the window to answer. Scared the pants off that little dog, he just crawled away! When he came back though he was much nicer. I don't bark too often because it scares humans. I can't help it I got this big deep bark for a girl!


Oops, I hear his truck coming so I better get off here and sign out or whatever they do and let myself back into my cage. I will act so innocent when he comes in the door.


Ha!


Sable

Holy Week


Palm Sunday (or Passion Sunday)


Holy Week begins with the sixth Sunday in Lent. This Sunday observes the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem that was marked by the crowds who were in Jerusalem for Passover waving palm branches and proclaiming him as the messianic king. The Gospels tell us that Jesus rode into the city on a donkey, enacting the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, and in so doing emphasized the humility that was to characterize the Kingdom he proclaimed. The irony of his acceptance as the new Davidic King (Mark 11:10) by the crowds who would only five days later cry for his execution should be a sobering reminder of the human tendency to want God on our own terms.


Did you observe Palm Sunday?


Traditionally, worshippers enact the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem by the waving of palm branches and singing songs of celebration. Sometimes this is accompanied by a processional into the church. In many churches, children are an integral part of this service since they enjoy processions and activity as a part of worship. This provides a good opportunity to involve them in the worship life of the community of Faith. In many more liturgical churches, children are encouraged to craft palm leaves that were used for the Sunday processional into crosses to help make the connection between the celebration of Palm Sunday and the impending events of Holy Week.


This Sunday is also known as Passion Sunday to commemorate the beginning of Holy Week and Jesus’ final agonizing journey to the cross. The English word passion comes from a Latin word that means "to suffer," the same word from which we derive the English word patient.

In most Protestant traditions, the liturgical color for The Season of Lent is purple, and that color is used until Easter Sunday. In Catholic tradition (and some others), the colors are changed to Red for Palm Sunday. Red is the color of the church, used for Pentecost as well as remembering the martyrs of the church. Since it symbolizes shed blood, it is also used on Palm Sunday to symbolize the death of Jesus. While most Protestants celebrate the Sunday before Easter as Palm Sunday, in Catholic and other church traditions it is also celebrated as Passion Sunday anticipating the impending death of Jesus. In some Church traditions (Anglican), the church colors are changed to red for the fifth Sunday in Lent, with the last two Sundays in Lent observed as Passiontide.


Increasingly, many churches are incorporating an emphasis on the Passion of Jesus into services on Palm Sunday as a way to balance the celebration of Easter Sunday. Rather than having the two Sundays both focus on triumph, Passion Sunday is presented as a time to reflect on the suffering and death of Jesus in a Sunday service of worship. This provides an opportunity for people who do not or cannot attend a Good Friday Service to experience the contrast of Jesus’ death and the Resurrection, rather than celebrating the Resurrection in isolation from Jesus’ suffering. However, since Sunday services are always celebrations of the Resurrection of Jesus during the entire year, even an emphasis on the Passion of Jesus on this Sunday should not be mournful or end on a negative note, as do most Good Friday Services (which is the reason Eucharist or Communion is not normally celebrated on Good Friday).


What have you planned for Holy Week?


Ed Winkle

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Trip to Ky


We enjoyed a little trip to Vanceburg, Kentucky today. It was a beautiful day and we wandered down to Tracy Cooper's auction house on Route 9, the AA Highway. First guy I run into is Donald Dye who farms near mom's farm where I was raised. LuAnn says I can't go anywhere without knowing someone!


They had some neat furniture, very old and well preserved and lots of old, old toys. They were bringing good money so we eventually left. We went up to Salt Lick Road and I think we found the Jones Cemetary where some of Grandma Carrington's family are buried. It was across a stream though, and the stream looked to high to walk or drive across so we saved that for another trip.


The flowering crabapples and such are all in full bloom and it is beautiful. It was too warm for a long sleeve shirt. As soon as we crossed the Ohio back to home you could feel the temperature difference.


I see my friend Kelly talked about the NASA solar activity link I sent him on Radio Check, Over. Check it out, it is on my favorites links. The solar low activity is affecting radio signals and our weather. How that will all turn out I am not sure.


The volcanoes spewing around the world are having an effect on weather, too. Maybe that will give us time to get the final touches to the equipment for the planting run soon to come. It isn't late yet but I will be ready to plant after Easter and that is next Sunday.


We moved Sable's crate to the side porch so she would have somewhere to lay when she got bored and it seemed to work well. I have to get a picture of her and an update, she must be 60 lbs now. She helped us go get wood as they are predicting some low temperatures this week.


I hope no farmers lose their wheat or barley crops but we won't know until we examine some plants after this passes and we examine a lot of plants.


That is what happened here today. What happened your way?


Ed Winkle

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Little Miss Winkle


I just met my fifth grandchild, Claire Evelyn Winkle. Corbin has a sister now!


I am not very good at trait resemblence but she sure looks her brother and her brother is a good part of her dad and mom. Most beautiful skin you ever saw. Don't you love the smell of newborns? One of God's Wonders, beats the Seven Wonders of the World.


At least she doesn't have dad's and my big Winkle ears. Liam sure does!


Had this dream about Matt having a baby last night and was driving down the road with a load of corn seed. It was Becky, Matt's sister, and she said Rachel is at the Hospital. I told her I had a dream about a baby last night and I guess that is it!


I called LuAnn and told her and she was at Stacy's baby shower for Tyler Cleveland, her little boy to be. Grandma had a great time shopping for baby boy clothers yesterday but we never thought to shop for little girls! Matt and Rachel didn't want to know what the baby was but that it be healthy. She is!


I called my sister Linda and she was with Lisa Jo waiting on her little boy to come. Lisa said congratulations to cousin Matt but she was bummed. She wants to have that baby!


What a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky, bright sunlight, you could even see every building detail driving into Columbus. Just like Little Miss Winkle, bright, clear and sunny.


Thank you Lord, I am one lucky guy.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Visitors


We visit lots of farms. We have lots of visitors come to our farm. Yesterday included a visitor from Valley, Nebraska, Daniel Davidson. He writes for DTN Ag Daily and I have linked him on this page.


He came to see me speak at the Purdue Top Farmer Crop Workshop a couple of years ago then came to the National NoTillage Conference in January. We email a bit and I told him he should see Allen Dean in Williams County and Dave Brandt in Fairfield County. They are both cover crop pioneers in Ohio and the group of us are interested in more profit with cover crops.


We all admit that getting the seed on and up is the challenge in a short growing season. Changing your farm operation to allow seeding two crops in one year is no easy challenge, either. In fact, it is the number one problem of cover crops if you want to maximize farm income. You can't let your first crop suffer to gain a cover crop.


He asked lots of questions and took lots of notes. He saw the White planter being rebuilt and a flurry of activity going on preparing for spring planting. The tour ended with the 1880 brick house and the chamber where freed slaves were hid under the kitchen. The Douglis Fir dining room floor and the original pecan hardwood floors are always an eye catcher. Top that off with LuAnn's touches and you have a pretty unique house in this area.


He drove away with $150 worth of inoculants and I was left with a $5 DTN cap. I think he got the better end of the deal but that is how we treat visitors here. We got our share when I retired from teaching and we traveled the 48 states camping in farmers barnyards we had met on AgTalk.


Since that first crop on this farm in 2004 this place has seen lots of visitors, from next door neighbors to Maine to Washington, and Canada to Japan.


That is what makes life more fun to us.


Ed Winkle


Thursday, April 2, 2009

Fertilizer Games


I spent the last two weeks playing fertilizer games. That is calling four suppliers and trying to get the right products for the best price. About the time I decided on one, wouldn't you know the low cost leader would call with a "deal."


No one is putting on potash around here since it is $800 per ton, cheaper than the $1200 they quoted last fall but still too high to pencil unless you are really low in potassium. I suppose a little went on but I haven't seen any myself and I do get around and talk to lots of farmers and suppliers.


Fertilizer followed gas up to $4, the suppliers booked it and many of them are stuck with it on barges or on hand. I don't know how it will all work out.


So now they have shut down the potash mines since none is moving so they can keep the price up. We will have to meet in the middle somewhere but I am not sure where that will be.


Fortunately trace elements are still a decent buy and everything I sample needs trace elements. Boron is extremely short across Ohio farmland. No wonder, no one ever tested for it so no one ever put it on.


I have many farmers who need Calcium, Sulfur, Manganese, Zinc and Boron. A few need copper. We don't test for Nickel yet but it is the last nutrient discovered that is needed by plants making a total of 17 now.


Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sulfur, Calcium, Magnesium, Iron (which is usually plentiful here) and the trace elements or micronutrients Boron, Copper, Zinc, Manganese, Molydenum, Chlorine and Nickel are needed in certain amounts by plants.


The soil test reveals the amounts available in your soil and the lab will recommend fertilizers if you ask them to. I always try to back this up with a tissue test in the growing crop.


This makes the fertilizer game a little more tolerable and a whole lot more valuable to the farmer. This year, it is difficult to calculate a profit based on market prices versus prices of inputs so fertilizer is getting reduced or cut out on some farms.


The combine will soon reveal the results when the first barley comes off in June until the last grain of corn is shelled this fall.


Hope it is a profitable one for both of us!


Ed Winkle

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Food for Thought


My sister sent me this, I had never seen it. Perhaps you have, it does make you think.


"Something of Historic Proportion is Happening" by Pam Geller

I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.

Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 - 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we know can never pay back. (Carter/Clinton - The Community Reinvestment Act) Why?

We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.

Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "We the People," who lent our powers to our elected leaders.. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why? We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, and school boards continue to back mediocrit y. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fie lds of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930's. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully them into submission.

And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think.

How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media - Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and .. . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930's while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don't forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years - a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency - it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am.. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am."


This was obviously written before the election but see how things have followed this path since? No, not every circumstance is the same but enough of it has come to pass and is now passing us.


More food for thought on this April Fool's Day.


Ed Winkle