We Have A New Ride

Today was one busy day from sunrise till 10PM. We just got home. I met LuAnn at Hillsboro and we drove down the old Y Restaurant on US 62 for dinner. It was nice to see our banker two tables down. They have a young child and a nice family.

The 3 piece Y fish, salad bar, vegetable and potato is always good and only $8. That is one of the best buys around. LuAnn tried the chicken stir fry with sweet potato fries and it looked delicious, too. Drinks and a good meal under $20 is hard to find these days. It was well worth the trip.

We stopped to look at a 2007 Dodge Dakota our dealer friend just got in from lease with 30,000 miles on it. He wants $18,900 for it and LuAnn offered him $16,000 cash. He wouldn't go below $17,700 so we walked.

We went to look at my first vehicle from Craig's list. It was south of West Union, just north of the Ohio River. It is a long curvy drive no matter how you go.

A grandmother passed away and they had to sell the truck to settle the estate. Come to find out this is what was left to pay off her funeral. I knew right then this was God's plan and not mine.

You see the old 2001 has been dying for a year and it has a coolant leak I can't find because it is internal. It doesn't flood the crankcase, it blows it out the exhaust. I decided I wasn't going to tear down a truck with 214,000 miles on it but I know it will run 300,000 miles with what I have done to maintain it.

Sable and I were walking corn this afternoon until we got hot and we came home for a break. When I shut the engine off, more coolant gushed out from underneath than ever had before and it has been getting progressively worse this month and especially the last few days. It has been to 3 mechanic friends and no one could find an inexpensive fix without tearing it down. It runs great, it just eats coolant.

I didn't know what to do so I just prayed the Rosary to take my mind off it. I came into my office and googled used Dakota pickups in southwest Ohio. This truck was the third one I found. I emailed LuAnn and she never came home at 4:30 as usual so I left a message to stay at work and I would pick her up, go for dinner and go look for a truck.

After dinner, we drove that hilly ride to the river. We drove it, I liked it, we negotiated a price, notarized the title and I drove it home.

When I got home just now Sable was all over me and I looked her in the eyes and said we have a new ride. LuAnn burst out laughing.

We do have a new ride. It is not new, but it is new to me. I have no doubt it will be as good as the last two have been.

Too bad they don't make them anymore.

Ed

No Crop

I am grumpy today. Nothing went right. But I read this and I have no reason to be grumpy.

"With our Southern Illinois fields looking like a total loss, I am often reminded of Habakkuk 3:17-18,

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior."

"At this point that's about all we have left........Faith in another year and Thanks for the good ones we've had in the past. If your family is healthy there is nothing else that matters. jmo"

"1 Corinthians 3:7,
7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow."

Now who could be grumpy after reading that? That's the best biblical discussion about crops I have seen on Crop Talk. Knowing how hard their area and many others are hit this year, it's refreshing to see these men quote scripture when times look bleak.

Sure they may have crop insurance and yes the American taxpayer pays a portion of it but they may not. That is not the point. The point is they have faith and are relying on it. I always said anyone who plants a seed and watches it grow and doesn't believe in God is lacking in faith. This blog in March with the neat flower video link at the top shows that fact even more.

We got rain and it wasn't a hundred degrees here today so I need to be happy about that. At least that is a place to start.

How about you? How do you handle your less than stellar days?

Ed

Ten Years

It's been ten years since I retired from State Teachers Retirement and took my early retire bonus and bought a brand new Chevrolet Silverado 4 door long bed. It's been eight years since we traded the slide in camper for a brand new one. This rig has taken LuAnn and I many wonderful miles. After a long hiatus, these two units are mated together once more.

We got caught up in cruising the oceans and rivers and flying to distant lands. Now it is time to see if we still love camping as much as we did ten years ago. That first trip in 2001 changed our lives and every trip since has, too.

Today two friends helped me move all of the iron in the way of the camper and we loaded that shiney, new looking Silverado under the Sunlite once more. That is an achievement I cannot explain to you because it sounds too simple.

It has been more than ten years since I started judging the crops, produce and canned goods at the Greene County Fair. I told them I was amazed they still wanted me. That surprised them. Those people are once a year friends now except for Wilma, who facebooks me almost every day.

While I was there, the Fairfield County Fair committee watched me judge an hour then came up to ask for my contact information. I was pleasantly taken back and surprised. That fair is the last one in Ohio and one I have always enjoyed and admired. It would be an honor to judge there. Now if I could just get Ross County interested, they have a great fair, too. Then there is the Great Darke County Fair, you get the picture.

You can see what the drought and heat hurt in the fresh produce but it has made an amazing comeback with the still hot but cooler temperatures and that precious rain we have been getting. The canned good classes were deep and challenging. I wish I could show you the difficult choices I had to make of top quality, canned produce and fruits. Thankfully I never anything like Chimel posted in my comment section yesterday.

It was a great day and a great week but a busy one. I think we may have palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed in the county so I am working with the state weed specialist on that problem.

The weather is beautiful here today and I hope yours is, too.

Ed

Barley Loaves

Our readings at church this weekend suggest much to us as farmers and as fathers. Our society has gotten so far from the basics of life of providing for our families and sharing with others I can see why most people would never read this. Even if they read it, they surely would not understand. Is that the difference between believers and non-believers?

We are blessed with many "barley loaves" this year. We can take care of our own and take care of many others, too. So few people work in raw food production now that is difficult to say how many people one farmer feeds.

"The amount of people that a farmer feeds is dependant upon the crop he is growing and how many acres he has of it. For example, a farmer that has 30,000 acres of potatoes is going to feed a lot more people than a farmer that has 1 acre of kohlrabi. Also, a farmer with an acre of potatoes will feed a lot more people than a farmer with that same acre of kohlrabi. I mean, how much kohlrabi do you eat? (Or okra or huckleberries or other random, more rare fruits and veggies?)

The general rule of thumb that is used is that:
~According to the National Cattleman's Beef Association, advanced technology allows one farmer can currently feed 129 people. In 1960, one farmer fed 25 people.
~According to Today's Farmer, America’s farmers are the world’s most productive. Today, each U.S. farmer produces food and fiber for 143 people in the United States and abroad."

A good blogger links his stories to past blogs. I sometimes do that but it is easy to search my blog with key words like I did here.

Farming employs so many more people because it takes so much transportation and processing to take the raw food from the farm to the many foods we enjoy at home or away from home. Six to seven jobs have been created from one farmers work. It could be more.

We have so much here it is difficult to share pictures of our bounty with our friends around the world who suffer from drought or flood. This fact has created some tension on Ag Talk and even between neighbors. Timing is everything in farming and it surely was this year just as in biblical times when they wondered how in the world is five or twenty barley loaves going to feed this mass of people?

It all comes down to my faith and my demonstration of faith through my work. Blessed are those who see and believe but so blessed are those who have not seen yet believe! Those are my words from my experience as you can well tell.

That adds more meaning to the glass half full or half empty, doesn't it?

Ed

Katherine

We just enjoyed our first visit from baby Katherine. I am sure it is the first of many! Tyler has asked for his stayover at the farm so he can "ride the Mule, the Gator, daddy's 4 wheeler" and on and on.

She is one of the most active newborns I have seen. I hope Erik posts the video on Facebook so I can link it here. She is busy eating and sleeping and doesn't make much of a sound yet. LuAnn says her mother never cried until she was 6 months old.

LuAnn and I judged the flowers at the Clermont County Fair this morning. It was a very nice show, better than Monday's as usual. It's like the entrants get the eye for their plants after the first judging. Our best of show was a beautiful little vase arrangement with the subject of parrot fish. The colors looked like those fish you see when you are snorkling. Monday was a piece of wood with water flowers arranged around it with the them a river runs through it.

We got blessed with 2 inches of rain yesterday. We definitely are the greenest place we have traveled, right here at home. We should have deep kernals with this late rain on the corn crop and the beans will really put on bushels with this water.

Corn shelling has moved from Missouri to Illinois with earliest corn ready for harvest. Here is video of corn shelling in Calhoun County that was just posted.

I need to keep bush hogging fields. They look pretty good but I still have some spots. I keep sowing a little radish and rye everywhere I can. The weeds have outgrown everything else this year. How are weeds so drought hardy?

Sure wish I could show you pictures. Google, you stink.

Ed

ShowMyStreet

A friend sent me Show My Street again so I thought I would look some things up. It is a new fly over because it shows the green tanks we put on the concrete slab in May! Type in my address at 3308 Martinsville Road and see how I have been doing. I can see the wet spots and the marks from the 24 row planter so it must be the end of April when we put those tanks in.

You an see every blemish in the field and I know what caused most of them. They must update their database pretty regularly or I just happened to catch a recent flyover. You can see the different cover crop effects in the garden.

I need the address of the fields I am scouting to help scout the problems! One outfit just copies the old ASCS or FSA maps and I am lucky if they write in a road I know. I had to have the farmer take me around to each patch this morning and that saved me a lot of time.

We ended up talking about his weed problem because he has $100 in chemicals spraying his non GMO beans and he has poor control after soybeans. After corn, the program is pretty acceptable. This weed probem is something else. There are lots of weedy fields like his and he is afraid he has palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed from the south. I am afraid he does too. The only thing we can do is move away from soybeans or go to Liberty Link soybeans. We can't do that too often or that chemical will build up resistance in the weeds, too.

If you take some time and read back in my blogs you will find where I have discussed this subject many times. This is something we MUST spend more time and effort on as this is going to cost us farmers a lot of money if we do or if we don't and a lot more if we don't!

It is blue overhead but big claps of thunder are rolling again. We are in a risk for high winds and rain again this afternoon. At least it beats a drought.

Ed

University Debt

This Penn State deal is terrible but it is getting way too much coverage. I was caught off guard during radio interview yesterday driving between fields I was scouting. The person said that the $60 million dollar fine was nothing compared to Penn State's debt of ONE BILLION dollars! I was shocked about that much debt until I started thinking of the bonds we floated at Blanchester Local Schools during the new building project we went through 15 years ago.

Multiply that debt against a major land grant university that represents the entire state and the figure is much bigger. Then I thought I wouldn't be surprised if Ohio State's is even bigger. It is.

"The amount of debt public colleges and universities carry has crept upward over the last decade, topping $60 billion in 2010 and 2011, according to data compiled by Moody’s. That amounted to about $13,000 per student in 2010. Moody’s draws a direct connection between decreased state funding and increased debt, and finance officials expect the amount of debt to increase further over the next few years as state appropriations stagnate or continue to decline."

"According to Sightlines’ data, the amount that colleges and universities spent on capital and maintenance peaked in 2009 but dropped significantly in 2010. Most colleges returned to 2008 spending levels in 2011, except for midsize public universities. “I think the places like Ohio State and Penn State, when states didn’t give them more money, went out and found that money’s cheap in the market,” Kadamus said, noting that interest rates are at historic lows. “If you’re a comprehensive public, you can’t get a lot of leverage out of the bond market. Those guys were not able to borrow, so state cuts are really having an impact on them.” At the same time, states have cut back on the amount of debt their issuing on behalf of institutions, leaving colleges and universities to fend for themselves."

"Century bonds are rare, primarily because they don’t make sense for most institutions. It would be risky to bet that any given institution is going to be around in 100 years and still in position to repay its bonds. But for historically strong universities -- many of which have already been around for hundreds of years -- the proposition is less risky for potential investors. That fact, plus the historically low interest rates, leads Chatas to think more universities will issue long-term bonds in the near future.

The century bond drove Ohio State’s debt load to more than $2.4 billion, six times what it was in 2001. Chatas said the increased debt load is not a concern for the university. “Ohio State has a lot more debt than it did 20 years ago, but it’s also a lot larger than it was 20 years ago,” he said, noting that the university plans to continue significant growth in enrollment and revenue over the next few years. “So long as an institution is planning to grow into its debt, then it really should not be a concern.” Debt-service payments at the university are roughly the same as they were a decade ago, in part because of the historically low interest rates. Ohio State’s bond had a 4.8 percent interest rate."

WOW! 100 year bonds and $2.4 billion in debt! Ohio State has a lot of valuable real estate but I am not sure it's worth $2.4 billion!

What do you think?

Ed