Two Good Men

I need two good men today.  Anyone available?  All my part time help is busy doing other jobs.  Maybe 2 men and a truck are available.

I just sent a garbage bag full of jackets and winter coats to Turning Point this morning.  LuAnn has a good worker who doesn't have enough (any?)coats so I fixed him up.  Tractor Supply has a sale on Carhartt's this week and I love new Carhartt's.  It's amazing what you accumulate over time.

Everytime we travel west or east to Pennsylvania we stop at Cabela's.  I usually end up buying a coat on sale.  The next thing you know, they won't all fit in our mudroom closet.  I just cleaned mine out and it is still pretty full.

I need to do that with shoes, too.  I have a bunch of good workboots I can't wear comfortably anymore and there is always someone around here who can use a pair.  10 years ago you couldn't give away this stuff and now it's in high demand.  There is the American economy for you in Ohio right there.

HOPE Emergency does a good job of distributing these goods to local, needy people.  We like helping them.  This is their busy week to try and get a Thanksgiving meal to all of their families.  I think the number is around 400 right now.  The local churches and other groups have been accepting donations for a month or so now.

Those barns housed a lumber store years ago that should have never been built out in the country.  It went belly up and a friend of mine bought it.  I forget the story how the sisters ended up with it but it must be on their website somewhere.

This was brought up on ag talk this week.  "Had a little farm got sold today 67 acres +or- only 52 tillable in 4 fields with a power line running through the biggest field is 17 acres and the smallest is 7 acres trees on 3 sides, a farm place in the middle of it that is sold to someone else no tile and light soils and rolling ground sold today for around $9700.00 an acre tillable and the farmer that bought will have to buy new equipment to farm it because his equipment is to big for it. The 2 guys that bid against each other I heard do not like each other. I wonder who one the fight?"

There are others who have been reporting actual fist fights over land rental and purchase.  That's not a good sign!  I told them to come to poor old Ohio where 84 acres sold for $3250 per acre last week and 440 acres of rough ground only brought $500,000.  Some people can't believe that but it's true.

I better get to work.  You have a good day.

Ed

Blessings

First of all today I want to say a special prayer for Irv.  I found Irv last night.  He is fighting a tough struggle with pancreatic cancer.  The numbers are not in his favor but we know with God all things are possible.  I just don't know what God's Will is for Irv so I have to pray they come true.  We know all things turn out good in the end if you are on the right side.  There are a lot of friends hurting right now and we pray for their peace and their healing.

We got to witness our oldest grandchild receive her First Communion yesterday.  The church was packed to Standing Room Only as family and friends gathered for the celebration.  Hearing that little girl, now young lady say she came on her own free will just made our hearts sing.  You couldn't force her to do something she didn't want to if you tried.  She knows right from wrong.

We got to see almost all of our grandkids this weekend.  Baby Deirdre is the quietest little newborn you can imagine.  Liam tickled us though, he said "Now if it were just Deirdre and me, life would be so much simpler.  That Caoilin and Finn, they are always into trouble!"  He grows so many ways every time we see him.  I think he will be a better big brother than I was.

Baby Katherine will be baptized in two weeks.  That will be a very special day for all of us.  She is one of those babies who could compete with the famous Gerber babies for cute and adorable.  LuAnn has each grandchild's picture hung up the stairway to the top floor so we get to see them every morning and every night.  Every one of them fit that category to us.  We have a handsome set of grandchildren!

We have so enjoyed the weather this month!  It has been pretty much gorgeous in southwest Ohio.  I hope to keep replenishing my firewood supply as winter draws near.

Farmers who are still shelling corn are very lucky compared to last year.  This fall is more like 2010 which seemed to go on forever.  However, this gives the tiller guys too much time to tear up ground while the rest of us work on fencerows, lime and tile issues.  I imagine everything that is going to be planted this fall has been planted.

Some things to ponder this winter:
Soil Health and Civilization
Modern Day Challenges
Solvita Soil Health Test
Rick Haney's Work With Soil Health
Soybean Inoculation
Naturall Inoculant

This should be enough good work to keep the blessings flowing!

Have a great week,

Ed Winkle

Deer Hunters

The deer hunters are starting to swarm the area.  It's deer hunting season again!  This 32 point buck was taken by an automobile on US 35 near Jackson, Ohio!  Not!  That's what a gullible friend put on Facebook.  This is actually it's story.

A 22 pointer was taken in Highland County and made the local paper.  I don't get too excited about deer season because I am not a hunter.  I gain new friends at this time of year and all year long just because we own a little land.

I hunt for quality soil like some guys hunt 4 legged deer.  A friend sent me this new piece on soil quality.  I have a lot of reading and testing to do this winter and in the future.  I also received a pdf file I haven't found on the web by Rick Haney, soil scientist NRCS in Temple, Texas.  If you would like a copy, just send me your email address and I will attach the file to it.  It is very interesting and makes a lot of sense to me.

I like the work of Steve Hartman on CBS.  He had a great story about a couple in Minnesota who are watching their 12th son finish his high school football career!  The best part was when Steve asked the mother if she was glad to see it over.  She looked him right in the eye and said NO!  Then he mentioned their 49 grand children!  I thought 11 was quite a score!

I started two blogs the last two days but Blogger is now dating them the day I press Publish.  Maybe it's always been that way, I forget.  I am getting caught up on my blogging after the farm auction, a trip to Cleveland and so many things this week. 

This morning our oldest grand daughter receives First Communion.  I have been up early praying for her and just giving thanks for everything that has happened this week.  We are truly blessed.

Ed

Land Auction

We went to a land auction last night at the Elk's Lodge.  We saw something that we and the auctioneer and I assume everyone there have never seen before.

The piece of land was a scenic 84 acres near us.  We pass the property nearly every day or whenever we go to Wilmington, our county seat of government.  It's scenic because it is very rolling with 26 acres of woods on it.   The woods is split by a creek, Little East Fork of Todd's Fork, that runs through the farm(and also this farm).  It does have some excellent bottom ground on it.

We walked into the room and there were about 8 potential bidders sitting there.  We looked at all the maps and papers and confirmed what we had seen that afternoon walking the property.  We didn't take the time to walk the far reaches of the back of the parcel with our little creek that becomes a mighty river during heavy rains. 

We saw what we needed to see, though and the maps confirmed it.  It is over half tillable with Sloan, Ockley, Miami and Xenia Silt loams.  12 acres of it is in CRP and the rest is creek and woods.

Soon the bidding began and someone opened with a reasonable $2500 bid and the bids quickly went to $3,000 per acre before the bidding slowed down.  The auctioneer started taking $50 bids and it got to $3250 per acre when the bidding stopped.  The auctioneer went into his close looking for someone to up the last bid.

There was an elderly couple sitting behind us.  The gentleman raised his hand to bid $3300 when his wife exclaimed, what are you doing?  I am not signing any papers!  This caught the auctioneer and the crowd off guard so the auctioneer suggested they discuss it.  She said even louder, I am not signing any papers!

I think that ended the bidding!  The auctioneer sold it for the $3250 per acre bid.  I have never seen anything like that and the auctioneer said the same thing.

Who do you think the final bidder was?

Ed

The Seed Story

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.

Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different.  He called all the young executives in his company together.

He said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you. The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued.. "I am going to give each one of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you.  I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO."

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.

Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew  Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.  By now, others were talking about their plants,but Jim didn't have a plant and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by -- still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing  Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however, he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - He so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.  Jim told his wife that he wasn't going to take an empty pot.

But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room.

When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful - in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.

Jim just tried to hide in the back. "My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the CEO. "Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!"

All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified.. He thought, "The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!"

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed,   Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim.  He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, "Behold your next Chief Executive Officer!

His name is Jim!" Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed.

"How could he be the new CEO?" the others said.

Then the CEO said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it,and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow.

All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!"

* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust

* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends

* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness

* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment

* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective

* If you plant hard work, you will reap success

* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation

So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.

Think about this for a minute.

If I happened to show up on your door step crying, would you care?

If I called you and asked you to pick me up because something happened, would you come?

If I had one day left to live my life, would you be part of that last day?

If I needed a shoulder to cry on, would you give me yours?

This is a test to see who your real friends are or if you are just someone to talk to you when they are bored.

Do you know what the relationship is between your two eyes?  They blink together, they move together, they cry together, they see things together, and they sleep together, but they never see each other; that's what friendship is.

Your aspiration is your motivation, your motivation is your belief, your belief is your peace, your peace is your target, your target is heaven, and life is like hard core torture without it!

Ed

Hydroponics

A newly hired, young ag teacher asked this question on Crop Talk.  Since I had that decision to make a few years back I thought it was an interesting topic.

"I know that there are some people on here that knows about Greenhouses and Hydroponics. I have recently been hired as a high school agriculture teacher and I am looking to see which hydroponics systems are the best, easiest to use, and the best/cheapest place to purchase. I have been looking at a few: General Hydroponics Rainforest 318, General Hydroponics AeroFlo2 Hydroponic Systems 60, Bontanicare® Aerojet,and Bontanicare® Econojet. Any help would be appreciated."

Which one would you choose?  If you are interested, click on the links and make a suggestion to the young man under comments or email and I will get them to him.

Crop King is the one of the first companies I saw to sell hydroponics commerically.  "Hydroponics, simply defined, is the growing of plants in a water and fertilizer solution containing the necessary nutrients for plant growth. It is not a new science, with work being done by researchers as early as the 1600's. In the early 1930's, W.E Gericke, of the University of California, put laboratory experiments in plant nutrition on a commercial scale. In doing so, he termed these nutri-culture systems "hydroponics". The word was derived from two Greek words, hydro, meaning water, and ponos, meaning labor, or literally, water working."

Before I retired I tried some hydroponics we the students.  It turned out we got funding for an aquaponics unit so we went with that.  It was quite a learning curve for this old teacher but the kids and I learned a lot and it became the center of attention for the whole school.  Almost every child in the district was brought to the FFA Shop to see what my students were up to.

The best thing I did was befriend the night janitors who watched after the fish and lab at night while we were gone.  They loved to feed the fish and if you've ever dropped food pellets into a fish tank or fish pond you know what I mean.  They tended to overfeed them but it was OK.  Everyone enjoyed the fish fry at harvest.  Their "manure" made tasty vegetables we enjoyed, too.  Lettuce was easy to grow and we even got beans and peas to grow but tomatoes took so much extra heat to produce.

I thought it was a neat topic for today but mainly, it brought back many memories for me.  I hope you found it interesting, too.

Ed

So, What IS Your Fertilizer Doing For You?

Our friend Mace Bower made a powerful post on Crop Talk.  One of my mentors called and said it's the best piece he has read on there.  My friends and I are discussing this mind tingling post.  It's more than worth discussing today.

"I kind of had an AH HA moment recently. I add this to contribute based on the recent discussions on adding Fungi of some name brand as a root growth promoter or for whatever reasons they are sold, and apparently have quite a following lately. As you learn, it is important to understand that there is more to science than just buying cleverly marketed inputs.


Well in January, one of the funniest things at National No-till Conference was Gabe Brown picking on Dave Brandt that he needed to "take out the pacifier" if he wanted to get his soil biological system working correctly. The scenario is that Brandt uses 60 lbs of Nitrogen to grow his corn crops that are otherwise grown with legumes/cover crops/organic fertilizer etc, and that he obviously sees a positive net return to this (60 lbs) input. Gabe is saying, that he has learned, the addition of this fertilizer is really holding back the biological soil/plant/microbial system from its potential. Or that the "cost" is greater than the nitrogen alone. So, lots of people don't "see" or believe what Gabe is saying, that is fine. It is what he has been taught/believes/is selling/whatever.

More recently, I am currently in a Soil Microbiology class (PhD). We had a guest lecturer, who specializes in mychorrhizal fungi (those that operate as root extensions, they use the plant for Carbon, and contribute other nutrients to the plant). I took some bullet notes and will share those, they are something that is definitely worth thinking about. Much of this is economically irrelevant in times of high grain prices, or low fertilizer prices, as profit trumps science every time. But if you are interested in the soil as a biological system, some good points.

-Phosphate critical for living cells. ATP

-Mychorrhizal associations contribute 20-80% of P needs.

-Plants without mychorrhizal association explore 1-2 cm3 of soil around roots.

-Plants w/ myc ass. explore 12-15 cm3 of soil around roots.

-When P or N is limiting, plants support mychorrizal association.

-High concentration of P or N in plants create more demand for Carbon. Then plants reduce C contribution to mychorhriza or eliminate association.

-Plants spend less energy in the mycorrhizal association than producing root mass for nutrient uptake.

-Hyphae (structure) reach up to 10 cm from roots.

-Phosphorus is largest nutrient uptake by mychorrhizae fungi to host.

-Other nutrients taken up N, K, Mg, Ca, Mn, Zn, Cu

-Increase plant tolerance to water stress. Hyphae extract water from small pores.

-Suppress root disease, improve plant health, mechanical resistance.

-Produce Glomalin to bind soil particles.

-Excess fertilizer leads to less myc association. 45 lb/A/Yr reduced colonization by 50%

-Negative correlation to high P

-Plants depend on myc to different level. Flax 90%, Corn 80%, Sorghum 60%, Wheat 30%.

-Brassica's are non-host of mychorrhiazal fungi.

The speaker's belief or prediction also included that political tensions will build over phosphate rock. The world would move from an oil economy to a phosphate economy. That is worth a whole discussion itself, as I have seen several scientists present that same view with hard data."

So the question is, when a friend produced 300 bushels of corn this year on 80-90 pounds of purchased nitrogen, how much were the above factors working in his soil?  I am thinking greatly but don't know how you would ever quantify it.

As I build my soil with more air and carbon from crop and cover crop root mass, I can see I am on the right path.  This strays from current adopted agricultural practices so it must produce beautiful crops that are efficient and profitable to get notice.

"Speak With Your Fields."

Ed