So, you think you're going to retire...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 9:28am.
I don't know what it's like to climb up to or down from a tractor seat a dozen or more times a day. But I did spend 10 of my post-prime years (i.e., I was getting up there) hopping onto and off a forklift truck dozens of times a night. It takes a toll.
I was happy to retire from that job a year-and-a-half ago and more than happy to get back to newspapering, which has always been my vocation of choice. I'm semi-retired now, with a part-time job. I'm hardly a trailblazer, but the trail behind me is getting wider and wider as more and more people continue working beyond "normal" retirement age. I know a couple of accountants who plan to never quit. A classmate who retired from selling heavy equipment who still calls on clients every day. A feed salesman who unretired to work the coffee equipment at a Wawa and quit after less than a month. A feed mill owner who retired but said he'd come into the office several times a week. After two weeks, he stopped going to the office. I know former teachers who paint houses. A retired surgeon who farms. A retired chemist who works at volunteering.
I can't think of any retired people under the age of 80 who actually don't do any kind of work, paid or unpaid.
I don't know exactly how farming works. If your farm has been your home, your life and your passion for 30, 40 or 50 years, it's not going to stop being your home, your life and your passion just because the candles on your birthday cake set off the smoke detector.
It would be interesting to delve into the ways farmers retire and don't retire. Maybe I'll do that. It would take some time to look into it. But hey, I'm retired. I've got nothing but time.
What started this train of thought was an article last Thursday in The Economist. You can read it for yourself here:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13900145
We usually have only one Bupp in our pages, but this week there are two. Leroy Bupp, husband of Lancaster Farming columnist Joyce Bupp, had some sage comments to share with readers on the subject of no-till farming. He's been been a no-tiller for 30 years, and his most potent message is, "Be patient." His advice in Section A is worth reading.
How to have fun with your food. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgDynGCzpjg
Chestnuts for food, furniture, barn beams...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 9:06am.
...and climate change. The American chestnut was a dominant presence in forests from New England to Alabama, until about 50 years ago, when it was nearly wiped out by chestnut blight, a fungus that showed no mercy
Researchers have been working on hybridizing the the American Chestnut with the blight-resistant Chinese chestnut for decades. They now have a resistant variety that is 94% American chestnut, and researchers like Purdue's Douglas Jacobs hope reintroduce the tree into existing forests as well as reforesting farmlands throughout the tree's natural range.
The great thing about chestnuts, according to Jacobs, is that the chestnut grows faster than other species, and it gets bigger, sucking more carbon from the atmosphere. And because people use the wood for furniture and other products, the carbon stays sequestered for a longer time than wood from trees that are used for paper, fuel and things like pallets.
And, because I was around before the trees died, I remember the smell and the taste of roasted chestnuts. As a kid, I had to go along Christmas shopping in Reading, and there was a guy with a cart parked on Penn Street. He roasted chestnuts and sold them by the paper bag for a dime. Or maybe it was a nickel. Today it would be three bucks. You had to be careful peeling off the shells, because they were hot. They were rich and nutty and I remember the taste to this day. You can still buy other kinds of chestnuts, and they do taste good, but if memory serves, I think I like the American variety a little better. So if it takes carbon sequestration to revive the species, I say let's go for it.
To read more about Jacobs and his work, click here:
And if you'd like a recipe for roasting chestnuts, click here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Chestnuts-108718
If you'd like to buy some hybrid chestnuts, here's one source: http://www.delmarvelouschestnuts.com/
So you have this old railroad car and you want to connect your house and your garage. If you're Gib Yoder of Allensville, you'd naturally think of using the car to connect the two buildings (now wait...where do you even get a railroad car, much less move it to your property?). But just putting the car between the two buildings wasn't quite elegant enough for Gib Yoder. He wanted a secret passage. Underground. And he wanted it to go through the railroad car.
Yoder started to dig a trench, but hit a huge rock. So he hired a dynamite expert and invited all the neighbors to watch as the "expert" blew a hole big enough for Yoder's "secret." It's a fascinating story, but to read the rest of it you'll have to check out page 18 of the 2009 Auctioneer Guide, which is part of the current edition of Lancaster Farming. The story was written by retired LF staffer Lou Ann Good, and this year's Guide was put together by Anne Harnish, Lou Ann's replacement as Food and Family Features Editor.
In Belgium, apparently, everybody knows the same dance routines. (Thanks, Anne.)
People say I rant...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 6:38pm.
I ranted on for a bit the other day about Food, Inc., a movie I haven't seen yet sort of reviewed, presuming to know what it was about. Food, Inc., is an indictment of Big Ag, which includes Monsanto, Tyson, Cargill, etc., but which I think also includes many of our regular readers. You might say, "It's not right to review a film you haven't seen," and there's a point to that. But in my defense, I would say that a lot of the movie reviews I've read have had almost no resemblance to the movies I've seen.
Anyway, I will see the film as soon as I can, and report back that my suspicions (prejudices?) were either confirmed or denied.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune had a round-up review today of scary food movies by reporter Christopher Borelli. Food, Inc., Borrelli said, works as a horror movie but I had the impression from reading Borrrelli that in striving for effect, the movie may have veered from the facts. He seemed totally horrified by the visuals, but less than horrified by the arguments. Here for example were his thoughts about the parts of the movie meant to depict Monsanto's evil bent:
Convincing? Yes -- and no. When he sticks to the coldly efficient details of production, Kenner brings the same outrage and urgency that's palpable on the scariest pages of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." But his most dramatic argument -- that Monsanto viciously goes after any farm, large or small, that doesn't use its genetically modified seeds -- feels muddled and confusing.
Borrelli also watched King Corn, Supersize Me and Our Daily Bread. He should never be made to eat popcorn again. If you'd like to read his roundup, the story is here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/chi-0624-food-filmsjun24,0,5590378.story
Here's a thought and I'll throw it out and if it gets me in trouble it gets me in trouble. Lancaster County is famous for growing tobacco. And Lancaster County is famous for puppy mills. Tobacco is being taxed and harassed out of existence. I don't smoke, sniff or chaw, so I'm not going to miss the "evil weed." But a lot of Lancaster County farmers depend on tobacco for income. What are they going to do?
My suggestion is: raise puppies to sell. Okay. So if that thought offends you, and so that you don't have to yell and scream and curse into empty space, my cell phone number is 717-419-4703.
I don't believe in puppy mills. They're evil.
But if somebody has four or five breeding bitches, treats them humanely, treats them as companion animals, doesn't overbreed them, doesn't keep them in wire cages, doesn't keep them penned in the dark - doesn't deny them the joy of being dogs - then I think that person should be called a breeder, and respected as such, and not be made to suffer the slings and arrows or outraged humanitarians.
I bought a purebred puppy a few months ago from a breeder in suburban Connecticut. She had nine dogs, five doggies beds, a couple of crates and a small corrall. In her kitchen. She really, really loves dogs, she is an ardent champion for her breed, and she sells puppies, but she is definitely not a puppy mill.
I think puppy mills are as much a symptom as a problem. If there were no market for puppy mill puppies, there would be no puppy mills. If puppy buyers asked questions about where their puppies came from and how they were raised, the market would dry up. If the Humane League worked to encourage legitimate breeders, maybe even certifying them, then the League could start working towards solving a problem which, at the moment, seems to have no solution.
If the AKC stopped sending a thousand sets of regisration papers to the same Lancaster County address, year after year...don't they ever get suspicious?
It's probably a pollyannaish thing to think that Lancaster County could switch from tobacco farming to become a legitimate and honorable supplier of healthy, well-bred puppies, and, in the transition, run puppy mills out of existence. It could be done without government money or oversight. It could be a free market triumph. Are we not ready for a free market triumph? Especially one that wags its tail and gives sloppy kisses?
Anyway, it's a thought. Call me, if you want.
If Polly answers, don't hang up.
Speaking of dogs... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqom4ejIf6I
Using everything but the squawk...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 11:04am.
When they start breeding chickens for feathers, I want to see what the birds look like. And I'd like to know if you can rig them up like a kite to take them to market. If they could float in a 5 mph wind, think of all the trucking costs you could save just by tethering a thousand or so birds to the pickup and flying them to the processing plant. Which would have to be upwind from the farm, of course.
Why am I talking about breeding for feathers? It's the hydrogen economy, which may or may not ever be upon us. If it is to be, then carbonized chicken feather fibers could be in demand as a storage medium for hydrogen gas. Keratin, a natural protein found abundantly in chicken feathers, forms strong, hollow tubes when it's heated. This increases the surface area, making an efficient and economical storage medium for hydrogen.
A 20-gallon carbonized chicken feather tank would add $200 to the cost of a new vehicle. Which is significant, but less so then metalhydrides , which would add about $30,000 to a car's cost, and nothing like the mind-boggling $5.5 million it would take for a tank filled with carbon nanotubes. A chicken feather report from the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute will run in the Ag Science section of Saturday's edition of Lancaster Farming.
Newton Bair was a man way ahead of his time. He was a soft-spoken low-key dynamo who sold his dairy farm and enrolled as a freshman at Penn State when he was 50 years old. After graduation, he became a Lebanon County extension agent. Nowadays we call that "mid-life career transitioning." The thing that really put him into company of futurists was an anaerobic manure digester that turned cow manure into enough methane gas to power a garden tractor. I saw him actually operate the tractor at the 1973 Ag Progress days in Hershey, and it was a bit of a marvel. Like the man himself. Newton's son, Alan, wrote a Father's Day tribute to his dad and his forward thinking ways in our current edition. It's a good read.
Unbelievable. Five minutes of hilarious comedy that even your kids can watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuMMfgWhm3g
Can you burp "No cow tax?"
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 1:41pm.
A year ago, the Bush administration's EPA released documents outlining how the Clean Air Act could regulate greenhouse gases. Buried deep in the documents was a single paragraph about the amount of methane released into the atmosphere by bovine belches.
Using EPA guidelines on the costs of ameliorating various environmental threats, the American Farm Bureau quickly coined the term "cow tax" and figured out how much it would cost farmers if it ever came to be. TheAFB's estimate for an emissions permit would have been $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle, and $20 for each hog.
Taxing cows or regulating their natural vapors is an idea whose time may never come, but they are definitely an environmental factor. Quoting from a story in Sunday's Washington Post, "Belching from the nation's 170 million cattle, sheep and pigs produces about one-quarter of the methane released in the U.S. each year, according to theEnvironmental Protection Agency."
EPA also said it has no intention of regulating livestock emissions of methane, which traps heat in the atmosphere. Any attempt to do so would cause enormous practical difficulties - how would you trap gas from both ends of a cow - and would no doubt face a loud chorus of public ridicule.
That said, there are studies underway to reduce emissions from cows by tinkering with their diets. Stonyfield Farm, Inc., which makes yogurt from organic milk, is working with a number of its milk suppliers to reduce their environmental impact. The test cows are being fedflaxseed , alfalfa and grasses high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The diet is supposed to produce less intestinal methane than a diet high in corn and soy.
Disappearing equity and a huge tax bite proved to be double whammies for a dairy family that turned to Brad Hilty for help. Hilty is a management specialist with the Penn State Dairy Alliance, part of the university's extension service. The couple thought the equity in their farmstead would bail them out if they went too deeply into debt. Hilty pointed out that they'd been living partly off depreciation for a number of years, and if they sold everything they'd still be on the hook to the feds for $100,000. With the help of Hilty and others, the couple, who are no longer dairying, worked through their problems. It's an interesting story, and it's in the current edition of Lancaster Farming.
How to wake up, be really busy and do absolutely nothing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yv0ETlEls
Today at the White House...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 4:44pm.
The Smoker-in-Chief disses tobacco. President Barack Obama has had almost as much press for sneaking cigarettes as he has had for his jump shots. One would assume that he's finally kicked the habit and that he's able to get up and down the court a little faster, but we don't really know for sure.
We do know for sure that earlier today he signed the toughest anti-smoking bill ever. In a ceremony to mark the signing, he said nine out of ten new smokers are under the age of 18, and he mentioned that he was one of those kids, and he knows how tough it is to quit.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act bans candy and fruit flavors in tobacco products, and limits advertising targeting teenagers. The law also empowers the FDA to lower the amount of addiction-causing nicotine in tobacco products and block what it sees as misleading labels such as "low tar" and "light." Tobacco companies also will be required to cover their cartons with large graphic warnings.
Opponents of the law said the FDA has failed in so many of its regulatory duties that there's no realistic hope for it to get smokers to quit. It should, instead, try to make sure that nicotine users have options to smoking, such as smokeless tobacco products.
If you'd like to watch the president use 10 Cross pens to sign the legislation (10 Cross pens? Hasn't anybody in Washington heard about the fiscal crisis?) you can do so here: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=14105515&ch=4226716&src=news
Clayton Smith is 75 years old and still milking cows twice a day. Plus, the farm he's working has been in the family since 1915, and shipping milk to the Washington, D.C. market since about 1917. Clayton and Shirley Smith love their family, their community and their cows. They're a good, solid couple and they're featured in a story by correspondent Laurie Savage in the current edition of Eastern Dairy Reporter, a monthly Lancaster Farming supplement. There's also a neat story about the comeback of home delivery in the town of Mountain Top, Pa. Check it out.
Wait until they all want to go to college. Then tell us how much fun it was to have quadruplets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FYtNq_k2UE
Backyard chickens - trend or no trend?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 7:38am.
The Web is all atwitter about backyard chickens, which The Economist says constitute a growing trend in urban areas all across the U.S. Judith Haller of Austin, Tx., for example said she was watching Martha Stewart one day and became envious of Martha's little flock. She bought some of her own chickens, and now has 13 hens keeping her garden both weed-free and fertilized.
And she gets eggs, too. In April, as part of Austin’s first Funky Chicken Coop Tour, she hosted 637 visitors. And Ms Haller is just one of many, many, many people who have joined the backyard flock movement, according to The Economist article, which is here: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=478044&story_id=13856313
Oh, please! says Jack Shafer, posting on Slate.com. Backyard chickens are a "trend" cooked up by the media. Stop it already with the chickens. They're time-consuming, they're filthy and they don't cuddle, according to Shafer.
He quotes experienced chicken-owner Jean Moore, who told the Albuquerque Journal in July of 2003, "On the warmth and entertainment scale a chicken is better than a snake, but not as good as a cat." Shafer"s passion is for outing "trends" which he believes are media-manufactured pap. His backyard chicken expose is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2218390/
It was bit surreal Tuesday in Harrisburg when a group of tobacco farmers and their supporters gathered in the Capitol rotunda to protest a new tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars. There were Amish growers facing squarely into the media's cameras while their English counterparts told the gathered reporters that a tax increase would cut tobacco consumption, which would hurt their farming operations. Republican legislators railed against the imposition of any new tax, even a state tax on smokeless tobacco products, and even though Pennsylvania is the only one of the 50 states to not tax chewing tobacco, snuff and loose tobacco. A story about the rally is in tomorrow's edition of Lancaster Farming.
Heartless "scientists" force lipstick-covered rat with cancer to run through maze. Awful. Just awful. http://www.theonion.com/content/news/underfunded_scientists_force?utm_source=a-section
Stampeding bulls redux...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 6:57am.
So farmland is the next hot thing for the investment world, and Shondra Warner is the face of a new agculture. Warner is actually a legitimate farm girl, according to Brian O'Keefe, reporting in the latest edition of Fortune Magazine. O'Keefe says that she is "A Nebraska farm girl who went on to a globetrotting career as a derivatives trader for Goldman Sachs and then as a hedge fund executive in London."
I don't know about you, but I find a few things in that description kind of scary. Like "derivatives trader," "hedge fund executive," and "Goldman Sachs."
If people like Shondra Warner can do to agriculture what they did to the world financial system, we'll all be eating nothing but dirt a decade or two from now. Another guy O'Keefe talked to is an American named Phil Heilberg who has leased a million acres of farmland in Southern Sudan.
Talk about scary. Can you use "Darfur" "genocide" and "investment opportunity" in the same sentence? And can you imagine any kind of scenario where you could lease a million acres from Sudanese landowners, not one of whom has been party to horror? Good luck, Phil Heilberg. Just be sure to wash your hands before you eat anything grown on those million acres. And wash them again. And again. And again.
Back to Shondra Warner, who at least is sticking to U.S. farmland and who told O'Keefe that "Farming might not look sophisticated. It might wear overalls and talk funny. But it's older than Wall Street. It's a fine-tuned machine, and it's a very difficult business."
And, she says, there are big opportunities if you execute right.
Aw shucks, you guys, let's kick the *hi* off our clodhoppers, drive our jalopies down to the Dairy Queen and compare spreadsheets and P&Ls.
I don't know how you can work with farmers if you're going to condescend to them, and maybe that's not what Warner is doing, but it smells like it to me. And what really annoys me with O'Keefe, the reporter who wrote this mess, is that he appears not to have spoken to a single farmer. Wouldn't it be nice to find out how farmers feel about being bought out or maybe trampled by that nice Nebraska farm girl?
I'd be especially interested in what he might have discussed with one of those Sudanese guys.
There's a lot of blame to go around in the financial meltdown. You know, the one that sucked $5 trillion out of the American economy. I believe financial journalists own a huge slice of that blame, and I think it's this kind of quick-buck reporting that helped make us what we are today.
Or maybe I'm over-reacting. You can read the story for yourself here:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/08/retirement/betting_the_farm.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009061611
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/08/retirement/betting_the_farm.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009061611
Or you can watch a nice down-home video of Shondra Warner here:
The Bureau of Market Development in the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is waiting for the budget axe to fall. Some of the bureau's functions will be cut back and some will disappear altogether, it seems, but nobody knows for sure what the final numbers will look like. In the Lancaster Farming issue due in your mailbox Saturday morning, with the help of PDA Press Secretary Chris Ryder we take a snapshot of the thinking as of Wednesday.
Why another cute cat video? Why not? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdhLQCYQ-nQ
Are the bulls getting ready to stampede again?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 5:37pm.
Are you looking for a way to grow that pile of cash you're sitting on? How 'bout investing in farmland? People will always have to eat, you know.
Went to the mailbox today and there was the latest copy of Fortune Magazine with the headline, "Why Farmland is Hot." My first reaction was, "Well, it's summer, duh," but they were talking about a different kind of hot. Actually, the big headline, which took up a third of the front page was, "Retire Rich."
Before we get to farmland, here's Fortune's formula for retiring rich - start when you're 25, set aside $400 a month at 7% and when you're 65 you'll have $600,000. I wish I'd have known that when I was 25 and finally crashed the $100-a-week barrier writing about the fantastically ne Haybine in New Holland Machine Co.'s advertising department. Right now, if I'd followed Fortune's advice, I'd be really set.
But I'm curious - is $600,000 "rich?" Especially to the readers of Fortune?
As the financial press becomes more and more irrelevant to my life, I find myself reading it more and more. By "financial press" I mean that group of professional journalists who missed things like Bernie Madoff, grossly negligent mismanagment of financial institutions, credit default swaps and other instruments where we'd have been better off paying guys commissions to play roulette...
Did I mention paying guys tens of millions of dollars to shovel their publicly owned companies into giant SlurryStores? Did I mention that they sacked our retirement accounts of Five Trillion Dollars? That's trillion with a "t?" A capital "T?"
So why do I read the financial press at all? Well, sometimes they're amusing. And sometimes I find things I want to buy. Like on the back cover of this issue they have a ballon bleu de Cartier watch...very nice. Lists for a mere $41,000 or so, but there are places you can get a deal. But then I read the fine print. You have to wind it. Or get your butler to wind it. I don't have butler and never will. I don't like people going through my things.
Actually, I think I read the financial press for the same reason I used to read comic books. For the entertainment. Gyro Gearloose, Donald Duck's inventor cousin, was my favorite.
Oh, wait...I was going to tell you why you should take all that cash you're got hidden in the corn
crib and buy a million acres of farmland in the southern Sudan, which is what an American named Heilberg did, according to Fortune.
But I'm out of space, I'm afraid. I'll let you know tomorrow.
If we all made one each of the dairy recipes in our June is Dairy month section in the current issue, we might just goose those milk prices up a little bit. Or if not, at least we'll all be eating well. I think I'm going to try the sour cream lemon pie from Thelma Blank in Bird-in-Hand, Pa.
Thia 4-H skit took a first prize in Texas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oF3bSz12DM
In step with the Times...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 06/15/2009 - 9:43am.
In a New York Times editorial yesterday, the newspaper chided the Obama administration for decimating USDA conservation programs while leaving in place huge subsidy payments to big producers of corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops. Secretary Tom Vilsak has proposed chopping $600 million from conservation programs aimed at helping farmers preserve wetlands, open space and wildlife habitat.
Interestingly, those cuts come out of a $4 billion program urged on the department last year by then-President Bush, characterized by the Times as "...reform-minded on agriculture."
Also interestingly, Secretary Vilsak is quoted as saying that he recommended cutting the conservation programs mainly because USDA "...does not have the administrative capacity to distribute the extra money."
Wow. Apparently they do have the administrative capacity to distribute $5 billion in direct subsidy payments to giant row crop producers. The Times suggests that cutting $600 million out of subsidy payments, rather than short-changing conservation programs, would be a much better way to go.
Couldn't agree more.
The complete editorial is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/opinion/15mon2.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=agriculture&st=cse
Do you love farmers? Well, Duh!, as the saying goes. I assume everybody reading this space has some kind of affectionate connection to farming and the rural way of life. In his editorial this week, Lancaster Farming editor Dave Lefever talks about his affection for a new website started by a group of young Californians. You can check out why we likes them here: http://ilovefarmers.org/about.html
Pick a pickle. Pick a pepper. Play a tune. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3OxKdDxkpg
