For Iowa agriculture, the 50's were happening. Howard Bohr, aged 75, has been an Iowa farmer for more than half a century.  The 1950s, Bohr told the Des Moines Register, "was a perfect decade. You had good prices. A farm tractor could run on liquid propane that sold for six cents a gallon, and good farmland sold for about $300 to $400 per acre. And we also had good weather. We didn't have to fight floods like we did last year."

When times were bad for the national economy, Iowa's farms and allied businesses put a floor under the state's finances. But even in Iowa, farm leaders are thinking that agriculture has become victim to the national recession.

Register reporter Dan Piller prepared an exhaustive report on the state's ag finances. You can read his story at  http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009905090336

Delivering on a promise. Last week, right there on the front cover of Lancaster Farming, there was a story about the weather for this week. We were supposed to have a much better weather week, a great time for field work, according to Staff Writer Chris Torres. Chris did an excellent job of seeing that his prediction came to pass. You're welcome.

That's what I call a barn dance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BWa1SvvvuQ

Why in the world would I write a story about a guy like Walter Lyon? That was the question I got today on the phone from a conservationist in Maryland. He was polite and thoughtful, and wasn't quite that blunt, but I got the message. One of his farmer contacts in Baltimore County had brought him a copy of the article to prove, once and for all, that farmers are not the culprits in the problems of the Chesapeake Bay.

My caller was distressed and wondered whether or not when I, as a journalist, wrote that kind of story, did I check out the facts or didn't I really care about that. Well, I do care and I do check out the facts as well as I can. Fact one is that Walter Lyon has prepared a compelling presentation that he is sharing with interested groups and individuals, some of them in high places.  Some of them see some sense in what he says.

Fact two is that for many years, Walter Lyon was the Elvis Presley of the clean water movement before there even was a clean water  movement.  Or maybe not the Elvis Presley, but Jimmy Buffet, at least. When my editor spied a piece in a local newspaper about Lyon sharing his philosophies with a local service club, he wondered if I'd be interested in talking to Mr. Lyon. Yeah, I wanted to talk to Walt. And if Steven Hawking called me to say he didn't believe in black holes, better believe I'd be on a plane to chat with Steve.

I knew when I wrote the story that conservationists would be upset, and some would say I had set their work back by years and years, and I did get the comments. Maybe there were some setbacks, but I absolutely know there was dialog that took place that wouldn't have taken place if the article hadn't appeared.

I pointed out to the caller that since the Walter Lyon story appeared, there have been any number of Lancaster Farming stories about the work of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other conservation groups - including stories I did with the CBF office in Harrisburg, and another about the work of the Stroud Water Research Center.

I expect that many of our 55,000 regular readers took note of those stories, as well.

You have just one week from today to apply for federal stimulus money to finance BMPs on your farm. In a story in our current issue, Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres notes that there is money available for things like anaerobic digesters and riparian buffers, but farmers have to go after it quickly. For more information on BMPs check out this web site: www.pennvest.state.pa.us

Is this what you mean by mixed breed? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqcHAeAMCfU

So you think giant agribusiness in the U.S. gets too much in farm subsidy dollars? Guess what. They are not alone. The news out of Brussels yesterday was that 712 European Union agribusiness firms received payments of more than $1.33 million (one million Eurodollars) in 2008. Firms in Italy (189 payments), Spain (174), and France (149), split the lion's share of government largess.
 
FarmSubsidy.org (http://farmsubsidy.org) was one of the organizations campaigning for public disclosure of the subsidy payments. Of the 27 EU nations, 18 countries paying subsidies, and who and how much they were paying, were listed in the first ever subsidy report. The New York Times ran the story of the released figures. The report is at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/business/global/08farm.html?_r=1

 “There is no argument for these larger payments,” Harald von Witzke, a professor of international agricultural trade and economic development at Humboldt University of Berlin, told the Times. “If they are designed to be part of social policy, there is no justification. If they are meant to compensate farmers for having higher environmental standards in the E.U., then they are being paid too much.”

Ireland, which had only six members in the million euro club, had one recipient that got a check for $110 million. Greencore, the Irish firm, produces Weight Watchers meals for the U.S. and European markets. It was the fourth largest subsidy payment in the EU.

Small world, huh? 

"Carolyn, I fell down the silo."  Carolyn Moyer's husband, Paul, called her from the cold, hard floor of the concrete silo outside the barn on their dairy farm in Roaring Spring, Pa., on a January morning in 2007. She gives a first-hand account of her family's harrowing experience, and her husband's road to recovery, in our issue going into the mail tomorrow.

Tie me down, huh? Put a leash on me? Okay, matey. Take that. And this. Andthatandthatandthatandthat...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_FVD0BR2Mc

A reader called this morning to talk about my food safety story in the current issue. He was a thoughtful guy, a farmer, who wanted to know if the newly appointed Pennsylvania Food Safety Council was going to be passing laws and issuing regulations affecting farmers and the food industry in general.

No. It's an advisory group with no legislative, regulatory or enforcement powers, and I apologize if that wasn't made clear in the article.

Is it going to eat up a lot of tax dollars, he wanted to know.

Again, no. I think. I hope.

I could find out with a quick phone call to PDA, and if this were an article in the paper, that's exactly what I'd do. But I'm occupying this tiny spot of ether to lay before you my opinions and observations and not always the facts. So here's my opinion about the Council's funding - I think participants should get lunch and mileage for attending meetings, and that's it. And I think PDA staffing should be kept to an absolute minimum. Someone at PDA should send an email to call a meeting and then get back to his or her regular job.

Then the farmer wanted to know about the Council's makeup, which is a question I had when I was writing the story. And for that answer, I did call the PDA. Because it was going to be in the paper. Simply put, PDA wanted to get a broad a representation of the entire food industry, as many people with as many viewpoints as they could get around one of those giant boardroom tables. If the council needs to address a specific issue -  making sure that a farmer's pawpaw crop, for example, moves safely to market - then they will assemble a group from that particular niche to talk about the issue.

My personal opinion is that the most effective committee is a committee of one. Get six people around a table and things start to drift. Get 22 people in a room with pitchers of water and carafes of coffee and onlookers and microphones...well, I'm glad they didn't ask me to be on that council.

Especially since in Council's first three-hour meeting with a busload of people, half of whom for which middle-age was a distant memory, there was not a single break. Cold room. Water. Old people. Three hours. No break.

And then my caller raised the issue of puppy mills. I think I'll save that for another day.

Wanna sell some body parts? Well, if they're to a 1940-41 half-ton Dodge pickup, there's somebody at 585-786-3584 who's looking to buy. That's from one of the Lancaster Farming mailbox market ads, a source of lots of interesting stuff and sometimes a chuckle or two.  For example, if you've got Araucona hens laying hatchable eggs that you're willing to sell, you might want to call 570-837-3673.  And if you're of a certain age and can identify 50-year-old pictures of Lancaster County farms and covered bridges, phone John M. Heisey at 717-653-4598. He'll appreciate your call.

Just what you need around the barn. And who let those things in the kitchen, anyway? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ikm3o5hDks

Traditional farm operations are scattered here, there and everywhere. Organic farms are clustered here, there and back to here, according to an article this week in the New York Times. A map accompanying the article showed the nation's 10,000 or so organic farms heavily clustered on the West Coast, the upper Midwest and the Northeast.

The map of the 2.2 million traditional U.S farms looks as though the mapmaker shook a pepper shaker over all the states from the Mississippi watershed east. A lot of the pepper hit Lancaster Farming's main readership area, of course. The map also shows that some of the tightest clusters of organic operations exist in a circle around our office here at 1 East Main Street in Ephrata.

It's an interesting time for all of agriculture. The majority of our readers will no doubt continue farming with traditional methods, although "traditional" is taking on new meanings. Today's best management practices reduce the need for purchased pesticides and fertilizers. Modern BMPs have also drastically reduced nutrient and sediment runoff from the levels of a decade ago. There may come a day, in fact, when there is very little to distinguish "traditional" from "organic."

Meanwhile, traditional farmers who want to make the leap - or is it a crawl - to totally organic methods can take comfort from the fact that they are in the heart of a ready market for their products. If you'd like to see the map in the Times, click here:  http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/05/03/business/03metrics.graf01.ready.html

Change the way milk is priced. That's the message from Roger Allbee, Vermont Secretary of Agriculture. And he thinks the time to do the job is now, with dairymen in a state of shock and milk prices under the cost of production. Allbee makes his case in an opinion piece in this week's Lancaster Farming.

Kidding around with a horse massage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wi_9n_BxDI

I saw an amazing thing the other morning when I stopped at the Weis Market in Ephrata, Pa., not far from the LF office. I was finishing my morning cup of coffee, or maybe it was my second, listening to the end of an NPR report before dashing into the store, and thinking, "Should I be a sissy and dig out my umbrella or not?" And in the  space of just  a few minutes, I saw maybe half a dozen people - youngish people, oldish people - bring their carts back to one of those cart parking places.

Did I mention it was raining?

Where else do you see people bringing their carts back? You certainly don't see it in the tourist areas of a state I won't name for fear of offending our readers there, but it's slightly to the east of Lancaster County, it's on the ocean and has a bunch of casinos. Maybe it's just the tourists who abandon their carts in the middle of parking lots, because why should they care? They don't live there. What's it to them?

But I'm a tourist when I'm there. I put my cart away. Doesn't make me a hero, but it does make me special in New J... that other state.

Shopping carts aren't a big deal. So, the wind gets hold of one and slams it into the side of your Buick. It's just a possession. Be glad, for one thing, youwern't driving a Pontiac.  You can still get parts for your Buick.

But carts are the visible symptom of something that is a big deal. Call it courtesy. Civility. Good manners. Or the lack thereof. It's nice to know that pockets of it do exist. Let's hope they grow.

In Philadelphia, a regional food bank called Philabundance is working to get farms signed up for a gleaning program that could provide many tons of food for its 65,000 regular clients. Last year, the organization received 200,000 pounds of less-than-perfect peaches from New Jerseycanner. So far this year, they have one Pennsylvania orchard involved in the program. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres talked to Philabundance recently, gleaning enough material to write a report, which appears in the current issue.

Your Farm Bureau advertising dollars at work...or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1KMk2b3acs

I gave my heart away when I got married, but...I got my driver's license renewed last week, and told them to put me down for an organ donor, but then I thought, "Who'd want any of this 68-year-old stuff?" And I remembered a lot of the newspaper people I've known. Some of them smoked, they drank, they kept weird hours, got stressed out over deadlines, didn't exercise, ate french fries, cheese steaks, didn't exercise...

That's not me, of course, except for the occasional cheese steak and deadline stress, so I called The Gift of Life, an organization that promotes organ donation, and asked them, "Who would want what I've got?

You're never too old to be an organ donor, I was told.  The man on the phone told me about an 84-year-old who'd been a liver donor. The liver, it seems, is constantly regenerating itself. Your skin, your corneas, your bones and many other parts are harvestable - that's what they call it, harvesting, like wheat. My heart, lungs and kidneys probably wouldn't make the cut, to coin phrase, but I was surprised at how many useful parts can be put to use.

So if you're getting your license renewed, think about checking that "yes" box. And then hope that it's a long time before anybody has to look at it.

U.S. rider is an upset winner in World Cup dressage. Steffen Peters and Ravel, his 11-year-old mount, bested the best in this year's competition, held April 18 in Las Vegas. Horse and rider are featured in this month's edition of Mid-Atlantic Horse, included in this week's Lancaster Farming.

And then there's that old John Deere parked out back...Got 13,029 hours to spare playing around? This fantastic machine was actually built out of old tractor and irrigation parts. (Thanks, Dave.) http://www.truveo.com/Pipe-Dream/id/2605785716

They make cars too well. But nobody seems to mention that fact. My wife and I were at a party in 2004, the evening after Thanksgiving, at a house across the street from our house. It was about seven o'clock, we had sampled the various crackers, cheeses and spreads, said hello to everybody, and my wife said, "Let's go buy a car."

"Now?" I asked, and she nodded.

So we walked across the street, climbed into our gray - she claims it was teal, but I'm not that colorblind - Ford Escort wagon, drove to a couple of dealers who sold the kind of car we knew we wanted and had been talking about. The sales guys at both places were sitting around, looking totally bored, and the guy whose turn it was brightened up when we walked in and asked if we could get a better deal than we'd been offered someplace else. They gave us a better trade-in for the Escort, knocked a bit more off the MSRP and threw in free pinstriping.

Hint: Unless it falls on a Sunday or a holiday, Black Friday is a great day to shop for a car. I'm convinced.

Anyway, the Escort had maybe 80,000 or 90,000 miles on it, but it was nowhere ready to quit. We were just in a mood for a newer car. We still have it. It has 60,000 miles on it, and we've had it to the shop for routine maintenance only, except for the time we were in a tornado and took an indirect lightning strike which blew out our computer. The dealer replaced the computer under warranty, and we're good as new. We even have the original tires, which I find hard to believe, although I plan to replace them in the fall.

When I was a kid back in the 50s and 60s, you traded your car in when it hit 20,000 or 30,000 miles, and if it had 50,000 on the odometer, you practically had to pay somebody to take it away. While gas was cheap then - and dirty - you might only be getting 10mpg out of the family buggy.

And you risked death if you didn't replace your tires every 12,000 to 15,000 miles.

So a dealer, instead of selling a guy one car every 10 years nowadays, back in the day that same customer would have been buying three or four new cars in a decade. And they were brand loyal. If your dad bought Fords, you bought Fords. Even if it was an Edsel.

So here's my plan to save the American auto industry - go back to making junk.

Just kidding. Honest. What they need to do, or - worst-case scenario, needed to do - was adjust.

I haven't mentioned the kind of car we got, because I really don't think it would have made  a difference.

Cattlemen need to find out more about why anti-farm initiatives are finding their way to the ballot box, according to Gary Voogt,, newly elected president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. He would like to see more farmers advocating for the beef industry, he told Charlene Shupp Esbenshade, Lancaster Farming special sections editor. Her story appears in Saturday's edition, which is finding its way to your mailbox as I write.

This may or may not be a tribute to W. But it is funny and interesting. (Thanks, Brett)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ZquJIolvY

The finger of blame can point anywhere when it comes to food safety.  Lolly Lesher, board president of the Center for Dairy Excellence is a dairy producer and also a retailer of milk from the family's dairy farm in Berks County, Pa. Sometimes she talks to her customers about what they're going to do after they load their three gallons of farm fresh milk in their and minvans.

Well, maybe they're going to drop the kids off at soccer practice and violin lessons, get the dog groomed, stop at Walmart and maybe stop for a quickie lunch before heading home to put that milk in the fridge. And it's maybe July. So maybe they were really planning to have three gallons of yogurt when they got back to the house, but probably not.

So maybe, Lolly Lesher told the first meeting of the Governor's Food Safety Council last week in Harrisburg, part of the food safety problem revolves around consumer  education.

Or turn that "maybe" into a "definitely yes."

Welcome to the Kids' Korner. Lancaster Farming's Section B editor Anne Harnish has put together a nice compilation of our youngest readers' thoughts and artwork. Check it out on page B4 of the edition due out Saturday.

Ever see a camel acting like a puppy? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWUK05j7Po