Yesterday I was mulling over the economics of powering my house with photovoltaic shingles on my roof. Such shingles do exist, they're looking more and more like regular shingles, and the costs have come down in recent years and months. But they're not quite ready for my roof, After googling a lot of  possibilities, it seems it would require too many shingles for my 1,800kwh monthly need, or they're too expensive or they don't really look like shingles.

So I checked out the decent looking solar panels offered by OkSolar (OkSolar.com). They have a model that puts out 580 kwh under average conditions (which means something different in Phoenix than it does in Boston, of course), so I would need three of these particular panels for my house. They cost $17,996 apiece, let's call it $18,000.  So for $54,000, my roof could be my power plant.

That's not as bad as I thought it would be. At 17 cents per kwh - which is where my light bill is headed - the system would pay for itself in 15 years. State and federal energy tax credits, dealer incentives and other factors would no doubt bring the cost down.

That's close to the five-year payoff I would need to convince me to install a solar system, but it's not close enough. Our current occupant wants the country to move towards energy self-sufficiency.  That goal might be as close as our roofs, and could justify the expense and national focus of a Manhattan-style project.

Ethanol is not the culprit in high food prices, according to a telephone gathering last week of prominent farm groups.  Officials from the American Farm Bureau, National Farmers Union, National Corn Growers Association and Growth Energy pretty much agreed that supermarket prices remained high while commodity prices were shrinking. High energy prices and an army of middlemen between farmers and retailers were cited during the teleconference. Special Sections Editor CharleneShupp Esbenshade reports of the conference in the current issue of Lancaster Farming.

How does your garden sound? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfYt7vRHuY

Solar shingles should be a hot topic when we're talking about alternative energy. Think of all the roofs in this country and around the world. To be civilized is to live under a roof. To be civilized is also to pollute. People who don't live under roofs aren't civilized. They also don't pollute on the grand scale of a forty-something's American family with a home roof, a house-at-the-shore roof, three cars, a pickup, motorcycle, a couple of scooters and a riding mower big enough to to take care of a football field, just to mention the outside possessions.

Couldn't we power everything we need just by capturing the energy that falls on our roofs? What's so hard about that?  Actually, I think if we had the will, we could find a way. The southern exposure on my bilevel has a roof surface of about 45-by-15 feet, or about 675 square feet. If you have a barn, a laying house, an equipment shed, your roof footage dwarfs mine.

With the rate caps coming off my electric bill sometime next year, I thought it would be a good time to look at the cost of solarizing my southern exposure roof.  Electricity powers my heating, cooling, hot water and everything else in my house.  I use about 1,800 kilowatt-hours per month and currently pay 11 to 12 cents per kwh. I expect that will go to about 17 cents when the rate cap is off.

Suppose I wanted to produce my monthly 1,800 kwh from my 675 square feet of southern exposure, and do so with a solar installation that would pay for itself in five years or less. If I stay connected to my utility, I'll be buying 108,000 kwh over that five year period, at a  cost of 17 cents per kwh or a total of $18,360.  So, can I install a system that will take me off the grid, and do it for $18,360? 

Well, I just don't know.  I'll think about, do some more figuring, and get back to you tomorrow.

Direct-to-chef marketing is a satisfying success for Bob Kiley, owner and operator of RSK Farm in Prattsville, N.Y. It's satisfying not just for the business, but because Kiley like to cook, he likes to eat and he likes hanging out with chefs. Lancaster Farming's Central New York correspondent Maegan Crandall writes about Kiley's venture in the current edition of Lancaster Farming.

Spring! Boing! Leap!...Cute lambs fooling around, plus a short lesson in how to overdo a video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvkSbDYmfqo

Farmer suicides have skyrocketed in the Indian state of Chattisgarh, where farmers have been been feeling increasingly hopeless about mountainous debt. The indebtedness has been linked to a falling water table by many, to the adoption of genetically modified cotton by others. Whatever the reason, 1,500 farmers in Chattisgarh have killed themselves according to recent news reports. While the span of time wasn't discernible from the reports - whether it was a day, a week, a month or a year - 1,500 is a tragic number.

In the U.S., more than 900 male farmers in the Upper Midwest committed suicicide in the 1980s,
at a rate that was double that for the general population of American men. The decade was a particularly stressful time for farmers, with record indebtedness, unstable prices, declining land values and drought. There were thousands of foreclosures and bankruptcies. With today's headlines virtually echoing those of the '80s, farm organizations and leaders are on alert about farmers' mental health.

When a modern farmer does commit suicide, there's some thought that he has been overwhelmed not by his debt load, but by the fact that he has ceded so much control over his business. Swine producers and poultry growers, in particular, might be seen as mere hired hands because they don't own the animals in their care. Those farmers, however, are in total control of how well the chickens and pigs fare. If a farmer's animals do well, he does well. He may not hit the top of the market, but he doesn't have to worry about the bottom.

Whether contract growers or not, guaranteed a modest profit or totally at the mercy of the marketplace, these are tough times for anybody in agriculture. Let's hope we've learned from the tragic experiences of the 1980s. What's true right now in India on a large scale is true here in the U.S., albeit with a smaller number of reported suicides.

Suicide can be about a lot of things, but with a farmer in particular, it is often about money.

PFB pres objects to ag budget cuts...Pennsylvania Farm Bureau President Carl Shaffer told a gathering of PFB members in Guthriesville last week that he was unhappy about the way farmers are being treated in the current budget. Other state programs have been cut an average of 8 percent, while ag is getting hit with 17 percent cutbacks. Staff writer Chris Torres reports on Shaffer's speech in the current edition of Lancaster Farming.

Things you hope you never have to say...Everything I know about using a chain saw I learned the hard way.

The funniest dog trick I ever saw...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalB-CvO7Qc (Thanks, Judy.)

Corn and wheat exports are enjoying a miniboom, which is good news for grain farmers, but not necessarily a bright light for the rest of the economy, according to a report this week in the New York Times.

Rising prices and the falling dollar have both contributed to the rise in exports, but as long as commodity prices are on an economic rollercoaster - which has been the case ever since the Phonecians started trading up and down the Nile - any movement up is shadowed by the threat of a movement down.

A remarkable thing about the current bright spot is ethanol. “What amazes me,” said Robert L. Thompson, an agriculture specialist at the University of Illinois, “is that we have been able to greatly increase corn exports while also using it for ethanol. Only by increasing the acreage devoted to corn have we been able to do this, and by squeezing down the use of corn for domestic livestock feed.”

Renaissance farmer, modern businessman. Jack Lazor farms with old-fashioned techniques but modern business practices - like figuring out what the market wants and then providing it - on 310 acres in Vermont. He grows old grain varieties and markets organic yogurt from his 30-cow herd. You can read about his enterprise in Saturday's edition of Lancaster Farming.

If you can't make it to the alpaca show this week in Harrisburg...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gZ0x8AVaBI

Earth Day was yesterday. And I didn't blog about it because, well...I forgot. It's not that I'm inattentive to what it was all about. Or that I don't care about the environment. I do care. I recycle. I drive a four-cylinder car and a four-cylinder pickup (which I'd love to trade in for an eight-banger monster, and an extended cab and Godzilla-sized tires), and I turn my thermostat down in the winter and sweat a lot in the summer...

But you can't forget. Not if you make your living in agriculture. I'm an attentive watcher from the sidelines, but my necessary vehicle is a computer keyboard, not a tractor. If I were a dairyman facing a tax on my cows because they produce methane from both ends, I'd be angry and fearful for my future and the future of agriculture. There's been talk of a cow tax, and the EPA - at least somebody in the EPA - is toying with the idea.

A recent report in the New York Times observes that there is probably more smoke than fire in the cow tax issue. Peter Gregg, speaking on behalf of the New York Farm Bureau, said, “You could take all of our cows together and they probably wouldn’t have the same effect on the atmosphere than the average traffic jam on the Tappan Zee Bridge.”

Having suffered through a number of those Tappan Zee jamups, I can honestly say I'd rather be surrounded by thousands of cows than a bridgeful of stalled New York drivers gunning their Jaguars and their BMWs and honking their horns and spewing their stinky exhausts and waving with one finger to the folks around them.

Yes. Give me cows anytime over those drivers.  Cows are more polite. And they smell better.

Common sense clearly doesn't apply in traffic jams. It doesn't always apply in politics, either, especially when it comes to environmental issues. Let's hope it applies to a cow tax. So let's give a cheer for common sense when it comes to cows, and a loud belch or two in support. And any other noise you might care to make.

Wait a minute...could they tax us?

Next Wednesday I'm scheduled for a full day in the office to take a stab at reporting on some of the markets that Millie Bunting has been watching for more decades than I feel comfortable mentioning without her permission. When Millie looks at the market reports she sees trends, old friends and new, fascinating stories from just yesterday and long ago, auctions that have opened in the last few years and others that are gone for good. She makes sense of the 200 pieces or so that come in every week by email and fax, and turns them into a finished puzzle. Me, I look at the market reports and I see a bunch of numbers. But Millie wants a day off every now and again, and I've been tagged as an understudy, emphasis on under. So think of me come Wednesday. And wish me luck.

This is how they do "Got Milk?" in Ontario...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFf6E-42Se4 (Thanks, Tracy.)

Charles F. Morris of Hanover, Pa., takes Lancaster Farming and the entire environmental movement to task for blind acceptance of wind power as an energy source of the future. His heartfelt explanations of why everyone is wrong about the wind make for a thought-provoking opinion piece on page A11 of the current issue.

It's easy to dismiss strongly opinionated rants as the work of a fringe element, and you do hear a lot of noise from the fringes, Michael Moore on the left, Rush Limbaugh on the right. But Charles F. Morris of Hanover, Pa., isn't getting paid, we assume, to espouse his point of view. I, for one, respect the fact that he is willing to express his views in such a public forum at a time when those views are so at odds with so much of public opinion.

Is he right? Is he wrong? I don't know. He has certainly done a lot of reading to dig up a host of negative opinion about the perils and unfilled expectations of wind power projects. But he must have come across some positive comments while he was on his hunt for the negative. Should he have balanced his piece with at least some mention of the positive?

Maybe, but you know what? Balance can be so boring. As journalists we're obliged to tell both sides of a story, or all three sides or however many sides there are. Try as we might to juice up a story with personal anecdotes, interesting asides, eye-catching graphics and catchy headlines, telling the whole story in a professional, well-crafted way is, a lot of times, more work than fun.

I hope Mr. Morris had fun while he was writing his piece, I hope hot blood was rushing through his veins while he was doing it and I hope he felt a sense of elation when he pushed the "send" button on his computer. Most of the time when I push the "send" button I feel a sense of mild accomplishment and relief that I'm done with that one. But I have felt the elation and it's a good feeling.

What Mr. Morris did for me is he made me stop and think about this whole wind power thing. While I feel in my gut that he's on the wrong side of the issue, I expect that I'll be reading about alternative energy initiatives from now on with a fresh and, I hope, more objective point of view.

In another opinion piece in the current issue, Tracy Sutton, Lancaster Farming zone editor suggested a new glamour job for recent graduates. How about farming, she asks. It's a thought provoker, too, and it's on page A8 of the current issue.

Butt Bunny takes on a goat...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lun3zgYrMPU

I never wanted to be a soldier. As a 19-year-old college dropout with some vague notion of "I just want to write for a living," I was ready for some kind of adventure, maybe even public service. In 1960, there was a public service avenue open to me, and it was the military. In that year, we were at peace with the world.

Well, we knew that the Russians might blow us up at any moment, but nobody was shooting at us and we weren't shooting back. I was totally convinced we would never go to war again - I was 19, naive, full of hope, which is what you're supposed to be at 19, and which I never quite outgrew - but the draft was still in effect. I was subject to the draft until the age of 27, and couldn't bear the thought of waking up to that dark cloud every morning for the next eight years.

But I had this notion that it's not right for me to kill people. Even if it's another 19-year-old soldier in another color uniform speaking another language, it wouldn't be right for me to kill him. So for reasons both practical (practically, my chances of survival as some bloodthirsty commie had me in his sights while I was pondering great issues of right and wrong would have been about nil), and philosophical (it's just flat-out wrong to kill people), I tried to substitute some kind of alternative service for the military.

At the time, I couldn't become a conscientious objector just by saying I didn't believe in killing. I had to be a member of a particular kind of church and, if memory serves, I would have needed a letter from a church official saying that I honestly, truly, really didn't believe in killing people, odd as that may have seemed to the sergeants and generals. Much as I admire the Amish, Mennonite, Quaker and other peace churches, I felt it would be cynical in the extreme to join a church to avoid the draft.

I tried to apply for a CO program I'd heard about, where I would have participated in a thermal stress experiment. My understanding was that I'd have lived in my shorts for two years, freezing part of the time and sweating rivers the rest of the time. But I didn't have the CO credentials I would have needed - maybe that program was an urban myth, anyway - so I gave up, volunteered for the draft, and was inducted into the U.S. Army in August of 1960.

It was, I must say, a maturing and positive experience. True, in basic training I had to shoot a gun (excuse me, a rifle) at a dummy that looked like a man, stick another dummy (this one had a painted-on face) with a bayonet and throw a hand grenade at a target with an imaginary dummy in it. And when I got to my official job, first as a chaplain's assistant then as a personnel specialist, I really could have killed somebody, but I would've had to throw my typewriter at the enemy.

It was a brute.  A 40-pound Remington manual.  I could have killed a cow with it.

But, while I wanted to serve my country, I never wanted to be a soldier.

That's why I was pleased to hear of the expanded AmeriCorps program. It is not compulsory, it is bipartisan and I really believe it can help make our country a better place. Both houses of Congress have approved the bill to expand the program, and the President is set to sign it today.

I feel good about that. I hope you do too. 

Will work for free. J. Loren and Wanda Yoder sold the cows from the Belleville, Pa., farm last fall and hit the road with a mobile canning factory owned by the Mennonite Central Committee. They made a two-year commitment to travel 20,000 miles to 33 different sites throughout the U.S. and Canada. At each site they will lead a crew of volunteers to put up as much as 6,720 cans of beef, pork and turkey for distribution to the needy. It's an amazing story, and Lancaster Farming Reporter Lou Ann Good tells it in section B of the current issue.

"I did not say "gutterball," Governor Bush, "I said "Butterball." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSDhSa2NxYc

 In one of northern Chile's sunniest corners, a quartet of solar-powered irrigation systems is providing water to farmers when they need it, and energy to the grid when the pumps aren't running.  Each of the four systems can produce up to 500 watts of power, enough to provide water for as much as two-and-a-half acres. The systems were developed by a team consisting  of Chile's National Energy Commission, the Agriculture Ministry and the regional government.  The northern desert region, with its abundant sunlight, is also the setting for residential solar projects, and the planned site of a 10 megawatt, $40 million solar generation plant that would be the country's first such installation. For more information about that project, go to      http://ecoworldly.com/2008/07/16/chile-bets-on-solar-power/ It's interesting to note that solar projects are gaining traction not just in the U.S., but around the world.

Last year at this time, dairymen were receiving $20 per hundredweight for their milk. This year, in some cases, Mid-Atlantic dairy farmers are seeing payments for half that amount. Lancaster Farming's special sections editor and a dairy farmer herself, talks about shrinking milk checks in this week's edition.

Had a  technical problem with Friday's end-of-the-blog funny bit, so in case you missed Johnny playing with his broccoli, here it is again...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GabHGlGm14

This was farmland in the 1800s and maybe in the early part of the 20th century. Now this stone fence that once separated fields or defined a property line near New Hampshire's White Mountains is just a reminder of the state's agricultural past. In Pike this week for a family visit, I'm reminded every time I walk through the woods that cows used to graze where I now roam. The state's population shifted, people moved away, farming practices changed, and trees gradually returned to the fields.  Once 80 percent farmland, New Hampshire is now 80 percent forested, and has been credited by environmentalists with absorbing and sequestering tremendous amounts of carbon that would otherwise be accumulating in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and contributing to climate change.

Cows have been called walking smokestacks because of the amount of methane they produce. Cows are the single largest component of the dairy industry's carbon footprint. The U.S. Dairy and Dairy Management Inc.'s Innovation Center in Rosemont, Ill., is working on a project to reduce cows' methane production by 25 percent.  You can read about the project in tomorrow's edition of Lancaster Farming.

Johnny, for the last time, STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR BROCCOLI!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GabHGlGm14