A trio of undergraduates at the University of Rochester in New York have turn used used cooking oil from fryers in the the school's dining halls into fuel for the shuttle buses that carry students and faculty throughout the campus. The oil is mixed at a four-to-one ratio with regular diesel and requires no engine modifications on the buses. Three undergraduate students (David Borelli, Dan Fink and Eric Weissman) coordinated the entire project. Their first bus will ferry students and faculty to their biodiesel lab for a tour of the facility. Not only will the project recycle cooking oil, it is itself composed of recycled components scrounged from around campus - a used processor, tanks and pumps. Biodiesel and other alternative fuels, whether from fast food byproducts or straight from farm fields, is a great idea for any number of reasons, but it is going to need smart people with practical experience, like the Rochester Three, to turn today's visions into tomorrow's everyday realities.

From teacher to journalist to farmer. Carl Groff's career journey has landed him back on the home farm outside Kirkwood in Lancaster County. He has 25 greenhouses with 1,700 varieties of perennials, 400 kinds of flowering shrubs, and customers up and down the East Coast. Two secrets to his success are word-of-mouth advertising and no credit cards. A story about Groff's Plant Farm is in the Ag Innovations section of the current issue of Lancaster Farming.

How to get a little too close to your horse...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teHfyby_veU

Money is a strange and wonderful and horrible and useless and powerful thing. An economist might stand in front of your annual co-op get-together and tell you and your neighbors that his specialty is a science. But then watch his eyes as they dart quickly from side to side to see if anybody's snickering. It's not a science like physics is a science. Drop a bowling ball from a 50-story building and physics can pretty much tell you what's going to happen when it hits the sidewalk. But if a company, like say, AIG, runs itself so far off a cliff that it can't afford to pay its light bill, much less meet payroll, and should seriously shut itself down, well, then, economics might say, "Now wait a minute, what could happen here..."

I started thinking about money when I read a letter to the editor in this week's Lancaster Farming.  It was from C. Arnold McClure of Shirleysburg, Pa., who took issue with Tom Maurer of Annville, Pa., who wrote in to say that for trade to be profitable, somebody has to cheat. Not so, said McClure. Farmers buy seed for pennies and turn it into products that sell for dollars.  Or they take a $70 feeder calf and turn it into a steer that sells for over a thousand dollars. That's where money comes from, said McClure. From trade.

Well, yes it does. But...I first realized how mysterious money is some years ago when I wanted to buy a camera, but didn't have enough money. It was a time when credit cards were a bit of a rarity.  So I went to my neighborhood bank, explained my situation, and got a small loan. But the banker didn't give me cash or even a check. He just took my checking account passbook - I told you it was awhile back - and wrote the sum of $200 into the next blank space. Then he smiled and handed it back to me. And I signed a paper. Then I wondered, "What just happened?" Where did that money come from? I didn't work for it, I didn't give the banker a bred heifer or a chicken, a bushel of corn or a bale of tobacco, and I didn't give him a sob story or threaten to hit him on the head. The money actually came from where it came from, the tip of  his ballpoint pen.

That's why I never throw away ballpoint pens.  And that's why money will always be a mystery to me.

Speaking of money mysteries, a couple of poultrymen have been making some extra cash by renting out chicks for Easter. Non-farm families -presumably non-farm families - pay these entrepreneurs $35 or $40 so they can keep a pair of chicks in their split-levels for a couple of weeks.  A story about this enterprise, by Lancaster Farming's food and family features editor, Anne Harnish, appears on page B6 of the current issue.

They're  kute! They're kuddly! They're kricket killers! And somebody needs to put down her camera and find a life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRZzi7PKr1M

It was a conversation about conservation at the Stroud Water Research Center last week. The occasion was a bus trip to the center by a group of Lancaster County ag and civic leaders who were there to spend a day learning about the world's fresh water supply, and the global efforts being made to protect it. During a Q&A after an informative PowerPoint presentation, one of the bus riders stood up to say that education about environmental issues should start early in grade school. I thought she made a good point.  When I was in grade school, we called these studies "geography." I remember it was about people, the climates they lived in, the topography, the native plants and animals, natural resources, crops, transportation...

Everything you wanted to know, if you were paying attention, about people, the ways in which they react and influence the world about them and the ways in which that world influences those who inhabit it. But geography is a word you don't hear in discussions about elementary and high school curricula. I thought maybe the subject is being ignored in colleges, so I checked Penn State's website. How wrong I was.  PSU has an entire geography department and 55 undergraduate courses with "geography" in the title.  Apparently, geography is far from being a dead issue, and I don't know where I got the idea that it was. Maybe I haven't been paying attention.

Food safety is a hot topic in Washington these days.  Tracy Sutton, Lancaster Farming's zone editor, took a trip to Washington last week to attend a Farm Foundation forum on food safety. She found some agreement, more questions than answers, and very few utterances of the word "farm." Her story is in our current issue.

How to jazz up your cow barn...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2tFeWfzQps

There was a tree sale going on yesterday when I went to the Farm and Home Center for the Lancaster Chamber's monthly ag issues forum. It was the Conservation District's 35th annual tree sale and it sent me back a few years. More than a few. I bought a trayful of white pine seedlings at the district's second or third sale - about 1976 if you're into math - and planted them on my three-quarter acre suburban lot. Each 10-inch seedling cost a dime. At home, I picked a random spot for the first tree, dug a hole with a mattock and planted it. Then I threw the mattock over my shoulder. Wherever it landed, the second tree went. And so forth, until there were 50 trees in the ground. Those seedlings now soar over our house. We still live there, and one reason we never left is the trees. I googled my neighborhood the other day, and could pick out my house from space. There's lawn to the east, lawn to the west, a cornfield to the north and a tiny pine forest right in the middle. When I was picking up my trees, there was a 92-year-old guy in line behind me, waiting to pick up his tree order. I thought, "Why would a 92-year-old guy plant trees that are going to take decades to mature?" Now, I think I know.

The Stroud Water Research Center is a world leader in the science of fresh water. It is tucked away - really, really, tucked - in the rolling hills of Chester County.  A busload of Lancaster County ag and civic leaders paid a visit to the center on April 3, and an account of their visit is in this week's Lancaster Farming.

You could sell way more eggs if everybody partied like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRduPZvIm08&eurl

 Sometimes a lot of money. In New Hampshire, for example, if your undeveloped campsite sits on a hill with a sweeping view of mountains, trees and soaring hawks, that vista may add $200,000 to $300,000 to your tax assessment. Property owners were stunned and outraged when the view tax went into effect in 2005. And they're stiill complaining. Imagine! New Hampshire has no sales tax, but I would rather pay 6 percent of $30,000 or so on annual expenditures for restaurants, dog food, a new refrigerator, a set of tires, etc., than an extra $4,000 because of what I can see from my rustic front porch or through my tent flaps on a dewy Granite State morn. And a question people keep asking is, "What if the property owner is blind?" And my question would be, "What if the view is of Vermont?"

A lot of New Hampshirites would rather look at 20 acres of junked cars than any snow-capped Vermont peak. I speak with a tiny bit of authority - my son and his family live in New Hampshire, in a house with a view that fortunately stops in a magnificent stand of white pines 100 yards from their front door. I was reminded of the view issue last Friday on a visit to the Stroud Water Research Center in Chester County. 

The center's director, Dr. Bernard Sweeney, is on a mission to establish riparian buffers on the banks of every stream in the White Clay Creek watershed.  An owner of a property bordering a stream, a restauranteur, asked Sweeney to pay a visit, and took him to a deck overlooking the Chester County countryside.  A stand of newly planted native tree seedlings, like the mighty red oak, was visible low to the ground, between Sweeney, the restaurant owner and the view. "You are going to ruin my million-dollar view," said the property owner. "Your trees are going to cost me money." Sweeney, quite the quick thinker, offered to rip out all the seedlings and plant lower-growing species, like sassafras. Problem solved. Now, if Sweeney wants to take some of those tall-growing seedlings to New Hampshire, he might find some eager buyers.  

Native American orchids can be beautiful additions to your woodlot, farm pond and even that flowerbed beside the barn, according to a story in Section B of this week's LF. But who ever heard of growing indigenous orchids? Dr. William Mathis, for one, proprietor of the Wild Orchid Company in Carversville, Pa. , at www.wildorchidcompany.com. He'll be speaking Monday, April 13, at the Lancaster Men's Garden Club, info at www.lancastergardenclub.org. And if you'd like to see orchids in their natural setting, check out the native gardens at Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, De. Their website is at www.mtcubacenter.org.

Here's what you can do when you're not spending time with TV or the internet. http://donttalkaboutwork.blogspot.com/2009/03/extreme-sheep-led-art.html

There's been a lot of blue sky talk lately about growing your own energy. Tractors that run on straight vegetable oil, in fact, could be on the market within five years. But what about growing your own tires? Science is working on it. Lei Jong and Jeffrey Byars, with the Agricultural Research Service in Peoria, Ill., are refining methods to transform defatted soybean oil into a replacement for carbon black, which is used in tire manufacturing as a pigment and strengthening agent. Carbon black is produced by burning heavy petroleum products to produce a maximum amount of soot. That soot is carbon black, which is messy and carcinogenic. A soybean replacement for carbon black would be more eco-friendly and provide another market for growers.  And, who knows, a used soybean-based 26/12.00-12 might provide enough base for a lifetime supply of chili.

Another way to recycle farm implements. Bob Cage, who lives in South Boston, Va., is a sculptor who uses things like worn out disc parts and plow points to create abstract visions with an agricultural feel. Cage's story appears in the current edition of Lancaster Farming.

Speaking of soybean marketing...these folks may never make it to Carnegie Hall.  Or even your local fire hall. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5rAu02xVOc

Drop for drop, the White Clay Creek in Pennsylvania's Chester County may be the most intensively studied,  wadable, body of water in the world. The Stroud Water Research Center is perched on the White Clay's banks, and ever since 1966, part of the streams flow has gone through one of the center's labs. Fish and insects and everything else that swims, crawls, clings, eats and breathes in the outdoor White Clay acts the same way inside. Last Friday, I tagged along with a group of Lancaster County government and ag leaders as they visited the Stroud. Their mission for the day, fully accomplished, was to learn some of the things the tiny White Clay has taught science about the workings of our water-covered planet. Some of those lessons were learned in micro-environments contained in the world's largest collection of specially fitted Coleman coolers. Bernard Sweeney, the center's president, figured if they were going to buy 600 Coleman coolers at one shot, Walmart should give them a discount. "But we buy 600,000 Coleman coolers a year," the folks at Walmart told him. So the order for Stroud, as befits a water research center, perhaps, was just a drop in the bucket for Walmart.

Down with fences for deer control. Stroud Center researchers study everything about their White Clay watershed, and that includes methods to keep deer from eating tree seedlings planted on stream banks. A 10-foot-high chain link fence will keep deer out of any patch of ground, but at a prohibitive cost. The Stroud scientists think they can keep deer away with a much lower, double fence.  A four-foot-high outside fence separated by two feet from a similar inside fence creates a space that seems to make deer uncomfortable. Maybe because they're claustrophic. Which could be why you never see deer riding in elevators.

Slashing dollars from ag budgets could affect a state's economy for many miles and in many directions from the end of the lane.  Lancaster Farming's Charlene Shupp Esbenshade covered budget hearings in Harrisburg, Pa., last week and reports on what she learned in the current issue. 

Forget about keyboards, passwords, uploads, downloads.  Give me ink on paper. The rustle, the feel, the smell of a newspaper. Easy to navigate. No www//blatherblatherblather.com or dot this or dot that and don't forget that a back slash isn't the same as a front slash. I can read the paper in the back yard, listen to the birds, hear the farmer cutting hay, feel the breeze on my neck.  Or I can lay my magazine down, go for my second cup of coffee and not worry about whether or not I'll be disconnected when I get back.  And if I drop half that cup of joe on my latest edition of Wired, I don't have to worry that I'm going to lose a week's worth of work and a month's worth of salary.

I can stretch. Put my feet up. Shift, when I am not hunched over the altar of the computer gods.  Have you ever noticed how much that position, humbled, hands close together, eyes cast downward, looks like praying? For what?

Oh, and have you ever tucked anything more often than a book under your arm? How good does it feel to have that solid block of knowledge, entertainment, escape, so close to your body? How close do you feel to the contents? To the author? It's almost like having an eye in your armpit.

But I will leave genetic modification for another time.

That said, thanks for stopping by to read my blog. Really. I appreciate it.

I was skeptical of webinars. Then I logged onto a couple of Penn State's "Manure du Jour" sessions. They started in January and wrap up with hour-long lunchtime sessions, 12-1 p.m., on April 9 and 16.  They offer all the advantages of a seminar - knowledgeable speakers, illustrations, even the chance to ask questions - but you can participate at home. Hunched over your computer. Really, they are well worth your time and attention, and they're free.  If you missed the live sessions, they've all been recorded.  Check it out at  www.aec.cas.psu.edu.

There was barely a drizzle misting the windshield when we pulled out of the driveway last Sunday for the 10-minute trip to my brother-in-law's house in Ephrata.  Halfway there, it was like somebody was hurling marbles at our car - big marbles - and then BOOM! Did a tree hit us? Part of a building? Had the wind picked up one of those Holsteins we'd seen and felt sorry for a hundred yards back and thrown her into our car? Whatever it was, it was invisible.  Couldn't see a tree, a cornice or a carcass.  We took shelter in the playground of a little red school house, and five minutes later, we were back to a drizzle.  The next morning, the Honda wasn't working quite the way it should have been, and, after a $1,000 trip to the dealer (Covered by warranty! Yaay!) we discovered the computer was dead. Death by lightning? Who knows? Speaking of struck by lightning...

Pennsylvania ag programs took a hit this week in state budget hearings in Harrisburg. And Washington's Food Safety Modernization Act is creating its own little twisters in the ag community.  Both subjects are covered in Saturday's edition of Lancaster  Farming.

Speaking of twisted, check this out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA1nTaSrfB4