For my next trick, I will make this milk check disappear...

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