Columns

Planting-mania: Farmers catch up (exactly how many 32-row planters are there in Iowa!?)

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 by Marlin Clark

How serious is the late planting? Depends upon the source of the opinion. (Hint, the trade is not all that concerned.)

As you’re planting, remember FSA deadlines

Thursday, May 16, 2013 by FSA Andy

Hello Again! Is your corn in the ground? Is your wheat ready for the bin? Are you prepping for beans yet? Are you just a bit busy right now? With all this sunshine and the days getting longer you’re still not done? You know there’s hay to mow, hogs to slop, eggs to gather, a [...]

You’ll know it when you see it

Thursday, May 16, 2013 by Alan Guebert

In the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart wrote a concurring opinion he hoped would establish a legal standard that protected every American’s right to free speech yet guarded “community standards” against “hard core pornography.” That competing interest, Stewart wrote, was difficult to balance because it was difficult to define [...]

Winners, losers and eighth place

Thursday, May 16, 2013 by Other News

Blue for first, red for second, third is white, fourth is yellow and fifth is green. By the time they blow past the primary colors and into the decorator shades of award ribbons, it’s fair to say you probably didn’t exactly excel at whatever it is that you’ve done. Burgundy may, in fact, be the [...]

Young man persists, despite hardships

Thursday, May 16, 2013 by Judith Sutherland

Sometimes the most impressive lives bear unspeakable sorrow but the story is told with a glow of perseverance, or simply never told at all. — Margaret Allenwood, 1902   Part II (See Part I) Anna Chloe spent her life with a steely determination to accomplish farm and house work. Her somber presence stood in stark [...]

Meet the vireo, a singing bird of its own kind

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 by Scott Shalaway

During spring migration, warblers get lots of attention. Most are brightly colored and sing loud distinctive songs. Yellow warblers, for example, are common, beautiful, and easy to find. But other, less spectacular groups are equally interesting. Vireos, for example, are less brightly colored and usually more difficult to see. Often they are heard before they [...]

Put-in-Bay events commemorate battle of Lake Erie

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 by Mike Tontimonia

On an crisp autumn day in the year 1813, Admiral Oliver Hazard Perry, in just his late 20s, altered national history and spawned a coming international peace when he launched his just-completed small fleet of tall ships from Put-in-Bay to attack an English fleet of war ships in what has become known as the Battle [...]

HSUS creates its own Ohio ag council to try and gain farming ‘street cred’

Thursday, May 9, 2013 by Susan Crowell

I wasn’t going to write about it. I truly wasn’t. I was going to let last week’s news story by reporter Kristy Seachrist stand on its own, and let readers read between the lines for themselves about how the Humane Society of the United States was creating a new agriculture advisory council in Ohio “to [...]

FSA Andy talks planting season

Thursday, May 9, 2013 by FSA Andy

Hello Again! It took a while, but I think winter has finally lost its tenuous grip on us. The smells of spring are fully upon us now. Newly mown grass, lilacs in bloom and, yes, that favorite scent of spring for a farmer, the smell of newly worked soils. Planting in the area is well [...]

Papa was a farmer

Thursday, May 9, 2013 by Judith Sutherland

“She would gather the eggs in her apron, studying each one, deciding whether this one was a keeper egg or one she would take to town to sell for pennies. Her husband, fortunately, was blessed with the patience of Job, remaining quiet as his wife pinched a nickel until it turned in to a dime.” [...]