Our most basic need is food — we can’t alive without it — and we want to spend less money to buy it.

December corn futures gained 9 cents in the last five minutes of trade Monday. Traders seemed to be reacting to fears of lack of harvest progress.
USDA released new harvest numbers after the close that seemed to confirm the bullishness.
December futures had a 24-cent range from high to low Monday. We had a spike […]

When I checked my nest boxes this week, about half were still occupied — by mice. When I gently probed the mass of dried leaves with a stick, it was only a moment before I had a mouse running down my leg.
Deermice and white-footed mice commonly use nest boxes intended for cavity-nesting birds, and […]

Almost before her first cup of government coffee cooled, Christine Varney, the antitrust chief at the U.S. Department of Justice since April 20, tossed the Bush Administration’s antitrust guidelines — described as toothless — out the window.

New collusion cop

There’s a new collusion cop in town, she explained May 9, and DOJ’s “Antitrust Division will […]

Hello friends,
Fall is a wonderful time of year to appreciate how beautiful Ohio and Pennsylvania can be. As my farmers have been working long hours to try to complete their harvests, the fall colors have been just spectacular this year.
Of course, fall weather can be different from day to day, too. I know some […]

Have you ever been to the grocery store or the gas station and had the clerk talk on their cell phone or text a message while trying to take care of you?
It has happened to me and you’ve probably had it happen to you or maybe witnessed it happen to someone else.
Have you […]

One of my very first columns written for Farm and Dairy centered around the topic of my excited impatience as I awaited the birth of my second baby. That baby girl just turned 21 a couple of days ago.
I have come to realize that parenting is very much like living through the seasons. As […]

It is often said that every boy should have a dog. That does sound nice. What I truly believe, however, is that every boy — and girl — should definitely have a barn.

Play
The first barn I vividly remember is my grandmother’s barn. It is the quintessential “big red barn.”

The lower level featured horse […]

Remember when the news was newsworthy?
News, of course, is anything you learn that you didn’t know before. Using that definition almost anything is technically “news” if it’s new to you.
Researchers at Georgetown University, for example, found that caterpillars can “shoot” their feces a distance of 40 times their body length. See there? News! Is […]

Don’t even blink, or everything will be gone.
That fire-red inferno of a maple tree now ablaze in the front yard will be naked.
That birch tree whose fallen foliage will have already made a golden circular skirt on the still-green grass and its bared white arms will plead for a blanket of snow.

Blinding

That silver maple will […]