Siren song of home is hard to resist
The usual six-mile drive home from Sunday church took a pleasant turn some weeks ago. As I headed back to the farmette for more...
A vital part of history: the Homestead Act
Already deeply engaged in a bloody war, a young, untested president-- whose thin resume noted but a handful of undistinguished terms in the Illinois...
Farm and Food File: Economic woes piling up
So corn is rockin' north of $7, beans are toyin' with $14, cattle look to be headed to who-knows-where and hogs, well, bacon is sellin' for what steak used to.
Once again, here come the trolls
A day does not pass without some Big Ag chieftain or Capitol Hill yakker parting their perpetually pursed lips to unleash total nonsense on...
Wrong cure, wrong problem
The official name for the group of 12 U.S. House and Senate members charged with finding "at least" $1.5 trillion in cuts to the...
Farm and Food File: Coincidence?
Bloggers might do coincidence; journalists don't. We do irony, maybe even allegory. Sometimes we stray into ennui and pathos. Coincidence, however, features facts that aren't tied as tightly together as we like. My Oxford Desk Dictionary agrees.
A real worker finds something to do
The undercooked thought and overbaked talk that endlessly paralyzes Washington would not have gone far on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth before someone, boss or hired hand alike, would have condemned the yak and urged all to "get to work."
Farm and Food File: Will changing the milk system help?
It's simply isn't true that only nine people in America understand the nation's arcane federal milk price formula. Only four people understand it.
Sliced or diced, baloney is baloney
Rupert Murdoch came before a House of Commons committee investigating the misdeeds of his company’s British newspapers with his heart on his sleeve. He...
Just the facts when it comes to GIPSA
Hedge ’em, hide ’em or howl at ’em, facts are facts. Trim ’em, trash ’em or trip over ’em, they still are facts....
