Columns

During a long-ago interview, the great grandson of a Kansas homesteader noted that only a handful of the 40 or so families who staked out farms with his family a century before remained after three years of disease, drought and death.

I was talking to a sweet woman one day this past week, and she mentioned that her little Westie dog is getting old and feeble.

What does it feel like to face foot-and-mouth disease? What does it feel like to have your farm quarantined? To have an entire geographic region closed to animal movement? To lose generations of livestock genetics in the blink of an eye? To receive little compensation for dumped milk or for meat? For all we know about farming here in the United States, we know little about the terror, the frustrations, of farming in the midst of a major animal disease outbreak.

They are to stand in three (almost) straight lines on the shiny wooden floor. Tennis shoes screech loudly in that nails-on-chalkboard yet oddly satisfying way that they sometimes do on gymnasium floors, as 46 feet swivel into position.

My friend Judi and I discussed plans for our club: delegating, decorating, and, of course, our talks almost always lead to food.

Corn silage is in and combines are running everywhere. When corn and beans are dry and the ground is fit to drive over, a good manager knows it is time to attend to these tasks.

Maybe the unseasonably hot temperatures that blistered the Midwest most of September can be traced to global warming, solar flares or the high volume of hot air blowing westward from Washington.

Last week, I talked with a wise fellow who has witnessed many changing seasons. We discussed how unseasonably hot it has been for October as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

When a Kentucky reader stopped by Farm and Dairy's booth at Farm Science Review, we chatted a bit about the extreme dry conditions down there, and the lack of pasture and feed for livestock.

Even above the 6 o'clock newscast I could hear an insistent voice - that of a chickadee calling over and over, and loudly, from the back porch.