Monthly Archives: October 2011

Jeff Marshall, pictured, and Jim Espenschied took a break from The New Company in Dover, Ohio and relaxed at Hatchet Lake Lodge in northern Saskatchawan, Canada.

David Theiss, of North Canton, Ohio traveled to Denver with a copy of the Farm and Dairy, to watch his daughter, Deborah Shaffer, of Aurora, Colo., graduate from Bel Rea Institute as a veterinary technician in June.

On the Clark Farm in New Harrisburg, the Murray Grey breed is the way to go for them.

We, in the agricultural community, would like to remind you that every day is "food day" and celebrating should be done with each meal, whether the food comes from your garden, farmers market, grocery store or the local food pantry.

It takes so many plants to make a stand, cows to make a herd and drops to make a rain. Before turning that herd out to pasture, you look for enough plant mass to support their grazing. If you’re watching a couple of bred heifers for a month, you might as well be watching 20 or 30.

Insurance can be a great form of protection for the unforeseeable. The Farm Service Agency offers the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program, which provides financial assistance to producers that plant non-insurable crops and suffer a low yield, a loss of inventory, or prevented planting occurs due to a natural disaster.

It seems harvest time came very quickly this year. It was by all means a very unusual summer. Just about the time you made plans to either plant or harvest, we had to deal with rain.

When Chairman Frank Lucas gaveled the full House Ag Committee to order Oct. 12, aggies who depend on commodity futures markets to price their crops, livestock and dreams might have thought the hearing would center on what its title suggested: "To Review Legislative Proposals Amending Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." The hearing would do no such thing.

Sometimes life is full of amazing little surprises, though it takes a bit of looking to find the best ones. For those of you who have read my column for many years, you might recall that my family endured a house fire in the winter of 2000.

October brings two wildlife concerns to mind -- feeding birds and avoiding deer on the highway.