Death and Tractors

I was going to name this Funeral but Death and Tractors came to mind.  We went to the city yesterday afternoon to be with my Winkle cousins for Aunt Jane's funeral.  The center of the message was giving.  Aunt Jane was a giver, a care giver and worker at church.  It was appropriate her funeral was held at the church of her adult life, the Montgomery Presbyterian Church on Zig Zag Road.  The road is well named.  It zigs and zags over Interstate 71 in Montgomery, near Blue Ash.

She was 7 years younger than dad and died 12 years later to the day.  They both lived good lives, all of the siblings lived good lives.  She took care of her husband Jim, then took care of the 3 sisters she lived with in Florida.  Then she cared for her daughter and grandson until they had to take care of her.  She ended up at Otterbein, the nicest nursing home around her last few years.

A farmer asked what tractor do you pull a 6 row corn planter with.  It was a lively discussion on Machinery Talk 2 days ago.  A younger friend wrote me this;  "Well, I don’t feel so alone!!  What is ironic is most of these guys are very smart folks and probably are more efficient/profitable per acre than the BTO’s!!  I am some what disappointed that they don’t come out of the woodwork too often.  I would much rather read posts about guys trying to figure out how to take 2013 technology and adapt it to work with simple older reliable equipment than to read 15 posts about which is the better semi to buy or where to find a chrome exhaust for brand new tractor or who makes the biggest bestus planter."

I am reminded that over 90% of the commodities are now produced by less than 10% of the farmers or farm operations.  We are in a minority within our own minority!  This even came up at dinner after the funeral.  My family doesn't care for big farms, GMO's or the lack of small, independent farms.  But that's the way it's went in America.  Big Agribusiness is big and we few small farmers left are truly a minority within our own minority.

My family often asks me what is going on in farming since I am the last one left of a long line of farmers.  Our oldest, Matt, is doing a little farming while teaching agricultural science but it's not enough to support his family.  The number of families left where all of the family work on that farm is very, very small.

One friend of the family told me her husband is actually afraid to eat the food available in America!  He thinks genetically modified food and spraying glyphosate on all of the crop ground is not good for America or our health.  Many people fit in that category but there is little they can do about it.  The love the advent of farmers markets and subscribing to a farmer to get their summer produce but that's very incidental still, compared to big agriculture and what we buy at the store and the restaurant.

Male, white, agriculture represents a dying breed!  I am one of them.  Will we survive?  Where will our food come from in just 90 years, the length of Aunt Jane's life?

Ed

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Charity and Humility

My routine is to go to Mass Saturday at 5 and attend my Sunday Morning Sunshine Group at 9 AM on Sundays.  I pass this little well kept cemetery when I go "the back way."   I listen to Sacred Heart Radio on the way and again this morning I heard this wonderful speaker teach me new things.  I was reminded why the wisemen brought gold, frankencense and myrhh.  Gold for a King, Incense for God and Myrhh for victory over death since myrhh was used for embalming.  I thought about charity and humility.  I caught these acts of charity by agribusiness on AgWeb, the Farm Jounal people.

1. AGCO has donated a new Massey Ferguson tractor to Atlanta-based Piedmont Park Conservancy. The tractor, valued at nearly $50,000 including accessories, maintenance and training, will be used for park maintenance and improvements. Piedmont Park Conservancy is a popular urban green space that Atlanta residents have enjoyed for more than 100 years.

2. Syngenta extends its FFA jacket support to 2013. More than a half a million high school students representing all 50 states wear the iconic blue jacket today. Syngenta and its retail partners have been donating $500 at a time to various local FFA chapters since 2008. Over time, that money has added up in a big way—more than $2.6 million has been donated to date.

3. Farm Aid’s grant program tallied up to $532,000 that benefited 67 different family farms in 2012. Farm Aid money is specifically raised to help farm families stay on their land and help build new market opportunities for them.

4. ArborGen donated 75,000 longleaf pine seedlings to the Dixie Plantation, a historic 881-acre property along the Stono River and the Intercoastal Waterway in South Carolina. The donation is expected to strengthen the plantation’s rich ecosystem of longleaf pine forests, wetlands, savannahs and tidal marshes.

5. The Trees for Troops initiative also had a busy 2012. Donations go to providing Christmas trees for military families. This year, the organization delivered more than 121,000 trees to 62 military bases in the U.S. and Middle East, covering every branch of the armed services.

6. ADM employees donate more than 245,000 pounds of food in observation of World Food Day on October 16. Donations were made in 29 communities in six different countries. ADM also announced in October that it was contributing $1 million to Feeding America to fund 30 mobile food distribution units in 21 states.

7. Pork Checkoff's event trailer headed to the East Coast in November to assist in feeding victims of Hurricane Sandy. A total of 9,000 servings (200 boneless loins, 306 boneless half loins, 64 cases of brat patties and two cases of Italian sausage grillers) were distributed to New Jersey residents.

8. Many other companies made monetary donations to Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. Among the notable donations were Bayer CropScience ($150,000) and FMC ($75,000).

9. Burrus Hybrids purchased a raffle ticket to win a custom pink motorcycle named "Fight Like a Girl" for a fundraiser for Illinois-based Shelby Memorial Hospital. Shelbyville resident Steve Koontz constructed the bike for his co-worker, Vicky Wagner, as a fundraising idea for SMH to help offset some of Wagner’s medical expenses when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Burrus beat the odds and won the raffle—and donated it to SMH, who sold it back to Koontz. "This is one of those situations that was totally unexpected, but really ends up making an enormous difference," president Tom Burrus says. "It’s great to see the proceeds directly reaching people who really need the assistance, and need it right away."

10. Monsanto donated $3 million to the Missouri Botanical Garden this past summer. The money will be used to help the World Flora Online project develop the first-ever comprehensive, authoritative and accessible online resource for the world's approximately 400,000 known plant species.
Monsanto has given many $2500 donations to organizations all over the country, including my son's Fayetteville FFA and my wife's work at Turning Point.

11. Time is money, and nearly 22,000 USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Earth Team volunteers gave time to private lands conservation last year, tallying more than 435,000 hours of service on America's farms and ranches. Translated into dollars, the value of those donated services totaled $9.3 million.

12. America’s egg farmers gave nearly 10 million eggs to hungry Americans this past Easter. The fresh eggs were shipped to Feeding America's 78 food banks in 40 states. Since 2008, egg farmers have contributed 60 million eggs in total.

My friend Robert south of here has given a portion of his harvest to the needy as well as farmers across the country.  There are so many good projects.

You and I helped these companies donate that money by buying their product.  Do you feel part of the charitable giving they are doing in your behalf?  Does that influence your purchasing decisions?  How do you handle charity and humility?

Ed

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UPS

Too bad DHL didn't stay in business in Clinton County.  I think they would have been OK in the US market.  I think UPS is overwhelmed.

DHL's move to Clinton County turned out to be disasterous.  I think it did more harm than good but I didn't work there 25 years like Les did so I would have to ask him.  It's hard to believe when I drive by that multi billion dollar world airport sitting nearly empty.  There are so many out of work but DHL had trouble finding enough dependable people.  It's all a sign of a sick society.  UPS seems to be a different story.  I wonder why?

We order lots of things online so their truck is here almost every day, sometimes more than once.  Today I felt sorry for a new kid handed a truck with 150 packages and a county road map.  He asked where Mad River Road is and I said 7 miles to the east and told him how to get there.  Then he asked where McK road was and I said spell it.  McKibben Road, well that is 3 miles west of me.  He said he was time limited and I told him I wish I had time to ride with him, we would knock his load out.  He laughed.

This morning neighbor Neil called to ask for the Newman's phone number.  He wanted them to see the sandhill cranes migrating our way if they were interested.  I need to introduce them to each other, its been years and time just creeps away.  We don't even know our own neighbors.

I work pretty hard at it but I fail, too.  I really wanted to get know Harry Ertel(this is LuAnn's picture of his old windmill where we were just standing so she could take a picture of the sandhill cranes) where the Newman's now live.  I was so busy getting this farm in order I looked across the street one day and the yard was full of cars.  Harry had passed away.  I think it was 04 or 05.  Now my aunt Jane has passed and I haven't seen her since her 90th birthday party nearly a year ago.  I guess I am no better but it doesn't seem like a year ago.

We will go to the city for her services tomorrow and start another busy week.  I don't know how much I can get done before we leave for New Zealand and Australia but there are things I must do!  I must put a check in the hands of a new trucker and lime spreader I haven't used and a check in the hands of a fertilizer vendor.  I can't farm without those materials.

Yesterday a Don Effren called me out of the blue to tell me about his new remote control heliocopter that flies over your field by GPS and takes 4 different kinds of pictures you download after the flight and look at your crop from pictures from visual to UV to NGIV.  It looks very promising to me.  I try to send the files that crept through the Frontier server and remind myself I must get on Road Runner cable.  It's lying outside our frontroom window.

I come up with this new idea of what it feels like in my corn field all season.  I name it Living In Your Fields and I envision camping in a tent with Liam and Corbin and taking temperatures of crop canopy, soil, BRIX readings, all kinds of informational things.  Smelling and touching and feeling and experiencing what a plant does though I am not a plant.  I am the steward of that plant.

Pretty crazy, isn't it?

Ed

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NNTC

LuAnn is OK, thanks for asking.  She was doing her Wii Fit like a champion last night. We had an expensive day yesterday.  The deer crash, my tire slipped on the ice and I mashed our little AC unit outside the porch with Old Red.  Then, I fell getting wood pellets into the house.  I saw the black ice and thought it was melted.  My feet were quickly level with my head.  I first thought there goes the trip, I layed there and hurt so bad.  I move a little, no, I don't think my left hip is broken.  I moved a little more, I don't think my left arm is broken.  In an hour I was feeling much better but 6 feet of 200 lbs plus hits the concrete hard.

Amongst the calamity yesterday Darrell Bruggrink calls from NoTill Farmer calls and we talk about the car crash.  They have that too in Wisconsin but turkeys are worse!  He tells me Kris Nichols is ill and she can't speak.  Dang, I was wanting to hear that Top 40 Under 40 speaker I recommended on microbiology of our soil.  Ed, can you take her place?

I said let's pray for her health.  I reminded him of my ordeal 2 years ago and he agrees on health and prayer.  Then we discussed topics and he said you have spoken on soybeans at the conference in the past, could you talk soybeans?  I said how about What's New In High Yield Soybeans?  I knew he would like that fancy wording and went with it.

I shook up NNTC in 2000 when I accepted my NoTill Farmer of the Year Award sponsored by Syngenta.  I showed them how I modified my old White 5100 planter with the Martin system and used lime, gypsum, fertilizer and biological farming to increase my farming at age 50.  We started NewAgTalk about the same time so we have all grown together(and apart.)

So I post my question to my trusted friends(and enemies) on Crop Talk.  I got excellent answers, just what I was thinking.  Take a minute and read these responses, there is a young guy replying I would like to see get more active on Crop Talk.  Can you pick him out?  His profile says he only had 34 posts when I looked for his name.

Then another young man asked about renting "a bunch of patches" like so many of us have done.  I replied to it.  I am pretty happy with my response to him, too.  I've got my confidence back thanks to Leon in Hawaii, Phred, Farmerrob, Southernokie and others.  Then I read a post about farm planning by my friend Paul up north and I feel even better.

Back to these high yielding soybeans, I have a good outline and comments in the links.  Do you have any others?  Somehow I've got to get my listeners thinking how to add a little calcium each year, balance their nutrients and treat soybeans as their top crop, not the "red headed stepchild."  Cover crops, biology, humates all fit in here somewhere but I know right now weed control is my first issue.  Weeds are eating everyone's lunch.

Ed

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A Deer Hit My Car!

This is not my truck or LuAnn's car but the title is the call I got this morning soon after LuAnn headed east for Hillsboro.  We sure didn't expect that today!  I told her to come home and get my Dakota and she thought I said stay there and call the patrol.  After many hours passed it seemed and after many unanswered calls she called back and said I don't think they are coming, bring the truck and you can take the car home.

The state patrol finally showed up and she said the officer was great and sympathetic.  He said they are getting record calls on deer accidents right now.  I took the car to our lifelong friend Jason Tussey at Tussey Collision and Frame and he says the same thing.  He is backed up too.  He asked why we wouldn't space these out better?

It's funny, I just saw how this topic was my number one all time read blog.  Little has changed but the day and the year!  I would say she hit a 2-300 pounder right in the center of her left headlight, it swung it around and broke the heavy plastic wheel cover, the butt hit the door hard enough it leaks air now.  The front end shimmied noticeably on the way to the body shop.  LuAnn is a very good driver and had the reflexes to miss another potentially fatal accident.

I told Jason he has us well trained.  LuAnn picked up a handful of fur for evidence off the side of the road and put it in the cupholder.  He laughed on that one, we have a family story about a supposed deer accident with no evidence and a dog with fur that looks like a deer!  I forgot to ask but I bet it pushes $3000 for a claim.  It even broke our new $20 coffee mug and I have a story about that too!

The day LuAnn almost got hit head on took out the right headlight and today's deer took out the left one.  The deer cost farmers millions in crop damage and drivers millions in insurance claims.  It could have potentially killed her if it would have come through the windshield and the Rendezvous is built perfectly for that!

So I publicly thank her Guardian Angel, yes we believe in Saints and Angels as they help us every day.  We both laughed too bad it didn't happen to Old Red, my oldest Dakota but it would have really had to have been a bad day for her to be driving that thing!  It hit the newest vehicle in our fleet so we will just grab another vehicle and go.

We are blessed like that.

Ed

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Early

We have been sleeping in and enjoying the holidays.  I told myself I need to get up at 6 this morning but I had a disconnect there somewhere, I woke up earlier than that!  Don't you hate it when that happens?  I have slept in enough this month to kind of enjoy this out of routine happening.

I used to be able to wake up when I wanted to but in my later years it doesn't seem to work as well.  It still works, just not as often and like today, I can be off a couple of hours either way!  I have slept well the last 21 months though since I gave my will to God.

The early bird catches the worm you know, but the worms are safe and snug deep in the soil.  We will get into earthworm habitat next week at the National NoTillage Conference in Indianapolis.  Odette Menard, who brought a bus load of farmers here a few years ago will be speaking about earthworms.  I haven't listened to a good lecture on earthworms for some time so it will be good to get some updated information.

I have one friend who says his worm population has changed since his yield producing levels have went up.  He still has nightcrawlers but he doesn't see the many species of red and other worms he used to see.  I don't understand that relationship, either.  If you start reading this one simple link, you will see we could have a long discussion just on one topic to be presented next week.

I need to go talk to grain merchant, banker and lime spreader so I will finish this later.  I don't want to have a bad day like this fellow:

Ed

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Thanks

I thank all of my readers today for getting me through another year!  I do this as much for myself as anyone but you folks keep me going when the going gets rough or beautiful!  Thanks for the email, cards, letters and pictures.  It is all greatly appreciated!

It's good to know I have friends all over the world keeping track of me.  I didn't make it to midnight last night but LuAnn awoke me with Happy New Year at the end of the guns shooting up and down the road.

We enjoyed the Rose Bowl parade coverage this morning.  RFD has really livened up that parade the last six years!  I really liked the big Oliver pulling the beautiful RFD float this year.  The FFA float was special a couple of years ago but they have all been great.  The Rose Bowl Parade is on our bucket list but I kind of hope the Buckeyes are never the reason we are there to see it!  The Buckeyes would not be favored by Standford.

A young friend called yesterday and asked me about the fertilizer price email I sent out.  He was trying to price fertilizer for next year and we talked about the best price and getting what you pay for.  This is where economy of size can be important and not having to rely on the local dealer for all your needs!

"As we end 2012, fertilizer prices are steady with the past few weeks, but 15-40 dollars cheaper than the Aug.-Sept. prices. I think these lower prices reflect the lack of interest on the farm and the lack of fert. movement due to this summers drought. Prices are the same as last week.

28 325
pot 480
dap 520
map 540
urea 445
62% and 10-34-0 prices are available upon request."

This email got his attention and many others as they price their fertilizer needs for 2013.  It looks like most of the midwest is counting what they spread last year never got used in the drought because fertilizer isn't moving.

I will have some needs and can use everything in that list this year.  Mainly I am thankful for everything I have and not geared up to do much right now.  My wheat will have the first needs but every acre needs something on it right now and this frozen ground with melting snow on it would be ideal to spread lime, gypsum or fertilizer.

"You can't grow it if you don't put it on!"  At least at not the yield levels I am shooting for!  I want my crop roots to look like the pictures in yesterday's blog, not these of a neighbor's corn roots taken in July!

Happy New Year and many more to you and yours and all of us.

Sincerely,

Ed Winkle

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