Editor鈥檚 note: This was originally published May 30, 2005.
Some time back I saw a bumper sticker that read, 鈥淚f you can read this, thank a teacher.鈥 I quietly mumbled, 鈥淎men.鈥
Jeepers Creepers, where鈥檇 ya get those peepers?鈥 Now there鈥檚 a phrase you probably haven鈥檛 heard for a while. Perhaps you鈥檝e never heard it. The line is from a song recorded by Louis Armstrong in the late 1930s.
As a twice-married man and a father, I have been made fully aware of all my faults. One of those faults is my temper. Over the years, I have learned to control that temper鈥 until someone pushes all the right buttons.
As a mere lad of 60 years with some semblance of youth, or as some would say 鈥渄enial,鈥 I wrote about meeting the challenges of growing old in a column entitled 鈥淪even Ways to Grow Old Gracefully.鈥
Fitting the pieces of a farm transition puzzle together can be challenging. Like a puzzle, you need to find the corner pieces first, then the outer straight edges to frame up the foundation.
David and his two grandsons decided to take the afternoon off and go to the county fair.
People who study those things tell us that the sense of smell is most closely related to our memory. An odor or fragrance can trigger a memory more quickly, they say, than sound, sight, touch or taste.
Unless the spigot shuts off in July, this ought to be a banner hay season across the upper Midwest.
The morning sun shined brightly through the front window of a newer house on the corner of a city block. Herman and his wife had moved there less than a year ago.
- By John Shutske, University of Wisconsin
You may have heard the latest buzz about a technology that will forever change the worlds of business, communication, entertainment, education and 鈥 agriculture. We鈥檙e talking about massive advancements in artificial intelligence or 鈥淎I.鈥
When I was about 11 years old, I subscribed to Boy鈥檚 Life magazine, the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. I was not a member of the Boy Scouts, but I enjoyed the magazine.
Editor鈥檚 note: Today鈥檚 Farm and Ranch Life article is written by a guest author in Montana, Darla Tyler McSherry. She founded the Ask in Earnest initiative to provide resources about preventing suicide.
My Saturday nights in the late 1950s were unexciting. Pre-pubescent me turned 10 years old in January 1958, so Saturday nights were spent at home with my parents and three younger brothers (two sisters came later).
Albert Einstein once profoundly stated, 鈥淚 fear the day that technology will surpass human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.鈥
It was the same story repeated over and over again. The successful older farmer, who is now between 60 and 65, looking to see if there is a way to continue the farming operation with one of his children.
As Julie鈥檚 family opened gifts on the most recent Christmas Eve, I was delighted to watch 13-year-old granddaughter Eliza open her gift from us. She told Julie earlier in the year that she wanted a phonograph and two long-play albums for Christmas.
During a January blizzard, a farmer whom I didn鈥檛 know called me. He said he reads my columns regularly.
- By Rick Haun
Thanks to ever-expanding farms and ever-tighter planting windows, wide-working, acre-devouring planters have become the norm. In fact, a new generation of 120-foot 48-row planters can knock out up to 800 acres a day or better when conditions are right and everything鈥檚 clicking.
Years ago I considered writing a book about funny things that happen in church. 鈥淎 Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven鈥 would make a good title, I thought. Of course, I never got around to writing it.
Two years ago, I wrote a column about the 鈥渟morgasbord of options鈥 for farmland transition. That column compared the smorgasbord in my childhood at Dickey鈥檚 Prairie Home restaurant in Packwood, Iowa, to the options in land transition.
- By Tabitha Kuehn, Iowa鈥檚 Center for Agricultural Safety and Health
Many young farmers have a mentor they learn from and look up to. Grandparents, parents, siblings, first bosses, ag teachers and more can all provide valuable life and farm lessons.
Editor鈥檚 note: This is the second part of a column that began last month. Find it on our site here.
Any way you measure it, Iowa is a livestock juggernaut. It is a top 10 state for dairy production, No. 1 in egg and hog production, in the top 10 for turkeys, and just outside the top 10 for beef cattle. That鈥檚 a lot of critters and mountains of manure.