Downy woodpecker
"I am heartbroken for this man and his family. It is absolutely true that you get up every single morning worrying about being able to get by, how you will pay for ever more expensive necessities with an ever shrinking milk check. It is county tax time right now and I am sure plenty of farmers have a tax bill sitting on their desk like something radioactive, glowing in the back of their minds like a nightmare…waiting for them to figure out how to deal with a bill that will probably take more then two milk checks, which are already needed for grain bills and power bills and last year’s crop inputs. etc……..
We are losing something priceless and irreplaceable in this country, as our farmers give up in one way or another and our farmland turns into housing developments and malls….. and most people won’t even notice until it is all gone."
Cottontail
Box elder
Hot Showers and Warm Toes
River Grape...
"A meeting of cattle organizations representing the beef, dairy and marketing sectors
was held in Kansas City, Missouri, November 4-5, 2009. The participating organizations agreed that a livestock identification plan for the cattle industry should be singularly specie specific because of the diversity in the way cattle are raised, marketed and processed. This system must be based on the following principles:
1. Additional costs to the beef and dairy industry must be minimized.
2. Any information relative to cattle identification information should be under the
control of state animal health officials and be kept confidential.
3. The system must operate at the speed of commerce
4. Brucellosis/Tuberculosis surveillance and control should be the model upon which
to build an interstate movement identification program.
a) Additionally, existing programs within our industry have proven to be
historically successful in livestock identification. These programs should be
recognized and utilized. [The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal
Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) February 2009 study of “Cattle
Identification Practices on U. S. Beef Cow-calf Operations” reported that there
is currently a high level of some form of cattle identification in cow-calf
operations in the United States. The survey of 24 major beef producing states
represented 79.6 percent of U.S. operations with beef cows and 87.8 percent
of U.S. beef cows. The study found that two-thirds of the operations (66.1
percent) used some form of individual identification on at least some cows.
Overall 79.1 percent of all beef cows surveyed were individually identified by
one or more methods, with 58.6 percent of the beef cows using an official
identification, such as a Brucellosis vaccination ear tag.]. Nearly half of the
operations (46.7 percent) used at least one form of individual animal
2 identification on calves, which accounted for 64.8 percent of calves being
individually identified. 61.3 percent of all cattle and calves had some form of
herd identification.]
b) The cattle industry recognizes that improvements can be made to these
programs and is committed to systematically improving the coverage, speed
and accuracy of these processes.
5. Any enhancements of historical identification systems must be phased-in over a
proper time-frame.
6. The first step in improving cattle identification is the individual identification of adult
cattle (breeding age cattle 18 months or older, excluding those going into terminal
feeding channels) by using the historically established federal and state cattle
disease programs as models, such as the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis programs
as they existed prior to any NAIS modifications. The goal is to accomplish this
voluntarily for all adult cattle changing ownership by 2015. (As we accomplish the
adult cattle goal as an industry, we commit to evaluating the phased-in addition of
other ages of cattle based on an industry evaluation of the cost/ benefits, feasibility
and value to continually improving U.S. cattle herd disease surveillance, control
and eradication.)
7. Producers must be protected from liability for acts of others after cattle have left
their control.
8. The purpose should be solely cattle disease surveillance, control and eradication.
The only data required to be collected should be that necessary to accomplish this
goal.
9. Maintain the historical state flexibility allowing State Animal Health Officials
discretion in assigning an identifier for the person responsible for livestock.
10. The 48-hour Foot and Mouth Disease traceback model is currently unachievable.
The goal of this program should be to enable the cattle industry, state and federal
animal health officials to respond rapidly and effectively to animal health
emergencies.
11. Renewed emphasis on preventing the introduction of foreign animal diseases of
concern.
12. We support the flexibility of using currently established and evolving methods of
official identification.
"About 99 percent of America's farms are family owned, Norton said, so the idea that there are these large corporate farms engaged in factory farm is really a myth.
"Sure there are bad apples," Norton said. "There are bad apples in every bunch, but people never look at the good stuff. They only look at the bad stuff. Only the bad stuff makes the news."
"American farmers have fed and clothed American families for more than 200 years and we're the leaders in the world in providing food and fiber," Norton said. "We're not going to let people not part of our industry tell us how to raise our animals healthy. We're already doing that."
!Drip!
This is my garden pond (for FC, who has ice too...ice which I envy very much). Those marks are where I tried (and failed) to use my trusty hatchet to chop a place to set the venting heater...guess I waited just a little too long this year....
"The delegates approved a special resolution stating that cap-and-trade legislation would raise farmers’ and ranchers’ production costs, and the potential benefits of agricultural offsets are far outweighed by the costs to producers. Due to these and other concerns, the delegates strongly opposed “cap and trade proposals before Congress” and supported “any legislative action that would suspend EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.”
“As Congress returns to the issue of cap-and-trade this year, the message of Farm Bureau will continue to be: ‘Don’t Cap Our Future’ agricultural productivity and food security,” said AFBF President Bob Stallman. “We will now send that message even more strongly.”
“Congress should focus on renewable energy that is better for the environment and our domestic energy security,” he added, “but it should not tie the hands of U.S. producers, whose productivity, historically, has provided the world’s food safety net. We should not shrink U.S. agriculture at the very time when many are concerned about how to feed a growing global population.”
A recent favorite
And one from way back last winter Click Here to view this email online
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January 2010
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After looking at this for a minute or two...
I am putting this sheep shearer up on Craig's list today. It has literally only been used to shear two sheep. I quickly discovered that I stink at shearing and did it with scissors after the first time. We no longer have sheep so....
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Have You Herd…
Starting this month, leading trade media publications such as BEEF, Beef Today and Dairy Herd Management will feature new producer communications ads with the theme “Producers can’t be everywhere, my beef checkoff can.” 
A seminar was recently held with Costco staff in Mexico to instruct them to be better advocates of U.S. beef. The seminar trained nearly 40 Costco meat buyers and wholesale managers so that they could answer consumers’ questions about U.S. beef nutrition and the necessity for meat in a balanced diet. Mexico is the largest export market for U.S. beef. Read more about 
Producers Telling Their Story
