National Agriculture Day

Broadway, my favorite cow of all time

Is today. 

But really every day is ag day for pretty much everyone. We all eat. Most of us wear clothes. We drive cars with tires on roads and like to color our walls with paint.

Bama, back in the day when she was a workin' goil

We like plastic stuff and it all isn't made from fossil fuels.

There are many other byproducts of farm production that we might not think about as well. Green fields, waving wheat, open space, and clean air are some of these. Farms provide homes for birds and wildlife too.

From NRCS: 

"With more than 70 percent of the land in the United States privately owned, it follows that most of the wildlife in the countryside depends on private landowners. Farmers are installing grass, tree, and shrub plantings; ponds; riparian buffer strips; and other wildlife habitat at record rates. Some farmers provide bird and bat houses, while others plant or leave food plots of corn, millet, or other grains specifically for wildlife.

Pheasants, grouse, quail, prairie chickens, mourning doves, and songbirds, as well as leopard frogs, diamond-back terrapin, red bats, and other wildlife, benefit from habitat that farmers and ranchers establish on their land. Farmers appreciate and enjoy wildlife supported by good habitat and also benefit from pollination and pest control by beneficial insects."

We do our bit here at Northview, as best we can, and not just on Ag Day either. Although it isn't always pretty, the land here is home to deer, woodchucks, both varieties of common squirrels, red and grey, sometimes fishers, both red and grey foxes, bats, opossums, skunks, rabbits, chipmunks, weasels, voles, coyotes, moles, mink sometimes, and assorted rodents, both good and awful.

As for birds, we got 'em. So far this year we have seen 45 species. We found 88 last year and are hoping to break 90 this year. If Lyme Disease, bum knees, and other potential problems stay away that is...crosses fingers, knocks wood, and thinks good thoughts....

Agriculture is the number one industry in many states, some of them surprising. Among them are Maryland, Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, Montana, and at least in 2010, New York State. (This changes now and then.)

However, the farmer's share of the US food dollar is only  seventeen cents. Not such a big payoff for all that comes from agriculture.