No beaches have been closed because of an ethanol spill, is one of the ethanol industry's newest talking points. Even before the BP disaster, Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group, had launched a TV campaign touting "America's Sensible Fuel," a fuel that promotes peace, is economical, home-produced and renewable. It sounds, and is, too good to be true. Less efficient than gasoline, more corrosive to today's engines, a significant factor in higher food prices, and a production and distribution infrastructure that depends on government subsidies, all  make ethanol less than a miracle fuel. Washington's policymakers agree that biofuels will be part of our country's energy future, but they generally agree that we will have to move away from corn ethanol, according to a recent story in The Economist. The photo if of an ethanol plant in Turner County, South Dakota. You can read The Economist story here http://www.economist.com/node/16492491?story_id=16492491


     Here's a fish that can belch and walk on land. Three fraternities are trying to get him to pledge. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/belching-african-lungfish/pqobdyc   

     English researchers have decided that the chicken came first. Not the egg. The chicken. There were eggs before their were chickens, of course, because many species of dinosaurs laid eggs, and birds, so the theory goes, evolved from dinosaurs. Probably. But before there could be a chicken egg, there had to be a chicken. This is according to a team of English researchers from Sheffield and Warwick universities. They used a super computer to zoom in on egg formation, and discovered that an egg shell can form only in the presence of a protein called ovocledidin-17, which is found only in chicken ovaries. The chicken-and-egg debate reminds me of some of the unanswerable philosophical issues - e.g., how many pins can you stick in the head of an angel - but the science of egg formation could have some practical applications. Understanding the process could provide clues towards designing new materials and processes, according to one of the scientists involved in the study, which was reported on in London's Daily Mail. You can read the story here:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1294341/Chicken-really-DID-come-egg-say-scientists.html

     On-farm ice cream sales are adding income to family dairy operations. A story in Saturday's edition of Lancaster Farming profiles four families that have gone into the ice cream business. By adding value to their home-grown milk, even if they use only part of their herd output, these farmers are helping to keep their operations profitable. You can read their stories in the food and family section, or check them out at our website, which is here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/

    STOP SHOOTING AND RUN! RUN! http://www.break.com/index/tornado-caught-forming-on-tape.html

      Passing a climate change bill this year would involve some "heavy lifting" on the part of the U.S. Senate according to Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat who is the new chair of the Senate Ag Committee. She cited other legislative priorities - health care and financial regulatory reform, in particular - that are certain to dominate much of the Senate's  work in this session.

     And she's skeptical of cap-and-trade initiatives that present challenges for farmers, particularly those in the South. In an interview with Reuters News Service reporter Charles Abbot, she said American farmers are sure to face higher fuel, fertilizer and pesticide prices because of efforts to control greenhouse emissions. But Southern growers would not have the opportunity to earn money for practices like no-till planting that lock carbon in the soil.

     Lincoln is the daughter of a seven-generation farm family, and is a "great champion of the American farmer," according to the American Farm Bureau. She was elected to the House in 1992, and to the Senate in 1998.

     The full Reuters report is here:  

http://in.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idINTRE58874S20090910?sp=true

       
     There were 430 Oliver tractors in Williams Grove, Pa., Labor Day weekend for the annual gathering of Hart-Parr/Oliver Collector's Association. We don't know if this guy makes it 431 or just 430-and-half. The Oliver lovers were part of the annual Williams Grove Historical Steam Engine Association show. There's a story about the show in the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.

   
     We've heard of double yolks, but...  http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1920643

     Frogs with teeth. A fish that grunts. Kangaroos in trees. And the world's biggest rat. Someday, a hundred- or two-thousand years from now, this headline could apply to a city like Houston. It is ringed by eight lanes of concrete that's certain death to anything that tries to crawl, walk or slither across the highway with non-stop, 24-hour traffic. I have never tried to get across that particular circle of death, but I have driven 'round and 'round it a fair number of times, and often thought of the new species that could be mutating there right before our eyes. Not including native Houstonians, of course.
     For now, the frogs with teeth and the world's biggest rat share a micro world separated from the rest of the earth by the rim of an extinct volcano in the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea. The volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago, and since then an astounding number of new species have evolved. It is a fascination for scientists, environmentalists and dreamers around the world.
     Robert Booth, a reporter for The Guardian newspaper in Great Britain, wrote a report about the research and the findings, and you can read it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/07/discovery-species-papua-new-guinea


     "A smart man learns from his mistakes. A really smart man learns from others' mistakes". This is just one of the pithy sayings hung on the walls of Amos Fisher's farm market in Strasburg, Pa. The Fisher family's 23-acre farm-to-consumer operation evolved from conventional soybean operation into an examplar of diversification. They now grow, for one example, 90 varieties of apples. And many learning opportunities - disguised as mistakes - presented themselves along the way. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres visited the Fishers and wrote a report which appears in our current issue.


     Kitty has a fan. http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=56840664

How to run a tractor on fire wood

     First you have to turn it into ethanol. About 1975 or so I had a several conversations with Mile Fry, a forward-thinking nurseryman and farmer from the tiny settlement of Frysville here in Lancaster County. Fry, who was probably in his seventies at the time, had a vision of the hybrid poplar as a wonder tree for both energy and conservation. It grows just about anywhere and could be used, Fry believed, to reclaim land that had been strip-mined.
     He also believed it could be a renewable fuel source decades before anybody had even heard the term "renewable fuel source." Miles is gone, but every once in a while his vision for poplar trees pops up again. The latest pop is a story in the Seattle Times this week by reporter Hal Bernton.
     People from a wide range of disciplines are questioning the practicality and even the ethics of using corn - a food crop - for the production of ethanol. Bernton dug into the issue and found a company, ZeaChem, that breaks wood down with the same chemistry termites use to digest wood. The process ends with the production of commercial quantities of ethanol. There are a lot of start-up issues to be overcome before it's a viable business, but it's an interesting story.
    But not exactly new.
    Bernton's story is here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009772319_ethanol30m.html

     It's tough to stay in the dairy business when every cow on your farm is losing $100 a month. But many dairymen are committed to staying the course, no matter what.
     A crowd of 200 people, farmers and others with ties to the dairy industry, gathered at Genesee Community Collge in Batavia, New York, last week to talk about the current dairy crisis, and to share their views with U.S. Senator Kristen Gillibrand and U.S. Representative Eric Massa. There were  a lot of interesting ideas thrown around. A story about the meeting, by Lancaster Farming New York correspondent Maegan Crandall, appears in the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.
     
     Yes, Johnny, it's okay to play with your vegetables. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alfrn3NVc78&feature=player_embedded

    "Climate change legislation could be an economic godsend to farmers..." Or maybe not. It could also be a tremendous financial burden, according to an article in Tuesday's Washington Post by AP reporter Margery A. Gibbs. There are two sides to that coin, and nobody knows how it will land when and if it flips into law. Farmers, ranchers, legislators, economists... some are calling heads and some are calling tails.

     Those who are against the bill say it would lead to skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer costs, cutting into farmers' and ranchers' already unpredictable profits. Those who support it contend any losses would be more than made up for through a provision that would allow companies to meet their pollution targets by investing in offset projects, such as farms that capture methane or plant trees.

     USDA projects initial losses of anywhere from one to seven percent of farm income, but says the losses could be offset by projects to reduce greenhouse gases. Very confusing. See for yourself here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/01/AR2009090100150.html

     Plowing for old time's sake is a passion for the 16 or so guys who turned out for the 52nd annual Pennsylvania Plowing Contest on Friday and Saturday, August 21-22.

     The event was held on the farm of Jay Wickard, outside Boiling Springs on a hot muggy day that did nothing to hamper the intensity of the contestants as they focused on rendering the straightest, most exact furrow ever plowed anywhere. Some came pretty close. I was there to capture the excitement and intensity, and to shoot a few pictures for the Lancaster Farming issue due in your mailbox on Saturday.

     Don't you just hate it when your kid jumps on the bed? http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=23012247

     

 

     A Chesapeake preview? Let's hope not. Sir Gitter, a retired race horse with his owner, Vincent Petit, up, was out for an afternoon trot along a picturesque Brittany beach on the French coastline, near Saint-Michele-en-Greve. 
     Petit was on foot, leading Sir Gitter by the reins, looking for a place to cross a stream running through the sand. There was a harmless white crust bordering the stream. The crust covered a decaying pile of green algae. In decaying, the algae had thrown off a voluminous amount of hydrogen sulfide gas and the crust had contained it.
     Far from harmless, the algae was a lethal trap. When Sir Gitter broke through the crust, he sank into the muck and so did Petit, up to his chest. Sir Gitter panicked, breathed in the fumes, gasped for half-a-minute while Petit looked on in horror, and died.
     Then Petit passed out, and would have died too had he not been pulled from the muck by a man on a bulldozer.
     According to an AP story by reporter Elaine Ganley, the green algae off the coast of France is fed by massive flows of nutrients from Brittany's thriving agricultural enterprises. And as long as the algae remain at sea, they are harmless to humans - and horses. But when they wash up on shore and decay, they turn the sand into a black deadly muck. You can read the rest of the story here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iu2Jx_1pUF4QSJNeCAEXSEObhoyQD9AC4CPG1


     Show us your towels. Back in the old days before there were cellphones and Twitter and Facebook and consolidated high schools and malls and boys with cars and big pickup trucks and motorcycles there was...cross-stitching. There's a story in the current edition of Lancaster Farming about the art of show towels made by young Pennsylvania German women to test and hone their needlework skills and to perhaps catch the eye of a young man on horseback. The article and photos are by correspondent Sue Bowman.


     Once again - Camelot. This time with home-grown vegetables.   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVpEr3kfWjc