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

     Ramping up the family farm. Five years ago, Marty Travis and the rest of his family had a request from a cousin to rid his woodlot of ramps - another name for wild leeks, pictured at right - they harvested two tons of the invasive "weeds," which they sold to local chefs.
    That was the beginning of a small-scale family farm effort that blossomed into a still small economic engine. Marty and his wife Kris and their son, Will, have bought back the family's 179-year-old farmstead, which had been sold to developers by Marty's grandmother. This year, in addition to selling ramps to Chicago chefs and local markets, they also sell such oddities as Glapagos tomatoes and 1,500 squash blossoms a week.
     There's a cook in the Windy City who likes, believe it or not, green pine cones. Kickapoo beans have been profitable for the Travises, as have weeds like purslane and stinging nettle. And then there's their most sought-after crop, white iriqouis corn, which they turn into an oak-roasted meal that professional cooks really, really want. 
     The story of the Travis family was recounted in a story by New York Times reporter Christine Muhlke, and you can read it here : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30food-t-000.html


     Speaking of good eats, Lancaster Farming's own Chris Torres traveled to Pennsylvania's Pike County recently to talk to Don and Shirley Coutts and their family about the blueberry business. The Coutttses planted their first blueberry bushes in the late 1960s, and now have a three-generation business not only growing blueberries, but turning them into baked goods, jellies and jams. And there's an ice cream shop next to their bakery where the most popular flavor is...guess what? Chris's story is in our current issue.


     Is that really what you think it is? Is there straw in that Fiat?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhmSVrLX1rc&feature=player_embedded





     

     Cornstarch makes a great gravy, and it seems, also an effective way to hold water in soil. A product called Zeba, made from corn starch and only cornstarch, holds up to 500 times its own weight in water. Absorbent Technologies, Inc., of Beaverton, Oregon, started up in 2002 and has been on the market with Zeba since 2004.
     A Wall Street Journal blog report from today -- http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/08/28/absorbent-technologies-copes-with-vcs-fear-of-the-f-words/
-- recounts the founders' problems with raising money from venture capitalists. VCs don't like the words "farm" or "factory." Seems the company has plans to sell to farmers, and is hoping to construct a factory to make 30 million pounds of the stuff annually.
     The Zeba technology is licensed from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, and is based on a product whose scientific name is saponified starch-graft polyacrylonitrile copolymers. Developed in 1973 and patented in 1976, the ever-playful ARS lab rate nicknamed their discovery "Super Slurper."
     A number of product successes have grown out of Super Slurper. It's been used for packaging, seed coatings, root treatments, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even a filter for gas pumps. But I couldn't find anybody that was planning to make and sell 30 million pounds of the stuff.
     In the perennially parched Southwest, Zeba could drastically reduce the need for irrigation in some crops. Not enough, perhaps, to bring the southernmost reaches of the Colorado back to life, but enough to cut irrigation costs.
     Did anybody in the Lancaster Farming readership area - Maine to Virginia - need Zeba this year to get a good crop of corn or anything else? No. But who knows what next year will be like? 
     Zeba's probably too expensive to spread on land here anyway. But for houseplants, gardens and nursery crops, it might be worth investigating. There's more product information here http://www.friendsofwater.com/Zeba_Quench.html and an interesting history from the ARS here http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/may96/starch0596.htm


     TMDL "consequences" were a topic of discussion earlier this week at a Chesapeake Bay conference held in Lancaster. TMDL is shorthand for total maximum daily load of plant nutrients and sediment allowed to enter waterways bound for the Bay. New rules call for monitoring TMDLs from both point source (e.g., wastewater treatment plants) and non-point (e.g., farms) sources. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres attended the conference and wrote the page one article for the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.

    
     Here's an idea for a new cash crop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyUvNnmFtgI&feature=player_embedded 

   Things are looking up for urban agriculture. Way up. Like the hanging gardens of Babylon, there's new/old thinking about producing food in the neighborhoods where people live.

     An op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times by Dickson Despommier, heralds the day when city-dwellers will be buying their fresh fruits and vegetables from sources just down the block, rather than half a world away. Despommier, it should be noted, is writing a book about vertical farming, and has started a business to promote the concept.

     It's an appealing concept, in many ways. There'd be no hail damage on the 30th floor, for example. Less fuel to harvest, transport and process crops. Bugs? Fuhgedaboudit.

     Despommier likes the climate control, the year-'round growing season, and the fact that, according to his math, every vertically-farmed acre would replace 10 or 20 acres of traditionally farmed earth, which could be allowed to naturally return to forests. Which is something you know actually happens if you've ever travelled to Vermont and New Hampshire.

     The writer doesn't have anything to say about the challenges of growing sunflowers indoor in, say, Seattle, which has approximately two sunny days a year, which is why they drink so much coffee there, which would still have to imported, I guess, from some sunny, tropical outdoor location.

     Nor does he have anything to say about rural ambiance, like birdsong, cows mooing, wind in the rye, and the perfume of freshly cut alfalfa.

     And if you farm with horses? Fuhgedaboudit!

     It's an interesting piece, though, which you can read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/opinion/24Despommier.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1251284710-O1yLVW2Sl3ZSElYNdyMpaQ

     They don't make 'em like they used to. Used to be if you had a model of your John Deere, your Case or your Allis Chalmers tractor, it looked like a tractor. It was made of metal, it had rubber tires and you could go "Brmm-brmm-brmm," 'til your lips felt funny. Models for kids nowadays are plastic, and lot of them make their own noises. "Toys from the Good Old Days" is a story in Section B of the current edition of Lancaster Farming. It was written by New York correspondent Deborah Jeanne Sergeant, and we understand she was making mouth noises as she wrote it.

     Do-se-do. With tractors. Here's something I should have seen earlier. It's from this year's Pennsylvania Farm Show. Next year I understand they'll be doing a salsa routine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmvhCpEKAjY