Neither is a big surprise. The first headline proclaimed, “Americans look to spend less on food.” The second, “New U.S. Census to reveal major shift: No more Joe Consumer.”

Let’s talk about the first item. The global market research firm Synovate surveyed food shoppers around the world and discovered Americans are the ones most focused on price. Almost eight out of 10 U.S. consumers said they would switch one food brand for another if it were a better deal. (Guilty.)

I’m sure the current economy climate influenced that response, as the survey also found out that 39% of Americans say they’re spending less on food than they did 12 months ago.

What saddens, but doesn’t surprise, me is that most people, including 65% of Americans, still think grocery items are over-priced and should be cheaper.

Over-priced? The U.S. has the least expensive food supply in the world (we spend 10 percent of our income on food consumed at home, compared to 14 percent in Japan, 26 percent in China and 55 percent in Indonesia).

To be correct, however, food prices have steadily increased in the last 30 years (but then, what hasn’t?). Since 1982, food prices have risen 128 percent, compared to the general economy’s climb of 102 percent. But — and it’s a big but — the prices farmers receive have gone up only 34 percent.

And if you can digest more numbers, in 1980, farmers received 31 cents from the consumer food dollar; today, that’s dropped to 19 cents.

What’s wrong with this picture?

No wonder more and more farmers are trying to find ways to market directly to consumers.

Which brings me to the second item: There is no more ‘average’ consumer.

I don’t know that there ever was an average consumer, but we used to be a little more homogenous in our makeup and our thinking and our demographics. Now, the U.S. population of 309 million is all over the place. And that’s OK.

Unless you’re a marketer or someone who sells to consumers.

“The average American has been replaced by a complex, multidimensional society that defies simplistic labeling,” writes demographics expert Peter Francese in 2010 America, a new white paper released by Advertising Age.

One example? The U.S. Census, which will start its next count in the spring, will list 14 options to define household relationships.

Francese adds that “minorities are the new majority.” In Texas and California, what we traditionally think of as the majority (white non-Hispanics) is the minority. In fact, in the nation’s 10 largest cities, “no racial or ethnic category describes a majority of the population.” The rural U.S. has seen similar trends.

I guess what doesn’t change is that all these people, regardless of race, religion or creed, basically want the same thing: good ol’ Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food, water, shelter; safety; to love and to belong. It’s only when these first needs are met that we develop other needs like self-esteem and finally, self-actualization.

So we come back full circle to food.

Our most basic need — we can’t alive without it — and we want to spend less money to buy it.

USDA released new harvest numbers after the close that seemed to confirm the bullishness.

December futures had a 24-cent range from high to low Monday. We had a spike high 10 days ago (Oct. 23) at 4.13-12 December futures, but a low Monday of nearly 3.59. The high, just before the close, was nearly 3.84.

November soybeans had a 44-cent range, posting a 10.06-14 high. We were back to 9.89 when the overnight session closed, but that was more than a dollar above the Oct. 5 low of 8.78-34.

Prices have been volatile lately, and much of the bouncing around has to do with the deferred reality of the record bean crop and near-record corn crop we are trying to bin.

Slow going in fields

This week again we made little progress on the harvest, and now it is November. The Halloween trick this year was continued rain that allowed intermittent field work in some areas, none in others.

I received an e-mail yesterday that had a series of photos of a harvest near-disaster. It showed a tracked grain cart buried in the mud on one side badly enough that the track was out of sight and it was nearly tipped over. Two four-wheel drives and a track hoe were being used to excavate it. Maybe that is “extricate” it, but the first is closer to reality.

Harvest unknowns

The reality of this harvest has yet to be realized. Do we have over 13 billion bushels of corn if three-quarters of it is still in the field the first of November?

What are the harvest losses going to be? What about yields 20 bushels/acre less than last year, with much of the loss being in lower test weight?

What about vomitoxin problems that have corn in some areas being limited in where it can be sold? What about even ethanol plants with vomitoxin problems as they try selling DDGs that has a vomitoxin test of 15 parts per million?

The questions continue. What about soybean harvest losses? The farmers can’t be getting all of them in the mud. The Delta farmers are losing theirs completely with flooding.

Who knows?

So, is this a record bean harvest or not? USDA provided some insight in the harvest progress numbers, but the January Inventory Report may be the real market mover.

The government has the corn crop only 25 percent harvested, up just 5 percent from last week. That is less than half where we were last year, and the normal is nearly three times that, at 71 percent.

By now, it is normally only the northern areas that are not done, like in northeastern Ohio and N.Y. This week, Ohio was spot on the national average, at 24 percent. We gained 7 percent from last week, but lagged last year’s 68 percent and the normal 60.

When you think of corn, you think of Iowa, and they are worse off than us, as is Illinois. Iowa has 18 percent of the corn off, and Illinois is at 19.

Beans in the way

The lack of corn progress can be blamed on the slow bean harvest. The corn is standing. Snow will soon take down the beans.

The U.S. is still only 51 percent harvested on the soybean crop. We cut 7 percent last week, but normal is 87 percent, with only the Delta usually dragging any big acres.

So, the tale of this harvest is not over. We will be talking about it for years, and the markets will be reacting until well into next year.

I continue to think these harvest delay bounces are selling opportunities. Sometime next year we will know if I am right.

Deermice and white-footed mice commonly use nest boxes intended for cavity-nesting birds, and they’re welcome during the non-breeding season.

These two species, both members of the genus Peromyscus, represent one of the most successful and widespread groups of rodents in North America.

Easy to recognize

Members of the genus Peromyscus are easy to recognize, but specific identification is difficult. All have white feet, light bellies, large ears, brown bodies, large dark eyes and long tails.

In fact, the genus name, Peromyscus, is Greek for “mouse with boots.” And though I’ve never heard a deermouse sing in the wild, they do communicate vocally. (Listen at www.sankey.ws/peromyscus.wav.)

Deermice and white-footed mice are especially difficult to distinguish. They even live in the same habitats — old fields, forest edges, pastures, forests. The only way biologists can precisely identify these mice is to examine their skulls and teeth.

Deermice (hereafter used to refer to both species) spend much of their time on or below the surface of the ground, but they climb trees easily. They build nests in subterranean dens, under logs and rocks, as well as in tree cavities as high as 50 feet above ground.

One reason deermice are so ubiquitous is that food is usually abundant. They eat seeds of many common grasses and weeds and a wide variety of berries, nuts, buds and fungi.

During the summer they eat everything from gypsy moth caterpillars, grasshoppers and crickets to an occasional egg or baby bird. In the fall deermice store vast quantities of seeds and nuts in cache sites as varied as hollow logs, tree cavities, nest boxes and even old bird nests.

I’ve often found an old robin nest filled with a mound of dried leaves. Inside, I usually found a generous supply of small seeds. Because deermice do not hibernate, these food caches come in handy during the winter.

Best time to find

Cold days are the best time to find deermice in nest boxes. Often as many as eight mice huddle together in one box to conserve body heat.

The nest usually consists of a mass of chewed leaves lined with fine grasses and fur. They keep their nests clean by using a separate nest chamber as the latrine.

In the spring these groups disperse, and pairs of deermice set up housekeeping and breed. After a gestation period of 23 days, three to seven young are born. They are pink, naked, blind and helpless.

The pups grow rapidly and wean at three-and-a-half weeks. At eight weeks of age they are sexually mature. Adults can produce up to four litters per year, if they live that long.

The high reproductive rate is balanced by a short life span; most Peromyscus live less than a year in the wild.

I really don’t mind finding deermice in my nest boxes, especially now. I just make a note to remove the mouse nests in March to make room for the feathered cavity-nesters I prefer. Displaced mice simply seek shelter in another den nearby.

Why tolerate?

But why tolerate or even encourage deermice? My wife asks this question repeatedly each fall as we struggle to keep the house mouse-free.

Fortunately, deermice have one important redeeming quality. Almost every predator eats them. They form an essential link in the complex, interconnected food chains that make up virtually every terrestrial ecosystem.

Deermice eat primarily plant material. They, in turn, provide food to a tremendous variety of predators — snakes, hawks, owls, weasels, raccoons, skunks, bobcats, coyotes and foxes. Peromyscus are thus the ecological link in the food chain that connects plants to carnivores.

Food supply

By promoting the winter survival of deermice, I help provide predators a dependable food supply. Every time I see or hear a screech owl, for example, I thank deermice. And if mice are abundant in the spring, perhaps predators will raid fewer of the nests in my bird boxes.

New collusion cop

There’s a new collusion cop in town, she explained May 9, and DOJ’s “Antitrust Division will be aggressively pursuing cases where monopolists try to use their dominance in the marketplace to stifle competition and harm consumers.”

Hurray! cried many farmers, ranchers and antitrust attorneys who’ve been barking at Justice to unleash its legal hounds on Big Meat, Big Milk and Big Seed almost since Adam and Eve accepted a consent decree to give up the apple monopoly.

Six months after laying down that marker, however, Varney and her trust busters have their eyes still fixed on ag but have yet to file one suit to fix ag. Others, though, aren’t waiting.

On Aug. 6, three U.S. senators, “encouraged by (her) commitment to take a hard look at dairy industry consolidation,” sent Varney a detailed letter on seven milk ventures and lawsuits (mostly involving milk giants Dean Foods, Dairy Farmers of America and National Dairy Holdings) that targeted “areas that we believe are particularly ripe for review.”

“Field” hearing

To ensure Varney got the full flavor of that ripeness, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a “field” hearing on dairy antitrust issues in St. Albans, Vt., Sept. 18.

The two senators holding forth were the two senators from the Holstein Kingdom of Vermont: Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Bernie Sanders, chairman — and only member — of the Senate’s Independent Party.

The star witness at the hearing was one Christine Varney who, again, pledged her allegiance to antitrust enforcement and to “a careful and comprehensive examination of the marketplace.”

A comprehensive examination of the marketplace is exactly what the American Antitrust Institute made public Oct. 23 in its white paper on the seed industry. Written by the Diana Moss, the institute’s vice president and senior fellow, the report provides answers to the question in its title, “Transgenic Seed Platforms: Competition Between a Rock and a Hard Place?”

Monsanto

Any look-see into today’s seed business, writes Moss, requires a rock-hard look into Monsanto, “the industry’s dominant player.” She begins that look exactly two sentences into the 29-page report.

“A threshold question,” Moss posits, “is whether Monsanto has used its market power to foreclose rivals from market access, harming competition and thereby slowing the pace of innovation and adversely affecting prices, quality, and choice for farmers and consumers of seed products.”

Moss’s report, online at www.antitrustinstitute.org/, raises as many economic points as legal ones. For example, she wonders if today’s fabulous new technologies and evolving views of patents also require new ways to enforce antitrust rules so markets and consumers have the same legal standing as the new technologies.

After all, observes Moss, new technologies that “enjoy widespread and rapid adoption typically experience precipitous declines in cost as innovators-by-doing and competitive pressures drive prices down.”

Just the opposite

And “just the opposite has occurred in seed and other ag areas, hasn’t it?” observes Fred Stokes, executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets. “Every farmer and rancher knows this and, I now believe, so does Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney.”

And so may Monsanto. On Oct. 9, the leader in transgenic seeds announced it had “received questions” from Justice “this year regarding competition in the seed industry.”

Early next year Varney and counterparts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture will hear from farmers and ranchers in a series of meetings (rumors suggest four with one in Des Moines, another in Denver) on ag antitrust issues.

Let’s all hurry — while there’s still something to talk about.

Fall is a wonderful time of year to appreciate how beautiful Ohio and Pennsylvania can be. As my farmers have been working long hours to try to complete their harvests, the fall colors have been just spectacular this year.

Of course, fall weather can be different from day to day, too. I know some of you have tried your best to get all your soft red winter wheat fields planted in between all the rains we have been having.

As you know, the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation establishes final planting dates for insurable crops. These final planting dates are benchmarks to ensure that the crop is timely planted so it has a chance to develop to maturity. They are also used as a cutoff to determine if you were prevented from planting due to natural disaster conditions (like excessive rain).

You have 15 days after the established final planting date to report to your FSA office if you had some fields you were unable to plant. Farmers in 25 Ohio counties (Cuyahoga, Butler, Hamilton, Warren, Clinton, Clermont, Brown, Highland, Adams, Ross, Pike, Scioto, Vinton, Jackson, Lawrence, Gallia, Meigs, Athens, Morgan, Washington, Noble, Monroe, Guernsey, Belmont and Jefferson) had a wheat final planting date of Oct. 31.

That makes Nov. 15 their final date to visit their local FSA office to timely report prevented plantings.

Farmers that plant in the remaining 63 Ohio counties had a final wheat planting date of Oct. 20. That makes Nov. 4 their final date to visit their local FSA office to timely report prevented plantings. (Oops! If you are reading this and that date is past, still visit your FSA office — you will be given the option to late-file your report even after the Nov. 4.)

FSA defines prevented planting as the inability to plant the intended crop acreage with the proper management and equipment during the established planting period (for that crop type) because of a natural disaster. Visit your local FSA office if a natural disaster condition has prevented you from planting wheat this fall.

They will have you file an acreage report (FSA-578) to document where the affected fields are and complete form CCC-576, part B that documents what natural disaster condition you had. And last but not least, please be careful while harvesting — your family needs you safe and sound!

That’s all for now,

FSA Andy

It has happened to me and you’ve probably had it happen to you or maybe witnessed it happen to someone else.

Have you seen your employees do this? If so, have you considered the potential negative impacts on productivity?

The use of cell phones has multiplied faster than we can imagine. It seems as though everyone has one (or as my 7-year-old son believes, needs one) and many feel this urge to talk on it continuously.

Costly to the employer

Talking on a cell phone or sending text messages while on the clock is costly to the employer and can potentially be dangerous.

Many employees think they can multitask, but the ability to do so is compromised when they are talking to their friend, wife, husband, girlfriend, etc., about what they did the night before or what they are planning for the weekend.

A 2005 research study conducted by Hewlett-Packard and the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London “found excessive use of technology reduced workers’ intelligence. Those distracted by incoming e-mail and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ — more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking marijuana.”

In another study, researchers at the University of California at Irvine monitored interruptions among workers.

“They found that workers took an average of 25 minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering e-mail and return to their original task.”

The job of milking cows is one that requires strict attention to detail. Forgetting to check for mastitis, dip teats or having milk from a treated cow enter the tank can cost the farm thousands.

Other jobs like operating a skid loader, hauling wagons on roadways or driving a combine through a corn field are important jobs that can cause injury or death if the operator is talking or sending text messages.

As the owner, you understand the negatives associated with allowing employees to talk on cell phones or send text messages when they are supposed to be working. So what can you do to correct problem employees?

The best way to handle the situation is to have a written employee handbook that specifically addresses this issue. Some employers simply state that using a cell phone during working hours is grounds for instant termination, while others provide guidelines for their use, for example during breaks or at specified locations.

Disciplinary procedure

When employees violate these policies, there needs to be a disciplinary procedure in place. For example, the first violation is a verbal warning, the second a written warning and the third is an automatic termination.

For some employers, hourly employees who violate the policy are sent home without pay for the remainder of their shift.

Because many of us have become so attached to our cell phones, it wouldn’t be surprising for employees to resist your attempts at restricting their use during work hours. Explain to employees that personal safety and productivity are concerns for restricting their use during work hours.

During breaks

If your policy allows for their use during breaks, explain to employees that messages can be checked at those times and calls returned.

In some instances it may be reasonable for employees to carry personal cell phones to communicate with one another when they need help. Examples might include finding a down cow, assisting with a breakdown or knowing when the next wagon will be to the field when harvesting.

Although an added expense, another option to allow employees to communicate is for the farm to provide radios.

The age of social media can be frustrating to employers, but with some planning and written policies it can be managed. It’s hard to believe we survived all these years without the communication technology available today.

]]> http://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/how-to-manage-employees-in-the-age-of-social-media/13436.html/feed http://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/time-will-forever-bring-change/13440.html http://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/time-will-forever-bring-change/13440.html#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:19:36 +0000 Judith Sutherland http://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/time-will-forever-bring-change/13440.html One of my very first columns written for Farm and Dairy centered around the topic of my excited impatience as I awaited the birth of my second baby. That baby girl just turned 21 a couple of days ago.

I have come to realize that parenting is very much like living through the seasons. As the seasons change, so do the needs of the children we have been lucky enough to bring in to this world. If we aren’t smart enough to figure that out, we will miss out on some really great moments.

Sweet-natured child

Caroline was — and still is — a sweet-natured child. I will never forget, though, that she was much younger than most when she first said, “do it myself” with great certainty. Captured on video, I have a clip that still makes us all laugh. Cort was 4 and Caroline was 2 when they were taking turns showing off for the video camera. Cort had finished a lengthy speech, and now it was Caroline’s turn. She wanted to sing me a song she had just learned. Just as she started to sing, “Way up high in a tree, five big apples smiled at me….” when Cort started singing along.

That adorable little girl turned her head, filled with blonde curls, quite quickly toward her big brother and snapped, “Don’t do it wiff me! Do it myself!”

Then she sweetly looked back at the camera and continued on with her cute little song, never missing a beat.

When we got Caroline her first pony, Hope, her dad wanted to lead the Welsh pony with a lead rope while keeping a close eye on Caroline in the saddle. This went on for awhile, with Caroline very quietly pursing her lips, not saying a word. I silently wondered where her smile had gone. As she dismounted near the little stable, I asked her if she was having fun. “Yes. But it would be a whole lot more fun if I could do it all myself,” she answered with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

Blazing her own trails

So, it comes as no surprise that she is blazing her own trails at 21. She is currently working two jobs and going to college, wanting to do it herself. She is insistent that she has it all figured out. She says it all with a smile, letting us know we have raised a strong, proud daughter.

She wants to experience city life, so today she is moving in to an apartment in town with a girlfriend. The two of them are as excited as they can be, and I share that excitement right along with them.

I realize as I look back on the happy years of parenting, there have always been steps toward the day our children could stand completely independent of us. Some of these steps are so tiny we don’t even notice them, while others are major, significant milestones that we celebrate with bittersweet joy.

I remember so many times wishing I could freeze, or at least slow, the incredible pace of our children growing up. As it turns out, each step is fun, exciting, amazing, wonderful to share.

Birthday party

At Caroline’s 21st birthday party, her brother was snapping pictures constantly. I was happy when someone thought to take his camera from him and get a picture of Cort and Caroline together. One of my very favorite photographs of that happy night was of Cort and Caroline with my dear friend Wendy’s son, Dan, on the other side of my daughter. Their joyous faces gives reason to celebrate; the fact that they are supportive friends to one another is all the better.

On the days I feel the pang of loneliness when this house is far too quiet, I remind myself that there are those who never experience this. My friend Wendy left us all too soon after a tragic accident; other parents continue to care for children who are not healthy enough to spread their wings and take flight toward independence.

Life marches on. Time will forever and always bring change. This is as it should be.

Play

The first barn I vividly remember is my grandmother’s barn. It is the quintessential “big red barn.”

The lower level featured horse stalls and a wide center aisle. The haymow above was a treasure trove of imaginary play — serving as everything from mountains to scale or castles to build.

Even the barn hill itself entertained.

The long sloping rise from the drive to the haymow provided my first — and favorite — sledding hill. At the time, I was sure I was traversing Everest.

Today, I see that I’ve probably had steeper drops from a stumble. Still, in memory it looms large.

I can remember as a child being shooed into the tack room to keep me from under the hooves of dozens of horses as they were let in, or out, of the barn. I would swing on the door while they thundered out to pasture.

All meals — all LIFE at Gram’s — revolved around activities in the barn. You could definitely say that her grandchildren all had a true “barn raisin’.”

Scary

Meanwhile, just minutes away loomed the other barn of my childhood. It too was a red wooden barn, but there all similarities end.

By the time I came along my great-grandparent’s farm had long been out of the livestock biz. As a result the barn, while well maintained, had been relegated to storage.

The fact that they had started the farm during the Great Depression was never more evident than when we were forced to clean that barn out some six decades later. It was, we would discover, where 60-plus years of neatly stacked “we might need this someday” goes to die.

I would imagine that in my entire life I never ventured further into that barn than where the shaft of sunlight admitted by an open door came to an end — and even then not more than a handful of times.

There was just something spooky about that barn. Sans the heaves, sighs, and hoof beats of living, breathing things, it sat in a sort of murky darkness on even the brightest day.

Dare

One of my favorite things to do as a child was dare myself to enter the barn. I would get myself all psyched up to go just past the first stall, then the second, then the third.

For the record, I’m pretty sure I never made it past the third. The Holy Grail would have been to make it all the way to the back of the barn where, I was certain, every ghost who had ever not lived kept all their ghostly horses and carriage. (I was, I should note, a very imaginative child).

I had once scaled a small hill behind the barn (also haunted I was sure) to peer in through the back. I think I knew by then I was never going to make it far enough in from the FRONT to figure out what was back there, but that if I went in from the back directly it might still count as a “win.”

I swear I saw a sled, carriage, SOMETHING in there. Where normal children would have been so intrigued, I’m sure, they would have simply HAD to investigate, I was too busy scaring myself to death to do anything more than scramble back to the brighter, sunny spots and forget all about that barn.

In hindsight, I see that beyond all my dares was the truth that it was a lovely barn. Nonetheless, for me it served as the perfect childhood foil — a “spooky place” to test my own limits that was, of course, perfectly safe.

In retrospect, it should come as no surprise that a girl who once dreamt of living nowhere less populated than Boston or D.C. would end up, in the end, with a barn of her own.

Could I ever have felt quite at home without one?

Built to house fruit and not farm animals, our barn has become such a key part of the children’s collective memory that our daughter, entering it yesterday, said with a depth of feeling normally reserved for living things, “I just LOVE how it SMELLS in here.” (For the record it’s a BARN. I think it smells like dust.)

I suspect her sentiment has more to do with her heart than her nose, however.

I find it amusing to think that if and when people pull out that old adage and say “what’s the matter with you, were you raised in a barn?”

Yet another generation can say with utter sincerity, “yes, as a matter of fact, I was.”

News, of course, is anything you learn that you didn’t know before. Using that definition almost anything is technically “news” if it’s new to you.

Researchers at Georgetown University, for example, found that caterpillars can “shoot” their feces a distance of 40 times their body length. See there? News! Is it newsworthy? Unlikely, that is unless you happen to be sitting next to a caterpillar when you read that.

Newsworthy

In reality when we talk about “news” what we mean is “newsworthy.” Is it interesting and/or pertinent information brought to us by a reliable source? Unfortunately these days all too often it seems the answer is “no.”

In order to feed the voracious appetite of the 24-hour news cycle we now desire to know something not only the very moment it happens but before it happens. This has led to the kind of debacle that is the balloon boy story.

Only if you were living under a rock over the previous two weeks could you not know about the Heene family and their elaborate hoax whereby they pretended their six-year-old had been accidentally sent aloft in a homemade helium balloon. Sounds believable right? Rigggghhhtt.

Not so much news

Still, most major news outlets immediately went to live coverage of the event, spending hours breathlessly hypothesizing on the fate of the boy while following the flight of what appeared to be a partially deflated mylar balloon across the Colorado sky. Pretty scenery, yes. News? Not so much.

Fortunately, of course, there was no flying boy. Only the deflated balloon — and egos — of numerous commentators who had breathlessly provided play-by-play conjecture of what would have, could have, and/or might have happened — but precious little in the way of what actually was.

In the end it turned out to be more a story about the Emperors New Clothes than anything else.

Nothing

Still, it was bound to happen in the instant information age. Today it’s not enough to know that something might have happened and then gather the facts, check them against available data, and provide a correct and comprehensive overview of the entire scenario at a later point in time. No. The breaking news cycle meant that almost the instant the Heene balloon took flight, national news channels trained their cameras — and babble — squarely on the sky.

The Internet lit up with so much chatter over the situation that the omnipotent public commentary site, Twitter, was momentarily overwhelmed with the traffic.

The phrase “much ado about nothing” comes to mind.

The most newsworthy aspect of the whole adventure was how quickly conjecture and “expert guesses” replaced absolute fact. No longer are we content to just let the news happen and read about it later.

Quill pen

Research, fact check and edit a story to be sent to print sometime in the next 24 hours? Why, you might as well say you plan to write the story out with your quill pen.

I love the 24-hour news channel, I do. Each morning I get up and say, only half in jest, that I need my a.m. news and my cup of coffee to confirm that the whole world hasn’t gone to heck in a hand basket while I slept.

I like a little national and a little international news, a medical report to convince me I’m dying of something (and really, aren’t we all?) and a nice wrap up about a moose that stumbled into somebody’s swimming pool (those moose are so cra-zee!) to start my day. What I don’t like is a whole lot of hype.

People can say what the want about the death of print media, but I still look forward to a nice, tight, fact-checked little “who, what, when, where, why” story. It can be so refreshingly real when compared to a lot of “ifs, ands, buts, and maybes” pulled, as in the balloon boy saga, out of the clear blue sky.

Wait

There is no shame in saying “we really don’t know what’s going on right now, we’ll bring you more when we have some facts.” Unfortunately, there are very few ratings in that tactic either.

The digital age can — and will — bring us the world at the touch of a button. Yet instant access is meaningless if we instantly access only nonsense. Me, I wouldn’t throw away my newspaper subscription card just yet.

If we can’t count on the people that bring us that much ballyhooed instant information to be a bit more discerning in what makes the cut, the news, much like the balloon boy saga, is just going to be a lot of wasted airtime — and a whole lot of not-so-hot air.

That fire-red inferno of a maple tree now ablaze in the front yard will be naked.

That birch tree whose fallen foliage will have already made a golden circular skirt on the still-green grass and its bared white arms will plead for a blanket of snow.

Blinding

That silver maple will have miraculously turned to gold which is actually blinding in the morning sun and again when the sun goes down in the west.

Around the pond, the display of goldenrod and purple New England asters is fading every day. The trees in the back fencerow are thinning and I am forced to look at buildings. Frost has twice whitened the pasture and there was a dusting of snow.

Robins have already almost stripped the fruit on one of the flowering crabapple trees, but the one in the cemetery is actually pink with its abundance of fruit. Mother Nature is feeding her children!

Isn’t it amazing that these changes take place before our very eyes, and yet how many passersby are too busy talking on their cell phones or texting to bother to look?

There was one, the other morning, when the sun ignited the maple. She drove in, turned around, stepped out of the car and focused a camera on the spectacle. Thank you, whoever you were, for your appreciation.

Hasn’t this been a strange autumn? Of course, every season this year has been strange in every part of the country. We have been so fortunate in this area not to have had disastrous weather — but what will winter bring?

Could not believe my eyes

Just the other day, I could not believe my eyes. A lady bluebird was at the bird bath, perched on the rim, first sipping, then plunging in to take a vigorous bath! Last year, in early November, a male bluebird did the same, and even though I never see them in summer, it is a joy to know they are somewhere in my small sanctuary.

But things change daily, and the changes are disturbing. Not only is there another huge medical building beside another medical building at the end of the boulevard — many trees went down for both of them — and now for months to come we will listen to construction activities as both the YMCA and St. Elizabeth Hospital, just south of me, are to be enlarged for millions of dollars.

Already traffic on Washington Boulevard is scary and it is bound to get worse. Every day another raccoon or rabbit or squirrel meets a violent end. I’m almost afraid to look when I walk out to get the mail. One day, I am afraid there will be a deer as several come here for sanctuary and fallen pears.

I worry about a small black feral cat who comes from somewhere every few days and has for several years. It cannot be approached but it seems healthy and I leave the garage door up a bit at the bottom for when it needs to get out of the weather.

Toby

As regular readers know, Toby, my sweet Haflinger, would eat himself to death if he didn’t wear a grazing muzzle that only allows him to slurp a few blades of grass at a time. Admittedly, his health and weight and hooves have improved immensely. But he is a clever fellow, and has learned to scrape the bottom of the muzzle back and forth to increase the size of the hole and thus the volume of “intake.”

Eventually, he was able to enlarge the hole on the bottom to his satisfaction — and to render the device almost useless. I managed to mend one, sort of, using baling twine, but the other two were beyond me. What to do? They are not cheap to buy.

Doug Wiley offered to drop them off at Simonds Leather in Leetonia to see if Susan Simonds Fader could come up with something, and sure enough she did. I reminded her — she is John Simonds’ daughter — that in December 1976 I had written a feature story about Simonds Leather, and don’t you know John called me and we had a great talk.

And it turns out Susan is a “birder” and so she and I also had a great talk. If you need anything in leather, canvas, webbing or nylon, harness or saddlery, just call 330-427-2014 and they’ll fix you up.

Such a nice letter from Hugh “Sandy” Gunn whom I have known since he was a youngster growing up in our village.

He was pleased to read about the Old Arrel Farm and especially about Elizabeth Arrel Thompson who “was like a wonderful aunt to me. She had a pony for me to ride and taught me to work hard and that nothing is free.”

Bargain basement

I heard a phrase the other day that rang a bell for me, and I wonder if it does for anyone else: bargain basement. In those wonderful days of department stores, with several floors and “moving stairs,” there was a basement to which much of the same material sold “upstairs” was taken and sold at a reduced price, hence “bargain basement.”

During the Great Depression, our family did most of its shopping in the “bargain basement” and I recall some of the clothes and hats that came from those interesting floors. Barbara and I were always well dressed and it didn’t matter what floor our clothes came from!