NOTE: The date this blog was posted - April 1 - is in indication of the gravity and seriousness readers should have when viewing what follows. Enjoy! It is with a blend of great sadness and shock and even some remorse and also a general dismay that Farm Progress Co. and Penton Media Inc. announce the retirement of veteran farm writer Tim White. White has been far and away one of, if not the, most admired ag-beat writers in the long and proud history of the company dating to 1845. His…

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No season seems to tantalize as much as spring, but I have proof it's here. Spring arrived yesterday with the vernal equinox at 7:02 A.M. (EDT). The temperature on my thermometer read 29 degrees F. For tonight we are expecting flurries with a low of 22. A winter storm is forecast for the weekend. I am not going to be disheartened by this. Spring is getting here. It's just a little slow. Vernal equinox – whatever -- I have seven signs of proof that spring is truly…

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  Let’s start this off by acknowledging I wear my shoes and boots until they die – as in hole in the toe, heel fallen off, sole paper thin gone. Tennis shoes especially get extended duty. After they provide a full range of usefulness in the athletic arena, they make their way to the work shoe box and usually end up as wade-around-in-the pond shoes until the smell is too foul to bring them into the house. Then they sit in the barn just in case I need something…

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  Happy New Year. We’ve sailed over the cliff. Not sure if we have landed yet. Don’t know about you, but I am still bracing for a jolt. Politics never stops. Winter’s here in force. I had to give our Labrador pup The Dude an extra nudge to get him out into the frigid morning sun today. At six months this is his first winter and the snow’s pretty fun to eat and roll in and dig up. So is the extension cord that lights the Christmas spotlight. At least it…

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Pumpkins abound at the Circleville Pumpkin Show. Pumpkin paraphernalia is everywhere and you can get just about any kind of pumpkin-based food you would imagine. A table covered with all kinds of pumpkins and gourds stretches for a full block down Main St. There is a tree-like tower made up from more than 200 pumpkins stacked one atop the other. It makes a great backdrop, but let’s get real, this festival is all about producing Pickaway County’s biggest pumpkin. Like the fat heads…

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Last weekend I succumbed to curiosity and attended my 40th college reunion at Stanford University. I could joke that I didn’t know who all those elderly folks were, but the fact is most of my old friends looked great. We talked about our children and grandchildren and our work and our vacations and our dreams to make the world a better place and our recollections of the college years. You math geniuses will figure that we graduated in 1972. It was the year that President Richard Nixon…

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It seems that Gov. John Kasich has truly bought into the ‘Ag Is Cool” concept being promoted at the Ohio State Fair. He actually was pretty cool himself in presenting awards to the winners of the Ag is Cool Art Contest on the fair’s opening day. One by one the governor carried the students’ paintings and drawings to the front of the FFA center for the audience and media to see. “This is better than “Starry Starry Night,” he told Isabelle Yandura…

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In the course of my 62 years I have had 13 dogs as companions to me and my family. That’s roughly one dog every five years. I can recall them all -- from Poopsie a shepherd/collie mix that was my sidekick from age 6 to 16, to our last two, Tizzy and Flash. A pair of yellow labs who I wrote about a little more than year ago, they were well known in the neighborhood because of their need to drift over to the local tavern anytime a thunderstorm was in the area. In didn’t help that the…

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Last weekend my wife and I attended the graduation of our youngest daughter Allie at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. From 400 miles away you may have felt of bit of wind or heard a murmur that was our sigh of relief. The third and last offspring is finished and moving on. Although the sky was not that Carolina blue the university is so proud of, the temperature was comfortable. As we sat and watched the graduates, clad in Tar Heel blue gowns, streaming down to their seats…

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So this is not one of those stories my wife is especially happy for me to be sharing and it won’t help our home resale value, but here goes. About three years ago I was cleaning off the shelf that sits above the stairs down to our basement. This shelf tends to collect tools that I have brought from the barn to the house to use for various projects. Periodically it gets cluttered with these tools and needs to be cleaned off. As I am gathering the pliers and screwdrivers and hammers to…

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