The countdown is on. I’m getting married September 27. I met my future husband in the fall of 1981 at the North American International Livestock Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky, where we were both attending the National Block & Bridle Convention. We haven’t been dating all of these years, but I know what I’m getting into, […]
Liquid Gold
My grain-farming neighbors have chopped their corn for sileage, and others not too many miles away that gave up on their soybean crop for dead, have baled it to save what they could. Cattlemen have re-installed the bale forks that came off of their pick-ups once the spring rains turned the grass green. Scorched pastures […]
Thank you, Orion, for blazing a trail
I first met Orion Samuelson in person when I was a senior at Western Illinois University serving as queen for the beef industry in Illinois. He welcomed me into the WGN studios where I was a guest on his early morning “Top ‘O The Morning” television show that aired on WGN in Chicago. Later in […]
Cactus Jim’s laughter will echo forever
I knew him as Cactus Jim when I was a kid. I would watch him on Quincy television and even had a Cactus Jim Prairie Farm’s red plastic cowboy boot cup for my milk. Dick Moore, from El Paso, is Superintendent of the Dairy Products Building at the Illinois State Fair. Dick and his wife […]
IRS plan would make CRP land expensive
When my assistant handed me a news release from U.S. Senator Russ Feingold’s office last week titled “Feingold presses IRS to leave CRP farmers alone” I nearly fell out of my chair. NOT because Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, is pressing the IRS to stop seeking retroactive taxes from those who have participated in the Conservation […]
It’s a great time to be in the cattle business
During last week’s Summer Cattle Industry Conference in Dallas, Texas, spirits were high, as beef demand is up, prices are up, and there is profitability in the cattle business. Mike Miller with CattleFax told me he believes that for stocker operators, feedlot operators, and cow-calf producers, the profits in 2003 should be some of the […]
Prairie dogs and squirrels and rats, oh my
A news release from the Illinois Department of Agriculture last week informed me that the quarantine of premises with wild and exotic pets has been expanded, as there is new evidence that indicates more than one Illinois pet dealer may have received animals exposed to the monkeypox virus. These animals include prairie dogs. I’m sorry, […]