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Awesome Ag Video
Thanks to Kathryn Shallenberger for sharing this video on her Facebook wall… I had no idea it existed, but it’s really cool!
Coffee farmers helping Japanese farmers with “virtual barn raising” appeal
Farmers helping Farmers. That is the kokua behind the fund being established by the Kona Coffee Farmers Association.
The KCFA will collect money to send to farmer-organizations in Japan to directly help farmers and their families who are victims of the recent shocking events, many now without homes, land, and crops.
Hawaii has a special relationship with Japan based on our many Japanese visitors and our kamaaina Japanese-Americans. The recent earthquake and tsunami caused enormous devastation in Northern Japan and affected all of us.
KCFA member Page Trygstad said, “Think of this appeal as a ‘virtual barn raising’, where neighbors all come together to help one farmer put up a new barn. Then next time someone needs a new barn they all go there. In our case think ‘drying deck raising.’”
The KCFA will accept donations, which will be forwarded to appropriate farmer organizations in Japan for dispersal to farmers and their families who have been displaced or otherwise financially injured by the earthquake and tsunami.
Donations designated for the Kona Coffee Farmers Association Tsunami Farmer Fund are being accepted at the Hawaii Community Federal Credit Union (HCFCU).
Donations can also be made through the KCFA website at www.konacoffeefarmers.org/JapaneseTsunamiFarmers.asp?
Originally posted by Hawaii 24/7
Happy National Teach Ag Day!
From Ag Wired:
Happy National Teach Ag Day
It’s National Teach Ag Day. What is it you might ask?
National Teach Ag Day is a day to celebrate school-based agricultural education and to encourage agricultural education advocates, especially current agricultural educators (middle school, high school, post-secondary, pre-service programs, etc.) to share with others the great career opportunities in agricultural education.
WHO IS IT FOR?
National Teach Ag Day is for anyone who wants to celebrate school-based agricultural education, share the story of agricultural education’s importance and effectiveness in the United States, and encourage students to consider careers as agricultural educators. Anyone who wants to participate can find a variety of resources to help them talk about agricultural education at www.naae.org/teachag.
National Teach Ag Day is a component of the National Teach Ag Campaign, an initiative to bring attention to the career of agricultural education, get students thinking about a possible career in agricultural education, and to support current agricultural educators in their careers.
The Teach Ag Campaign is an initiative of the National Council for Agricultural Education, led by the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE). It is sponsored by Landmark Nurseries as a special project of the National FFA Foundation and by Delmar Cengage Learning.
You can find the A Day In The Life Of An Ag Teacher Blog here.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
From Rural Route Review:
Happy Official St. Patrick’s Day, as people at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign like to say! Hopefully today’s festivities find you “festooned” in green, just like the Chicago River:
Now, don’t forget St. Patty’s Day = Feast Day.
So make sure to include agriculture a little agriculture while celebrating. That could be in the form of corned beef and cabbage, Irish spice bread, or a host of other Irish recipes.
But don’t forget the number one agricultural product associated with this holiday: beer. And the number one agricultural lesson that should be associated with this holiday: safety. With that, I will leave you to enjoy this somewhat gloomy on the outside, happy and lively on the inside-holiday!
Celebrating National Ag Day!
By Donna Marykwas, Science News Examiner:
Today 2011 National Ag Day is being celebrated in Washington, D.C. and throughout our great nation. The national event is hosted by the Agriculture Council of America (ACA), which was started in 1973.
Agriculture is so very important to our every day lives and to our national economy.
Fiber
Farmers put clothes on our backs. Cotton is of course a plant, a renewable source of fiber to make blue jeans, tee shirts, flannel sheets, and much more. Linen is woven from the fiber of flax plants. Hemp is another source of plant fiber used for clothing. Leather is of course not a plant fiber, real leather comes from the hides of cattle, another important agricultural crop, and is used to make the finest of shoes, accessories, car interiors, and furniture upholstery.
Apparently March is National Nutrition Month!
I learned something entirely new today – that March is National Nutrition Month! Here’s the blog post that lead me to not only that new information, but also some great information on soy oil along with a delicious-sounding recipe:
March is National Nutrition Month. So I thought since my first post was in the beginning of Nutrition Month, I would blog about an easy way that we can all make our cooking a little healthier.
Soy oil is a great ingredient substitute! It’s easy to make the switch and soy oil has many positive
AP File PhotoSoy oil is a nutritious ingredient substitute.benefits.
It is high in poly- and monounsaturated fats (which are the good kind of fats). It is also low in saturated fat, and contains no trans-fat (the bad kind). Not to mention, it’s a great source of Omega-3′s and high in vitamin E.
There has also been a lot of work done at the cellular level to make the actual soybean plant healthier for us; this work has taken away the need to hydrogenate the oil, which is what causes the bad fats that we don’t want to be eating.
There are taste benefits too! Soybean oil is a neutral flavor oil, which means that you are going to taste the food, not the oil that you cooked it with.
So the next time you go to Kroger to buy oil, look for a soybean oil and start on the road to a Nutritious March!
Just because you’re cooking healthy does not mean you have to give up taste. Here is a great and tasty recipe for Italian-Seasoned Roast Chicken!
Italian-Seasoned Roast Chicken Breasts
Total: 53 minutes
Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 breast half)Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
- 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 4 teaspoons soy oil
- 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 4 bone-in chicken breast halves (about 3 pounds)
- Cooking spray
Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 425°.
2. Combine first 8 ingredients in a bowl, stirring well. Loosen skin from chicken by inserting fingers, gently pushing between skin and meat. Rub rosemary mixture under loosened skin over flesh; rub over top of skin. Place chicken, bone side down, on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Coat skin lightly with cooking spray. Bake at 425° for 35 minutes or until a thermometer inserted into the thickest portion of the breast registers 155°. Remove chicken from pan; let stand for 10 minutes.
Nutrition Note: Since chicken breast meat is low in calories and saturated fat, you can eat the skin and still keep saturated fat within allowable limits. If you like dark meat, which is higher in saturated fat, remove and discard the skin.
Nutritional Information
- Calories: 240
- Fat: 12.2g (sat 2.8g,mono 6.3g,poly 2.1g)
- Protein: 29.5g
- Carbohydrate: 1.8g
- Fiber: 0.3g
- Cholesterol: 82mg
- Iron: 1.2mg
- Sodium: 366mg
- Calcium: 24mg
Desktop Farming
If you’re an agribusiness professional that works from an office rather than from the field, Mashable has some really nifty gadgets to help create an outdoor atmosphere inside your cubicle.
A bit of foliage can make all the difference to a workplace, bringing a little bit of nature indoors in all its green and air-purifying glory.
If you’re stuck in a cubicle, or behind a desk, then we’ve got 10 excellent gadgets, gizmos and other solutions that will see you enjoying the pleasures of desktop gardening in no time at all.
If you like the idea of introducing a bit of the natural world to your workstation, have a look at the gallery below and let us know which options get your green fingers twitching.
It’s National FFA Week!
Here’s a great post from Potted Goose in honor of National FFA week!
This is the image of the National FFA Organization in 2011. A modern, forward thinking youth organization.
This may be the stereotype etched in your memory.
Gangly, awkward teenagers running around in less-than fashionable corduroy jackets.
And at times, in small towns across the country, there were lots of gangly, awkward teenagers running around town in corduroy jackets.
You may have even wondered, “What’s up with all those kids and aren’t they hot in those jackets?”
In case you didn’t already know, it’s National FFA Week. A week dedicated to celebrating all those kids and their corduroy jackets. And a few other things.
I could use this space to help you understand all the wonderful things about the National FFA Organization. (That’s the name, now, by the way. They stopped calling if the Future Farmers of America twenty-three years ago.) Instead, I want to take this space to shed some light on the state of the agricultural education in my small town.
One year ago, ag education took a major hit in funding and support from the local administration and local school board. The program was cut back to half-time. Half the usual number of classes and a half-time teacher – who also was responsible for running the concession stand at dozens of home football games and coaching wrestling and track. This was the best the school district could put forth.
Today, things have changed. The school district has advertised to hire a full-time agriculture education instructor and re-instate the program to it full-time status. Much applause!
The timing couldn’t be better – for a number of reasons:
- 25 ag education graduates from Kansas State University are seeking employment. Currently, there are two openings across the entire state. The opportunity to hire a young, eager, top-of-the-class teacher is literally knocking on the door.
- Current, local FFA membership is up. Involvement is down. That says we have lots of interested students – but a teacher without the time to get the students involved in valuable ag ed programs.
- 3% of Americans are food producers. But 20% of Americans have jobs tied to agribusiness. Take a quick drive around town and that’s easy to see. Agriculture education benefits not just the future farmers, but the future Kan-Equip or John Deere employee, the future banker and the future machinist at Great Plains manufacturing. An investment in ag education is, simplistically, an investment in your future work force and the future patrons of your school district.
- 100% of Americans are food consumers. And the majority of those are generations removed from the farm and lack a basic understanding how food is produced in this country and around the globe. We need food literacy – we need people to understand how their food arrives at the local grocery store. Furthermore, we need 100% more food in the next 50 years to feed the growing world population. If you want your children to have job security, encourage them to learn about agricultural careers through the local ag education classes.
- Agriculture education has the solid support of this ranching, farming, and manufacturing community. Cutting back ag education here, can be likened to cutting back basketball in Milan, Indiana. (Don’t take that wrong – I played and loved basketball in my small town high school. But making the all-county basketball team didn’t help me get through college or instill within me the understanding and passion for an industry that feeds the world.)
For me, National FFA Week is a chance to remember all the wonderful ways my involvement helped me prepare for a lifetime of service to the agricultural industry. And, it’s an opportunity to speak out to ensure the same opportunities are presented to the next generation of agriculturalists.
Happy National FFA Week, folks!
Behind the scenes: Tax Season on the farm
Well today is the day before our big tax meeting. The farm typically does a pre-tax meeting towards the end of the year and then our actual tax meeting in February. I just wanted to take a few seconds to highlight some of the things you can expect a farmer (or their wives) to keep track of through the year, in addition to all the hardwork they are putting in with the fields and/or animals.
Income and Expenses. Just like any small business owner farmers track their income and expenses through the year, or some simply compile them together at the end of the year. With a farm as big as ours we find it easiest to sit down each month and record our income and expenses into Microsoft Excel. Some farmers prefer an accounting program, such as QuickBooks, but around here we love excel!
Assets- Defined as items of ownership convertible into cash. It’s important to keep track of these as you purchase and sell new items. In farming technology is often times always improving, so some farmers often buy and sell equipment, its important to have a good system down to keep all of your paperwork for each asset you own and sell.
Liabilities- Defined as moneys owed. This is another important part of farming. Just like in your own personal finances its important to keep track of what you may owe on your mortgage, credit card, or school loan. It’s important to keep track of any open accounts you may have with implement dealers (aka people that will sell you tractors and their components), credit card companies, or banks.
Balance Sheets/Financial Statements/Cash Flow- These are all documents you can expect to see if you are any type of business owner. These are always my favorite documents. I took a great class in college called Farm and Ranch Management where we looked at these different documents to determine debt/asset ration, net worth, etc. It’s a great way to take a look at the entire year as a whole, but then to also set up projections for the following year.
Cattle- defined as bovine animals. At our farm “cattle” are our feeder cattle. What we are raising for food. There are so many different records that could go into cattle. When you bought them, when you sold them, when you worked them, when they need to be worked next, what lot they are in, what they eat..I could probably think of a few more, but I will leave it as that.
Calving Operation. All our Momma’s and their Babies. We have a small calving operation. A lot of the same things are similar here when it comes to record keeping in cattle. Except now you add in the factor of being a Mother. Before cows give birth they are often checked numerous times a day, just like a human. We want to make sure the cow is comfortable, healthy, and ready to give birth to her ”extra big” baby. At our farm we keep records of when the baby was born, its color, and whether it was a girl or boy (heifer or steer).
These are just a FEW things that go on behind the scenes of being a farmer. I feel myself looking back through the year thinking of all the hard work my farmers did to make it all happen. I love farming and all the work that goes into it..and then I remember that behind every good husband is a loving wife- or a wife who does all the paperwork!
Ag Issues for the Next Generation
Did you know the NYFEA is now using Vimeo? We’ll use the account to feature educational videos pertaining to agriculture and the next generation of Ag Leaders.
Here’s a video from the 2010 National Young Farmer Educational Association “Agriculture’s Promise” event in Washington, D.C.
This panel discussion sets the foundation of the event’s purpose – to identify key issues effecting young and beginning farmers and producers and provide some strategies for talking about these issues with national leaders and members of Congress.
