"A bunch of bosh," is what one professor is calling another professor's idea that human-caused climate change didn't begin with the Industrial Revolution or internal combustion. It began, according to University of Virginia professor emeritus William Ruddiman, when people burned entire forests to plant crops, and when they first planted methane spewing rice paddies 5,000 or more years ago.

Ruddiman's bosher is Wallace Broecker, a professor at Columbia University. Broeker said he's worried that the idea of pre-modern people as massive carbon emitters could turn into an argument that the modern world need not worry so much about its own pollution. He thinks Ruddiman's approach could be used as a dodge by opponents of legislation aimed at curbing global warming.

"I get really upset with him," was Broecker's stinging response to the publication of Ruddiman's latest article in a scholarly journal hardly any of us has ever heard of, much less read. The battle of ideas was reported on in a story in yesterday's Washington Post. The story, by staff writer David A. Fahrenthold, is here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/27/AR2009092701949.html?sub=AR

Kind of gives a new/old meaning to the phrase, "It's academic."

The sale of Pilgrim's Pride to Brazil's mega-meat JBS SA operation, with $28.7 billion in world-wide sales, is creating nervousness throughout the poultry industry. Not to mention the thousands of Pilgrim's Pride employees and contract growers who are dependent on the company for their paychecks and the loan payments on their chicken houses. Lancaster Farming Virginia correspondent Andrew Jenner took a look at the possible sale, which would have to be approved by shareholders, regulators and the bankruptcy court overseeing Pilgrim's Pride's attempts to free itself from Chapter 11. Jenner's story is in our current edition.

Corn. Just give them a some corn. All they want is a little corn.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1921973

You may not want to spend $332 a night to sleep in a tent, cook your own food and toss haybales onto a wagon on a hot afternoon. But then, you're not from New York City, and a "haycation", probably looks more like regular life to you than an exotic getaway from the urban confines of the Big Apple.

Kim Severson, a reporter for the New York Times, did plunk down her $332 times three for a long weekend stay at Stony Creek Farm in Delaware County, New York. It's in a part of the Catskills with ground so rocky that locals say there are two stones to every dirt.

Farm vacations are much more popular in Europe than they are in the U.S., so when they decided to get into the farm vacation business, Stony Creek's owners, Kate and Dan Marsiglio, hooked up with Feather Down Farms, a high-end European farm-stay chain. Feather Down provides the marketing for the franchisees, and the tents, which are comfortable, spacious, have flush toilets and showers. And well-stocked kitchens. More than half the the guest fees are turned over to Feather Down.

Any extras that guests pay for at Stony Creek stay at Stony Creek. The Marsiglios, for example, have a small farm store on site, where guests pay for everything but eggs. Eggs are free. And since Ms Seversen wanted to putter around in the garden, they let her pick some carrots and beets that they'd later sell at a farmers market. And they only charged her $35 for the privilege.

Which means she dug up the beets and the carrots and gave them, along with $35, to the Marsiglios. They did, however, let her pitch bales for free.

I'm planning to contact Ms Severson to ask her if she would like to get a taste of life in a small Pennsylvnia town, where she can mow a lawn, prune some bushes, wash a car and cook in a genuine small-town kitchen. For a fee, of course.

And if she wants to walk the dog...well, that would be extra.

If you'd like to read her account, you'll find it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/dining/26farms.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Master Gardeners are helping young people in trouble by teaching them how to get their hands dirty. In a program that's in its eighth year, the Lancaster Master Gardeners visit twice a week with the young people housed in the Lancaster Youth Intervention Center. The goal is to help the struggling kids get closer to the earth and, hopefully, closer to themselves and to society at large. Anne Harnish, Lancaster Farming food and family features editor, paid a visit to the Center and came back with some interesting photos and a story which appears in Section B of the current edition.

What if every bird in your layer house could do this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWh_2Iit3Ek

My hometown is only complete, really my hometown, for five days a year, Tuesday through Saturday of the third full week of September. That's Ephrata Fair week. As a town kid, living on the square, I knew that every Wednesday morning of fair week, I could look out the second story window of my apartment building and see the merry-go-round ready to go to work.

It was the 1950s and the horses were handcarved from solid wood, unlike the handsome, but plastic, steed here. Many of those wooden horses have been lost to the dump, fire, termites or just plain lost. The ones that have survived can command some astonishing prices.

In fact, if you have an extra $10,000 or $15,000 in your cookie jar, you might want to take a look here

http://www.mycarousel.com/index_01.htm

Actually, my fondest memories are not of the horses, but of the rides and the food. I'm not so keen on the rides anymore, especially the octopus. The arms of the octopus went around in big circles, the seats spun in little circle, the arms went up and down and they tilted. I think that covered all the possible ways to move, at least in a three-dimensional universe.

Let me eat a cheese steak, a couple of Cokes, french fries, a candy apple, another Coke and one of those pan-fried, swirly, fried dough things with powdered sugar and buy me a ticket to the Octopus and you'll be my enemy for life, Adam Brubaker. There. I've said it. That's why I didn't come to your wedding.

Is there something fishy going on in the dairy industry? Christine Varney wants to know. Her interest is especially notable because she heads up the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Varney was in St. Albans, Vermont, last week at the invitation of the state's two U.S. senators, Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders. She met with the senators and other politicians, farmers and the general public. Lancaster Farming correspondent Steve Taylor was there and prepared a report for the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.

Who says only people and a few monkeys can use tools?

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3253554/funny_birds/

Belgian dairy farmers last week loaded their manure spreaders with milk and sprayed three million litres back onto the land. They were protesting the fact that the current milk price being paid to farmers in the European Union is not enough to cover their cost of production. About 300 French-speaking farmers drove their tractors to a field in the country's southern Wallonia region and opened the valves on their spreaders, according to an Associated Press story out of Brussels.

Dutch-speaking farmers handed, concerned about public backlash from the images of so much good food going to waste, handed out free milk to consumers in their part of the country.

EU Milk Board chief Ronald Schaber told a press conference that more and more farmers were joining the milk price protest, which began gathering steam when agriculture ministers from the various countries could not agree on an aid package for the beleagured dairy industry. Other demonstrations have been held in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.

Deep-fried butter. Try it. You'll like it. But you'll feel guilty. Even Abel Gonzales, the Texas State Fair concessionaire who brought deep fried butter to the table this year, thinks of it as a once-a-year treat. He's also the fellow who introduced his fellow Texans to deep-fried Coke and deep-fried cookie dough. You may have read out deep-fried butter - apparently not as totally disgusting as you might think it is - in the September 12 issue of Lancaster Farming. Or you can read a report from Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Mac Engle here:

http://www.star-telegram.com/entertainment/story/1632274.html

We were just coming in to visit our mom. She's over there. With the Slim Jims. http://www.break.com/index/cowboys-herd-cattle-in-convenience-store.html

A California pomegranate grower, Parry Klassen, who penned an opinion piece for the Modesto Bee, said he is happy specialty crop growers have been recognized in the current Farm Bill. He's especially pleased with a $2.6 million-a-year provision that will help farmers in the northern San Joaquin Valley institute measures to mitigate the impacts of irrigation and storm water runoff on public water supplies.

Coordinated through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the program will pay for half the cost of such practices as installing sediment basins and irrigation tailwater recirculation systems, planting native shrub hedgerows and the creation of riparian buffers for erosion control.

Klassen is encouraged that at least some of the Farm Bill focus was switched away from Midwest corn, soybean and wheat growers, and California's own dairy, rice and cotton producers.

You can read his letter here: http://www.modbee.com/opinion/national/story/863485.html

Dairy farmers continue to struggle, and 150 of them showed up at the American Legion Hall in Canisteo, New York, to talk about their problems and their prospects. Lancaster Farming correspondent Maegan Crandall covered the meeting which was moderated by Arden Tewksbury of the Progressive Agriculture Organization. Her story is in the current edition.

Let's just keep Sharky well supplied with kibble, okay? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obr7CRotuv4

The good news is that no one's going to starve in India. The bad news is that this might be a temporary situation. With over a billion people, the world's second most populus nation needs to do a better job of managing its water resources to avoid future catastrophes.

There's a drought this year. There have been droughts before. And none of the five droughts since 1947, the year India claimed its independence from Great Britain, caused wide spread famine. And with bumper crops in 2007 and 2008, there is enough stored wheat and rice to serious food grain price inflation, according to an article in The Economist by reporters Andhra Pradesh and Lubana Teku. But there's no long-term comfort in those facts. Monsoon rains begin in June in much of the sub-continent and continue into September. But the country can get as much as half its annual rainfall in a 15-day period. This year's rainfall was down by more than 20 percent, which is causing droughty conditions in many agricultural regions.

In their article, Pradesh and Teku cite experts who say the country needs to anticipate more doughts because of global climate change. There also needs to be a national effort to store water and to get it to the right place at the right time to do the best possible good.

What the article doesn't say is that India's water problem could be a bellwether for the rest of the world.

You can read the full article here http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=478044&story_id=14401149

There's a shock in store for Pennsylvania farmers when rate caps go off their electricity costs in 2010. PennAg Industries Association is working to establish a buying pool for poultry farmers that could knock dollars off the generation portion of their electric bill. It's a complicated program. Staff writer Chris Torres did a story about PennAg's program in the current issue of Lancaster Farming.

I want to know where he pins his fishing license.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2931446/fishing_dog

A low-tech way to help the Bay got a tryout earlier this month in, of all places, Puyallup, Washington. Rain gardens, as they're callled, were installed in the lawns of seven homes in the 900 block of Eigth Avenue in an attempt to reduce the effects of storm water runoff from the roofs of houses and covered areas like drivesways, patios and sidewalks. The gardens consist of heavy stands of drought resistant plants and, according to a story by reporter Melissa Santos in the Tacoma News Tribune, cost about $2,000 to $3,000 each.

(That's one of the gardens in the photo above. If you gave me $3,000 to plant that garden, I think I could give you about $2,500 in change. Or maybe I'd just keep it.)

On September 6, a record-breaking downpour hit Puyallup, a city of about 35,000 people. Puyallup is just south of Seattle and in the heart of the Puget Sound watershed. The Puget Sound is an estuary much like the Chesapeake Bay and, like the Bay, is becoming an ecological disaster. Residents and city officials reported much less water in the streets after the storm, and attributed that fact to the water captured by the rain gardens.

Much has been made of the problem storm water runoff can carry to the Bay, in particular untreated sewage from overloaded municipal drainage systems in times of heavy rainfall. Here's an idea that, it seems to me, can be imported to the benefit of the Bay watershed. You can read Ms Santos's story here

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/roy/story/881245.html

And if you want to send me a check for $3,000, me and my guys will be on your front lawn with a load of succulents first thing in the morning.

Speaking of the Chesapeake, a number of Lancaster Farming articles in the current issue dealt with Bay issues. Staff writer Chris Torres reported on a telephone conference call EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had with media, government, ag representatives and others to talk about a more hardline approach to Bay cleanup issues. And yours truly reported on a presentation in Lancaster by Barry Simns, president of the Chesapeake Bay Watermen's Association.

Revenge of the grapes. Did you think those helpless little berries liked being stomped on? http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=343461

The horses of Mackinac Island. Hello from your guest blogger, regional editor, Tracy Sutton. Just thought I would let all of you horse fanciers know about a story I'm writing for the next issue of Mid-Atlantic Horse on the draft horses of Mackinac Island.

I was in Northern Michigan last weekend and took a trip to the famed island, which is in the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet (at the tip of mitten). It's a bit of a haul to get there, but on a crystal blue day (which it was, a rare blessed weather day), the place is heaven itself. Blue water, bright skies -- and horses! Mackinac Island is renowned for not having any automobiles (except one town fire engine and ambulance). The only way to get around is by bike, foot, or horse.

The island is only a few miles long, but during the season (when the lakes are not frozen), Mackinac Island is home to nearly 700 draft horses, about 400 of whom work for the historic Mackinac Island Carriage Tour Co. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Bill Chambers today, the fifth generation horseman in the family business. It was his great-grandfather, Thomas Chambers that successfully petitioned the Island in the 1940s to ban the introduction of automobiles on Mackinac Island. I asked Mr. Chambers how business was and he said, oh, they hitch a lot of teams in the season. The busiest season he had, he said, was one year in the 1980s when he hitched 280 horses in one day.

The horses get quite a work out, traipsing around the Island, pulling tourists. (Known as "fudgies" by the locals, for all the confectionary sugar they consume.) At the end of the season, in early November, before the lakes freeze, the town has a parade -- hundreds of draft horses march down to the docks and get on ferries, where they sail five miles north to the Upper Pennisula of Michigan and spend their winter on a farm in Pickford, run by Mr. Chambers brother Jim Chambers.

So check out the next issue of Mid-Atlantic horse to see pictures of this unique island and its horse history.

Monday we turn you back to the capable hands of regular blogger and Lancaster Farming phenomenon Dick Wanner.

Happy Friday!

The All-American Dairy Show is coming. On the agriculture calendar, hands down this has to be my favorite major agriculture event of the year. Starting later this week, some of the nation’s best cows will be rolling into the Farm Show complex for their first stop to compete at the first of three national dairy shows.

My earliest memory of time at the All-American was when my family had to take my uncle down to compete in the Pennsylvania State Junior Dairy Show. I was only four at the time and I remember how awestruck I was at the size of the Farm Show Complex and the show. Then a few years later when I was 10, I earned my first qualifier with my Guernsey, Midget Lake Able Daisy. With the wisdom of my 10 years, I believed I had “made it to the big time.”

As the years advanced, I was blessed to have a class winner and my brother the junior champion of the Guernsey show in the early 1990s, which was my parents benchmark for us to cross over into the All-American Dairy Show – a pinnacle in our 4-H and FFA career.

However, it is not the cows that only make this a favorite for me, it’s the people. The breeders, the youth and the friendships I have been blessed with from those years of having my cows in the Northwest Hall of the complex. When I am not busy covering an event for Lancaster Farming, my family and I can be found wondering through the barns, visiting with many of our farming friends and seeing what cows they have brought to the show.

If you have not thought about attending this year, I would encourage you to think about taking a day off the farm to make the trip to Harrisburg. Events to note are: youth supreme champion on Monday; youth showmanship contest on Sunday; open supreme champion on Thursday; and three days of national breed shows starting Tuesday.

If you can’t make it to the All-American, stay tuned to Lancaster Farming for full coverage of the show!

- from Ag Scene Guest Blogger, Charlene Shupp Espenshade

A week ago I walked out to my grape arbor behind the barn, to harvest the few basketfuls of delicious Concord grapes that grow there every year. Unfortunately, there were no grapes left on the vines! Although I had been inspecting the young grape clusters regularly all summer, (“counting my grapes before they were harvested”) and even though there had been green grape clusters developing as recently as three weeks earlier, here I was at harvest time with no grapes. It was mystifying.

Could it have been birds? Or a strange fungus? Did the wet weather bring them down? Could it have been some opportunistic children, discovering the grapes in the cool shade on a hot day? My pruning efforts? I’m not a grape-growing expert and only an amateur gardener, but whatever happened to those grapes made me reflect once again on the struggles of farming -- working with the vagaries of nature to produce food. My own successful and unsuccessful gardening efforts always give me a renewed deep appreciation for the skill of farmers, who produce food for the rest of us to eat year after year.

Innovators are coming up with new ways to compost cow carcasses such as the composting equipment developed by DAR, a family-run company in Myerstown, Pa. Read about it in Lancaster Farming on page E2 of last week’s special section insert, Ag Innovations.

Watch 10 days of ant-digging compressed into 40 seconds on this little homemade ant farm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pb7MYA1Go8

- from Ag Scene guest blogger: Anne Harnish

Welcome to the guest blogs this week, while Dick Wanner is away at the beach.