Get out those red slippers, Dorothy. Looks like another storm brewing in Kansas. That was my thought when I learned of a $17.4 million USDA loan to the city of Greensburg, Kansas, for a 10-turbine wind farm.

The money is going to Greensburg Wind Farms LLC, a subsidiary of John Deere Renewables. I know it's a loan, and it has to be repaid, and I know John Deere is good for it. At least as good as General Motors was for its...but let's not go there. And if anybody deserves an infusion of jobs and capital, it is Greensburg, Kansas, blown literally apart by a tornado in May of 2007. Ten people died and there was almost nothing left of Greensburg.

The city is rebuilding from the ground up, it's in one of the nation's windiest spots, and it will be supplying good old USA-generated megawatts for Greensburgians and the citizens of surrounding communities. It is an absolutely ideal project. For the Department of Energy.

My question is this - why did the cost of this loan have to come out of the USDA budget when millions of family farmers are facing their own financial storms? For a copy of the news release that seeks to justify the project, click here http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/10/0503.xml

How would you like to visit one of the most historic hunting lodges in the country? Six presidents have stayed there, it's considered the first presidential retreat (an honor now accorded Camp David) and one of the lodge's founders, Henry Bridges, is credited with help to save the wild turkey from extinction. Well, you can't see it anymore this year. That bus has left. But the Maryland Park Service does open the Woodmont Rod and Gun Club Lodge in Hancock, Md., near Baltimore, twice a year to the general public. The latest tour was last month and the next one will be in the spring. Meanwhile, you can read about the lodge in our current edition. Lancaster Farming correspondent Ayleen Stellhorn took the September tour and writes about her adventure in our current edition.

Charlie's got a biting sense of humor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM