Monthly Archives: November 2010

One of the things that American farmers should be proud of is the fact that each one feeds 115 people.  I found this You Tube clip fairly interesting.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4vvPPNyQ5g

Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day and millions will be seated around tables loaded with food, it occurred to me that most of them have no idea where that food came from.  So I did some research at USDA and found the following.

Obviously, the center of any Thanksgiving meal is the turkey.  Did you know that Minnesota is responsible for 95% (47,000,000) of the turkeys produced in the United States.  Like potatoes, the sweet ones probably came from North Carolina, but the mashed that I prefer come from Idaho.  Those buns your grandma makes that you love, might have come from Kansas wheat.  That head of lettuce most likely came from California.  The relish tray you most likely are munching on mostly came from California.  If you like squash, you should know that Florida is the leader there.  Pumpkin pie for dessert, look to Illinois for the source of those pumpkins.  How about that table cloth, ever think that a cotton farmer in Texas took the time to grow it?

Tomorrow, when you are giving thanks for whatever you are thankful for, don’t forget to be thankful for the farmer that produced the food.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The past month has been pretty quiet.  About a month ago, we had 2 inches of rain that effectively ended all field work around here.  We still are trying to get out to finish some ditching.  We’ll be able to get it done when the ground freezes and before it snows.  Fortunately, we have missed the snow that the Twin Cities had over the weekend.

The past two weeks have been deer hunting.  Most guys use this time as vacation.   August through October all pretty busy and there isn’t a lot of time for rest or relaxation so they use this time to get caught up on some fun.

It’s also meeting season.  I had wheat grower meetings in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, today I did my pre-tax planning and have a load of things to think about before the end of the year.  There also are a plethora of seed meetings going on.  It’s not to hard to get a free steak dinner at least once a week with all of these meetings.

This year there are a few more things for us to consider when buying sugarbeet seed.  Ongoing litigation on the west coast has our hands tied on buying GMO seed or conventional seed.  Basically, we have two crops of seed ordered.  Hopefully, we find out what we can plant the GMO by the end of this year but I don’t think any of us are holding our breath.

Tomorrow, I head to North Carolina for a Field to Market sustainability meeting.  Two weeks after that I head to South Dakota for the wheat grower convention.  Then Minnesota and North Dakota have their convention the week after that.  So even though it’s a slow season, it’s not to hard to keep busy.