Desperately trying to stay awake until the New Year (it’s 9pm, 12/31) I’ve been surfing the presidential candidate’s sites, considering their fundraising appeals. (All of the following are from official campaign communications.) My native (Indiana) son, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is apologetic, ‘This is the last time you’ll hear from me this year’ … ‘Can…

I ran the HUFF today at Chain O’ Lakes. It’s a 50K trail run with an 11.3 mile “fun run.” I’m not in 50K shape. I’m not really in 11 mile shape either. I hadn’t done much more than 6 miles in a training run for several months. But one day after a pleasant…

The centre has held [1], perhaps things won’t fall apart. [2] 1. Trump Impeached 2. The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and…

Each year Jason Holzinger, our seed corn dealer, gives us a ham for Christmas. It’s the best ham in the world, an Ossian bone-in ham. I’ve been wanting to try cooking something sous vide and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I don’t have a sous vide cooker, and even if I did it…

I’m reading Mark Twain’s “A Tramp Abroad” and I came across this gem today. “A (blue) jay hasn’t got any more principle than a Congressman.” As appropriate today in Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District as it was in 1880 when Twain wrote it. Although that does seem to be a harsh comparison for the blue…

Almost 5 years ago I went to a meeting in Woodburn Indiana about nitrogen management in corn. There was a person there from the Environmental Defense Fund with brochures about selling carbon credits, i.e., we’d get paid for farming in a way that burned less carbon or sequestered more in the soil. I really…

Two black raspberry posts in a row? Yes, indeed, I love my black raspberries [1]. The black raspberries just keep coming, like the rain this year. Normally the black raspberries are burning up by this time of year. But this year the rain won’t stop. I picked another 8 cups in in my backyard…

After a long wet spring the wild black raspberries are finally ripe. We didn’t burn our native prairie last year and this year the wild raspberries are growing like crazy. I don’t know if the burning schedule contributed to this, or whether it’s just the vagaries of the weather. Whatever the reason, I have…