AgWired

Our family farming operation bleeds green. To any John Deere lover, you know what I mean. The tractors today are bigger, have more horsepower, more options and enable growers to accomplish so much more in a short amount of time. It wasn’t always so.

The top photo is a Mogul 8-16 breaking sod on our family’s farm in the early 1900s. This was McCormick’s (International Harvester) first attempt at a smaller tractor and was manufactured in 1915. It had one forward and reverse speed: 1.5 miles per hour.

The middle photo is a Titan 10-20, also an International Harvester, and was also built in about 1915. It had a maximum speed of 3 miles per hour. My grandmother’s family used this tractor to harrow 70 acres per day. (Brand new, the price was $950.)

Both the Mogul and the Titan ran on kerosene.

The bottom photo is a Farmall … my great grandfather’s first tractor he purchased in 1929.

Today’s equipment is built to cover more ground, more efficiently, in an effort to provide food for a growing domestic and world population. Just remember – bigger doesn’t mean ‘corporate’. It just means there’s a farmer out there working long hours, farming more acres, so that you can go to the grocery store and buy affordable, healthy food for your family. Farmers today just have more mouths to feed.

Until we walk again …

It may sound disrespectful, but our good friend Derry Brownfield always referred to the day of his funeral as “Bury Derry Day” – so that’s what we’re calling it!

The official obituary has been published now in the Jefferson City News Tribune with the important facts of his life distilled into a few short paragraphs. Those who knew him could write a book about him!

But here are the details for visitation and funeral and such:

Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, March 16, 2011, at 11:00 a.m. at California United Church of Christ, California, Mo. Burial will be in California Masonic Cemetery. Visitation will be held on Tuesday, March 15, 2011, from 4:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at Bowlin-Cantriel Funeral Services, California, Mo. Memorials are suggested to the Gideon’s International, c/o Derry Brownfield, P.O. Box 79, Centertown, MO 65023. Arrangements are under the direction of Bowlin-Cantriel Funeral Services, California, Mo.

I will be there tonight for the visitation. Chuck is hoping to get back from DC early enough tomorrow morning to get to the funeral. We know that many of Derry’s friends and fans will be there – along with his wonderful family. It is sad to know that his voice will no longer be coming out live from a microphone here on Earth, but we will be celebrating the time we had with him and his new life in Heaven this week!

With federal funding for public broadcasting on the chopping block in Washington, programs like “America’s Heartland” need friends more than ever.

Now in its sixth season, the PBS show shares the stories of America’s farmers and ranchers with a sophisticated public television viewing audience and is seeking production funding for its seventh season. To that end, the grassroots “Friends of America’s Heartland” website is offering fans of the award-winning series a way to support it by making donations and encouraging others to do so.

The Friends campaign will supplement the sponsorships already promised for season 7 by the American Farm Bureau Foundation, Farm Credit Services, and the United Soybean Board while additional major funding support is still being sought. America’s Heartland is on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and is produced by KVIE Public Television in Sacramento.