AgWired

It’s time to vote for the AGCONNECT Expo 2011 “Advocating For Agriculture Awards.”

AG CONNECT Expo 2011 is proud to announce the finalists for its “Advocating for Agriculture” Awards. It’s now up to you to determine the Grand Prize winner for each category by voting online from November 24 – December 9, 2010.

* Chad Bremmer
* Elliott Marsh
* Erin Mohler

I can imagine how it sounded:
“Can I have your phone number please, starting with the area code?”
“6.”
“I’m sorry, I just caught the first number. Can you give it to me again?”
“Yes. 6. That’s my phone number.”

I can’t even keep up with the latest in cell phone technology. Pretty soon, we’re going to have a chip implanted in our ear and we just have to blink to dial someone. Once for home, twice for the office.

Back in 1947, however, my grandfather’s family was on the rural farmer-owned telephone exchange where the central office was upstairs in an old farm house. His family’s number was 6. Just 6. The poles were installed and lines strung by the farmers themselves.

It wasn’t until the REA was given authority to install rural phone lines in 1949 that the installation of rural phone systems took off. By 1975, farmers overtook and surpassed their urban neighbors in the percentages of households with telephone service.

The phone pictured here hangs on the wall as decoration, but I think it was less than 10 years ago when they finally took down the rotary phone in the kitchen and installed a touchtone phone.

Until we walk again…

If you have food on your table today – thank God and thank our nation’s fabulous farmers and ranchers for the affordable, safe and abundant food supply they produce for the world.

I found this poem online that gives good reasons to give thanks today for those who produce the food, fuel and fiber that we all enjoy everyday:

I’m Just a Farmer, Plain and Simple
By Bobby Collier

I’m just a farmer,
Plain and simple.
Not of a royal birth
But rather, a worker of the earth.
I know not of riches
But rather, of patches on my britches
I know of drought and rain,
Of pleasure and pain.
I know of the good and the bad,
The happy and the sad.
I am a man of emotions.
A man who loves this land,
And the beauty of its sand.
I know of a spring’s fresh flow
And autumn’s golden glow,
Of a newborn calf’s hesitation,
And the eagle’s destination.
I know of tall pines,
And long, waiting lines.
Of the warmth of campfires,
And the agony of flat tires.
But I am a man who loves his job
And the life I live.
I am a man who works with God,
I cannot succeed without his help,
For you see,
I’m just a farmer
Plain and simple.