Who Makes Chocolate Milk???

I was looking through the magazine published by the Missouri Farm Bureau, and found something that I found humorous and in my thinking almost unimaginable.

There is an imbedded article on page 26 of the July/August 2008 issue of SHOW ME Missouri Farm Bureau which asked the above title question.  Who Makes Chocolate Milk?  There is a picture in the corner which has three different colored cows - all considered to be milk production cows - a Jersey, Gernsey, and a Holstien; along with a Brahma bull, and then two small boys.

They presented this or a similar picture to “8000 elementary students at a Farm Fest in a large city” and asked the students to select from “a solid brown cow, a black and white cow, a brown and white cow, a cream colored Brahma bull, a boy, and a girl holding a chocolate milk carton”.

Out of these 8000 elementary students only one child selected a human as the correct answer to the question.  This just seems obvious to a country boy, but it is a real problem to know that many children do not realize where food comes from.  To think that children could think that a cow produces chocolate milk is beyond me, but I do understand the plight of knowledge concerning farming, and the farmer.

Cows produce white milk.  There are no chocolate milk producing cows.  Chocolate comes from a tree and its fruit called cacao, and is from the tropics.  That is where our chocolate comes from.

Understand, I do not mean to lay blame on these children.  There may be some adults, the parents of these children even, who don’t know that cows don’t produce chocolate milk, or even where milk comes from.  There is nothing wrong with being ignorant of some things, which I am, but, it is foolish to remain ignorant.  I pray these 8000 students learned much on this day of the Farm Fest.

God is the giver of all good things; and some things not.

-Tim A. Blankenship

The High Cost of Livin’

There are a lot of folks complainin’ about the high prices of everything, here in the good old USA.   Gasoline is high, diesel fuel is high, boat fuel, airplane fuel is all too high.  That is what we hear.  Then, we go into a grocery store, and we hear some of the same folks complain’ about the food being so high priced. 

Now, don’t anyone go thinkin’ that I said things ain’t high.  To be perfectly honest with you I would be one of those complainers’ too much of the time.  It comes to my mind once in a while, something I heard from a neighbor who lived on their farm borderin’ the farm I grew up on.  Elmer, would say, and it was usually when someone would be complainin’ about the “High cost of livin’”, “It ain’t the high cost of livin’ that’s the problem.  It’s the cost of livin’ high”, and you know I think he had somethin’ there.

We farmer types are agile, and able to make it when things don’t go good.  Hank Jr. had it right in a song a few years ago, when he sang “A country boy can survive.”  He sang, “I got a shotgun, a rifle, and a four wheel drive, and a country boy can survive…”

I never have understood why it is when things get hard, some country folks want to head for the cities.  That seems plumb dumb to me.  Out in the country you can grow your food, butcher a steer, hunt deer, or squirells, fish in the creek, lake or river, and if you find yourself homeless you can find a cave or an overhang on a bluff, and have a cozy warm or cool place to sleep.  My goodness, what more does a man need.  The greatest need we have other than clothing, food, and shelter is the grace of our God, through His Son Jesus Christ.  Without that you just as well live in the city, in a cardboard box depending on handouts.

When you get to thinking about it we have nothin’ to complain about, but we do have much to be thankful for.  We have been surrounded with too much luxury for far too long, and are not appreciative of the better things of life.  When we have been livin’ high, and we start losin’ some of that high and mighty stuff, our eyes are being opened toward gratefulness.  Open the mouth, and say “Thank you LORD.”

Look up to the floor joist of heaven, and be thankful to the One who created it all.  If you are wondering what the “floor joist” of heaven are, they are also called stars, planets, etc..

-Tim A. Blankenship

What Is the Value of A Farmer???

There are people living in the large cities, even adult people, who have no idea where their food, milk, ice -cream treats, vegetables, and meat come from.  At least that is the way many people act.  “You go to the grocery store, WalMarts, Ramey, Giant Foods, Piggly Wiggly, or whatever and you get what you want.”

While you can go to the grocery store, which is Oh, so convenient; there are farmers “breaking their backs”, and in many cases risking their lives in order that you might have food on your table, or in front of your television.  Even many of the snacks that we eat today is food that has been prepared from crops, for you to have a ready to eat snack.  Doritos, Potato chips, snack cakes - being made from flour, which requires wheat, and then there is the sugar in the cookies which is from farms as well.  The Sugar farmer may prefer to call his place a Sugar Plantation, but it is none-the-less still a farm.

Many of the big farms may produce much milk, grain, and fruits and vegetables, and they make a good deal of money.  Don’t dare think that farming is a lucrative business.  Let me give you and idea of the money that is made in farming.  A farmer may bring in a cash value of 200,000 dollars per year, but by the time they pay for the fuel of the tractor, farm labor costs, feed for the cattle, fuel for their other farm vehicles; the maintenance and upkeep of all farm machinery, etc..  After all the expenses and farm costs are paid the small farmer; if he is blessed; may have 20,000 dollars per year.  And that would be a fairly good year.

After they have made that kind of profit [wow!!!:)], can you believe that, then the government wants to tax more than what they actually have in spendable income? 

When farmers have a bad year with a drought all our government wants to offer them is a low interest loan.  When farmers in the country of Columbia want to make a deal with the United States that’s a different situation.  Our farmers can just suffer, but we can’t let foreigners farming suffer.  We will take their meat, their crops, and pay them a great price for it; and at the expense of our own people.

I have heard in Hollywood productions and from people who don’t know much that the oldest profession in the world is prostitution.  Well that is not true.  The oldest and grandest profession and vocation is farming.  There were farmers long before any woman or man ever thought of selling themselves for cash.

What makes a man or a woman want to be a farmer?  Some grow up on the farm and don’t know much of anything else.  They decide at an early age they want to take over the family farm, or have a farm of their own.  There are some who grow up and go to Agricultural Schools/Colleges/Universities to learn more about farming, the soils, trees, and vegetables.  They may come back to the farm to help make it more productive, and they may not.  The outdoors, fresh air, fresh turned soil, and its fragrance, sunrises and sunsets, are all things that farmers enjoy.  Not to mention the planting of the seed in that freshly worked soil, watching it come up through that dirt day later, then, weeks and months later it reaches its peak, and it bears fruit.  From one little seed of grain comes thousands of seeds of grain.  The farmer can look at that and thank the Lord for giving the increase, and thank Him also for giving him the strength to plant and harvest the crop.  Farming is one vocation that gives a person a sense of worth, and accomplishment.

The next time you go through that grocery aisle, and you pick up a head of cabbage, or brocoli, or some Apples, Peaches, Oranges, or a can or frozen bag of peas; and a gallon of milk remember there were some farmers who rose early many mornings to get that milk and cheese to you; spent many hours plowing the ground preparing it for the seeds that produced that cabbage, brocoli and other veggies.  Many Orchards spend hours protecting their trees from freezing in the seasons of their blooming in order that we might have fresh fruits.  When you pick them up remember where it came from.  It came from hard working farmers who have given their lives to feed the American citizens and the world.

by Tim A. Blankenship

February One, Two Zero Zero Eight

I couldn’t think of any other title. Real creative genious, right? 

Anyway; it is the first day of February in 2008, and the farmers around Southwest MO, and over quite a bit of the State are feeding cattle and all their livestock in the snow.  This type of weather puts a little extra burden on the farmer, and the animals.

In this type of weather animals can lose a lot of their body heat due to the cold, so they need extra food to help them maintain that heat.  At least that is a good thought.  That is what I have heard, and I think it is true.  It helps we human beings to eat good and healthy during this kind of weather too.

The way farmer’s feed their cattle now is usually with trucks carrying big round bales of hay to drop off where ever they need it.  Most farmers now have four wheel drive trucks which allow them to trudge through mud, snow, and many kinds of rough terrain.  There are times they can get their trucks stuck, and that puts them behind on getting the hay out, or the feed to their livestock.  That often requires they get their tractor, or sometimes a neighbor’s tractor to pull them out.  I should say in some cases the farmer uses the tractor with a spike on the rear and one on a front end loader to carry two big round bales at one time.  Sometimes tractors get stuck too.

The life of a farmer is filled with adventure.  It is a life of work in all kinds of weather.  Be it rain, sleet, hail, snow, wind, tornado, lightning, or sunshine, the farmer tends to his livestock.  Most of the time it is after these events have taken place, but sometimes when necessary it can be during the event.

The next time you go to the grocery store, and you pick up that pack of cheese, gallon of milk, two pounds of hamburger, or those T-bone steaks; those tomatoes, onions, potatoes, brocoli, spinach, or any and all the veggies just remember where they came from.  They came from a farm and farmers are providing all our food, by the graciousness of our merciful Creator.

Hog Wild

No!  I am not writing about a movie.  Not too long ago the local Television news ran a story of wild hogs in Southwest Missouri.  I know that to be true, though I have not seen any of them.

One of the members of the church where I pastor told of seeing one as he was walking back to the road from a stuck tractor.  He was walking along the road-trail back to the main road, and saw one just a short distance away.  He told me, “I didn’t know, but what I might have to run for a tree.  I didn’t have a gun”. 

The television news was saying that there is an open season in Southwest MO, for hunting those pigs.  They are getting quite numerous, and are they ever troublesome.  Though they are rarely seen, they do leave their mark on the farms, and land around where they have been.

Hogs, whether they are wild or domesticated makes little difference, like to root with their snouts [noses], and they leave the ground in a terrible mess.  The farm I live on is one in which they must come out in large amounts, because the field in back of the house looks almost like it has been plowed in certain spots. 

Now like I said, I haven’t seen any.  I have the testimony of others, and I have the testimony of their sign which they so eagerly leave behind.  I wouldn’t mind seein um, but I don’t have to to know that they are.  Do ya understand?

New Header

In the way of aging barns are somewhat like people.  The older they get the more care they need.  As you can tell by looking at this barn it is an old one, and it has been neglected for far too long.

This past Saturday [October 22, 2007] some of our kids, Madge and I and some others showed up at the old place and began doing some work on the old barn.  You can’t tell it from the picture, but we really did do some work.  There were old rafters hanging  and rotted roof slabs hanging out over the edge.  They were removed, and piled in a pile to burn a little later on.

The old barn pictured in the header was in existence when my Dad was born in 1934, so that gives you a little closer of an idea how old that barn is.  I was told that one time Flat Creek, which is only a few yards away, got up one time and destroyed one barn which sat in the same place.  At least that is how I remember the story.  I might be wrong on that a little bit.  They say the Creek hasn’t been that high since then.  I personally have seen it within a few feet of the  barn though.  That is after we have gotten a whole lot of rain.

The old barn is now closer to being repaired than it was.  Maybe when we get it done I will take a picture of the finished product and make it the new header for this blog.

Noisy Noises

Asleep in bed.  Suddenly shot up awakend from sleep by the noise of a train roaring up the tracks.  It was one of the most frightening events of my entire life.

I had never lived in the city.  Where I grew up and  lived was three miles from the highway by road, but you can see a highway from the house, and sometimes hear the roaring engine of a big diesel eighteen wheeler going North or South on Highway 39.  If you could get there as the crow flies it might be a mile, or a little more or less.

What we heard were things like the “Mooooing” of our cattle; the singing of the birds; the voices of one another; sometimes the clanging of metal to metal as the metal gates were closed.  We could hear the wind blowing, or just a breeze as it calmly sang through the trees and brush on the hillsides.  Those are some of the things I like about farm living.  I don’t mind noise.  I just don’t like noisy noises.

That train was in Louisville, Kentucky; actually in the Saint Matthews area of Louisville.  My wife and I had moved there for a couple of years so I could attend Boyce Bible School, and like a very green farm kid in the city I had picked an apartment right next to the railroad tracks.  When we got moved in we were tired from travelling all day, and around midnight or so, we were sleeping quite soundly, that train was pulling up a slight grade, and its engine was really roaring.  The windows were rattling on our apartment, and we were very quickly and soundly awakened.

We sat straight up in bed.  “What is that?” were the first words out of my mouth, with a tone of fear probably.  I had never in my 21 years of living at that time ever heard such a noisy noise.  My life with the railroad was not over though.

Several years later I was called as Pastor to the First Baptist Church of Billings, Missouri.  The parsonage of the church is only about 100 yards or so from a busy railroad track, with the busy highway 60 in between.  The street itself had enough noisy noise, not to even mention the track.  There were a couple of times in the almost eight years we lived there that I thought I heard the trumpet sound of the rapture of the Church, and was awakened to be disappointed, because it was only a train blowing its horn.

Why do I like farm living, or just plain ole country living?  There is not so much Noisy Noise.  You can sleep at night.  You can go to sleep to the sounds of crickets, frogs, coyotes, the hoot of an owl, or the screech of a Screech Owl, the breeze blowing through the trees, if you have your windows open.  Besides all that the air is sure clean, and there is not so much Noisy Noise.

The Fallin’ Down Barn

On the place where my Dad was born and raised the barn they milked cows in, stored hay in, and farmin’ implements as well, is fallin’ down on the East side.  It has been doin’ that for some time now, but  we are gettin’ ready to do somethin’ about it.  It has been Dad’s desire to get it back up, repaired and the like, but he has been unable to do so himself with health problems and now just recently havin’ his right foot and leg below his knee amputated.

It is one of those thangs that happens.  Buildins’ get old, and fall in if they are not kept up, and maintained.  One barn on the farm has already fell in.  I guess it was just overlooked for too long, and eventually it just fell in.  Now we are going to use some of the old lumber from this fallin’ in barn to repair the one Dad wants to get done up right.

We got some plans of doin’ it in about 15 days.  Havin’ a family get together, and havin’ an ole’ time like barn raisin’; only it’s gonna be more a barn savin’.

This old barn has been aroun’ ever since before my Dad was born; at least that’s what I’m thankin’.  I know it’s been aroun’ a whole lot longer’n I’ve been aroun’.  It has seen several cows put through milkin’ by hand.  It has had thousan’s bales of hay stacked in it - in the loft and the milkin’ room after it wasn’t used for that anymore.  I know that I helped put a few thousan’ in it myself over the course of a few years.

Ther’s basically no place in this barn to place the big round bales which just about everbody’s usin’ nowadays.  I thank’ Dad kinda wants to keep like a museum barn or somethin’ along that line of thought.  There useta’ be a mill on the place to, but I never seen that.  It got warshed away before I came along.  There useta’ be some old millstones around, but somebody come a long and carried ‘em off.  I thank you would call it stealin’, but that’s not the first thang either.  Thangs like that are best protected by a double barrell twelve guage shotgun.

New Cow in the Barn

There are times when, as a dairy farmer, you must get a new cow, or a just freshened heifer into the milk barn.  You have them all in the holding pen, you milk the rest, and eventully get to the one who is skiddish, and scared.  In some cases the holding pen is messy, and as in the case of our barn at the time I was milking cows, the pen was sloped, and slippery - even with it being roughed up from when it was poured as fresh concrete.

There are times this endeavor can be dangerous to cow and human.  It must be done with care and caution.  There has been many a cow ruined due spraddling out on the pen and crippling her. 

There was one time when my Dad and I were trying to get one of my freshened holstien heifers into that barn, and she would not go.  She made a run for the pen fence and made a leap.  Before she got to the fence I saw what she was about to do, and I went to head her off.  The problem was as I was going over that cedar log fence, nailed horizontally around the pen, she hit that top one going over or through it, and my 180 pounds, at that time,  was no match for her 1300 pounds, and I went sailing back into the pen.  By the grace of God I landed on my feet, running backwards to maintain my footing.  We never did get that cow back into the pen, little lone, into the barn.

We ended up taking her to the livestock auction for hamburger I imagine.  We had much better time with all the other new ones we have had.  Some slip and fall on the concrete pen.  Some get hurt and some don’t.  Some mend, and some are usually shot and butchered.  There is no point in wasting some good hamburger meat.  If we waited until the cow died it would be a waste.

This story tells you a little bit more of what some of farm life is like.  Not every dairy farmer has this hard of time training cows to the milk barn, but some do.  Some may have better ways of getting them into the barn.  Let me hear from you it you do.

On the Farm When it Rains

No I am not on the farm today.  I have not been since about 5:15 this morning, when I left to go to Cassville and drive a School bus, and deliver about 40 - 50 youngins’.

Rain is a necessity on farms in the Southwest part of the state of Missouri.  Of course, it is a necessity in other parts as well.  Some parts near to us are gettin too much rain as far as flooding is concerned.  I haven’t  heard of any one drowning as of yet, but it has happened before.

Flat Creek which flows through the farm I grew up on has gotten over the banks and done some damage and taken lives.  Carelessness is often the cause for deaths though. 

Rain causes the grass to grow and gives food for those cattle, sheep, horses, goats, and wildlife to eat, be nourished and grow.  It started to rain this morning, once again, while I was out on my bus route, and when I had returned to the Bus Garage, parked the bus, and gone into the Garage it came a downpour.

Rainy days slow down work that needs to be done on the farm, but it can give the farmer a day to rest, go to town, and pick up some farm needs, or even to go shopping with the wife and kids or grandkids.  Now, doesn’t that sound fun.

It was getting dry around here, and there were many praying for rain.  Certainly nothing wrong with prayer; we need more of it.  Let’s be thankful for the blessed rain.  It is great to receive from our Blessed Creator who gives us all good things, and directs the bad.