My wife and I were looking up the hibernation facts about squirrels on Google the other day. Google will then give you suggested other questions. One suggestion was squirrel hospitals near me. First off, I didn’t know squirrels had their own hospitals and secondly, I was not looking for one near me. I’ll feed them but I’m not making doctor appointments for them.
The meme going around on Facebook is that some people have their ducks in a row. But I have squirrels and their all over the place. I don’t think my squirrels hibernate. From dusk to dawn, I don’t see them, but once the sun is up, there out there looking for food and knocking on the door, waiting for more acorns that I collected all fall. Either that or they need me to drive them to the hospital.
The 300 year old red oak in my back yard had a bumper crop this year. I had about 90 pounds of acorns in our chest freezer until I was told to remove them. The weather had turned cool enough they could be stored elsewhere. So needless to say, I have enough for my squirrels and the several down at the nearby park.
Speaking of memes, here’s a couple of my favorite ones I’ve seen recently. ‘Studies show cows produce more milk when the farmer talks to them. It’s a case of in one ear and out the udder.’ The other recent one that made me say; ‘Ain’t that the truth?’ ‘When you’re an adult, spilling your coffee is like losing your balloon when you were a kid.’
Eight years ago when I was broadcasting ag news and ag markets for the Iowa Agri-Business Network, we would also put some of the information on social media. I found this market update that I had posted on Twitter. First here’s what the info looked like:
Crude oil +76¢ to $53.01. USDA 2016 corn 174.66bpa = 15.1B bu. Soybeans 2016 52.1bpa =4.31B bu. Iowa corn 203bpa. Iowa beans 60.5bpa
That’s clear enough right? Well if you follow ag markets and crop reports it does. To others it may look Greek. Twitter on the other hand, put underneath this tweet, click to translate from Indonesian. Evidently I was multi-lingual and didn’t even know it. I can go to Indonesia and get along just fine.
I’ve mentioned before that I still follow the Ag news, I just don’t have to follow-up with interviewing someone and writing the story. Here’s a story that recently made news. The state of Illinois now has an official state bean. The Illinois Legislature passed HB 4439 which designates the soybean as Illinois’ official state bean. Not many pressing issues going on in Illinois I guess. Illinois is the number 1 soybean-producing state as it grows 16% of the nation’s soybeans so it’s been the unofficial state bean for some time.
Another item that is always of interest is the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) corn yield contest. The highest yield in 2024 was 490.6276 bushels per acre (bpa) grown by David Hula of Charles City, Virginia. This is the 13th time he has won the contest. Now that 490 sounds high and it is, but just the year before, Mr. Hula won with a yield of 623.8439 bpa in the strip-till irrigated division. So indeed, the growing season was not as good in 2024.
The state winner in Minnesota this past year was Dale Fabian of St Charles with a yield of 340.0355 bpa in the conventional non-irrigated division.
To wrap this up, getting away from agriculture, I found this list entitled Kids Say the Darnedest Things. Not an original title as Art Linkletter was saying this way back when. Here are some samples from the list; Never trust a dog to watch your food, Patrick, age 10. When you want something expensive, ask your grandparents, Matthew, age 12. Never try to hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk, Rosemary, age 7. When your dad is mad and asks you ‘Do I look stupid?’ don’t answer him, Heather age 16. Never try to baptize a cat, Laura, age 13. And finally; Listen to your brain, it has lots of information, Chelsey, age 7.
