Bringing Home the Bacon

Guy (that's my nickname for my husband) doesn't bother with too many pages of the newspaper that don't contain box scores. I do what I can to keep him abreast of pressing agricultural issues, which means it's time for another installment of Guy Reads , the exciting segment where I share with you the news items I clip out of the paper for my husband. From CNN: In European news of the are you kidding me nature, locals are selling space in their haylofts for tourists - In Germany and its European neighbors Austria and Switzerland, a long weekend in a converted barn - sleeping on a bed of freshly raked hay -- is fast becoming the 'staycation' of choice. Yes, hotels with beds made out of hay are the newest rage. The article says people are booking these primitive accommodations for honeymoons--so they can take a literal roll in the hay , I guess. Readers of this blog know by now that no American farmer would even let you SIT on their valuable hay , let alone ro

Every year I get ambitious and make multiple non-pig entries at the county fair. This year, for the first time, we actually practiced the kids' decorated cupcakes--although we went through three bags of Oreos before getting to it. Here is Justin's planned entry. I hope you can tell that it's an owl. Let me just say that I shopped for two weeks, looking at every check-out I visited before finding a box of Runts for the candy banana used as the beak. Morgan placed each one of these jelly bean "kernels" on this ear-of-corn cupcake. The pat of butter is a Starburst. The corn holders are real. I grated a little Oreo crumbs on the top to simulate pepper. I must confess that these are not original creations. We got a great deal of help from a fun cupcake book, Hello, Cupcake! (I am not affiliated with them, just like the book) With a week until fair entries are due, I hope I haven't given away too much. I will keep my scarecrow under wraps until the fair sta

I took my popular Dayton Media Twitter list and did a little analysis this week to determine the most frequently followed Dayton journalists on Twitter. Dayton Daily News - Hal McCoy - 1375 followers WHIO TV7 - 1281 followers Dayton Daily News - 1244 followers WDTN TV2 - 1217 followers Dayton Daily News - Ohio Politics - 865 followers Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Wine - 861 followers WDTN TV2 - Kennan Oliphant - 645 followers Dayton Daily News - Kim Margolis - 606 followers Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Food - 601 followers WHIO TV7 - Rich Wirdzek - 550 followers *Followers as of Aug. 20, 2009. A few observations on this list: Congratulations to @HalMcCoy_Reds , Dayton's most popular journalist on Twitter. Unfortunately, Hal has been given his walking papers , so perhaps he won't be Tweeting for the paper for long. Jeff Booth of WRGT/WKEF TV easily made the top ten, but I took him out of contention because his Twitter account is largely personal. Kennan Ol

Today, local radio DJs were inviting people to call in and share their stories of domestic bliss that end with the phrase, and that's when the fight started ... One poor woman called in to say she was very pregnant with her daughter and she borrowed a red dress from a friend. When her husband saw her in it he yelled, Hey Kool-Aid! And that's when the fight started... I was very tempted to call in but like so many of the stories I want to tell about my home life, my most recent and that's how the fight started story requires agricultural definitions, explanation of rural culture and possibly a quick refresher on the birds and the bees. Let's go back to the beginning... (harp music, harp music, harp music, waaaaves) Husband showed up to a farmer meeting a few years ago and was put in charge of procuring awards for the Champion and Reserve Champion Yorkshire gilts at the Ohio State Fair. A position, I am finding out, that has the same term of office as U.S. Supreme C

Once again the worlds of PR, agriculture and motherhood come together! After I tweeted and blogged about the fake cow in the Agriculture & Horticulture building at the Ohio State Fair and all the great exhibits provied by the Oho Farm Bureau, I received this @ reply. They had a previously unidentified photo of my kids riding pedal tractors in the Farm Bureau Booth! Kudos to Ohio Farm Bureau for using social media to sow the seeds of loyalty among its membership. What a great case study for any association. Click on the photo.

I set the bar pretty high with my last Multi-Media Pig Show Report , so I decided to switch things up at bit at the Ohio State Fair. Posing as non-farm civilians, the kids and I left the barn and infiltrated many fair attractions. Husband stayed behind so as not to arouse suspicion among the other farmers that we were out actually enjoying the sights. Nothing says Oh my God, my tits are rubber and I only produce water like the look on this fake cow's face. Ryan, Justin and Morgan couldn't get enough of this. I had to drag them away from the water-producing cow so we could move on to other attractions. It only seems fair that kids who have never seen a cow in their life should take precedent over kids who have 40 cows milking outside their back door twice a day, 365 days a year. Thanks to a very friendly Division of Wildlife officer, Justin was able to catch this fish at the Ohio Dept of Natural Resources park inside the fairgrounds. We passed on taking the fish home with u

pigs Originally uploaded by Flamestitch How often are any of us called out in public to perform our special occupational skills? Do people stop at the mall and scream out, IS THERE ANYONE HERE WHO CAN COMBINE SYNERGIES OR OPTIMIZE INDUSTRY-LEADING SOLUTIONS? No, unless you are a physician, your day-to-day work abilities are very unlikely to be tapped in a public crisis. So imagine my surprise this past weekend at the Ohio State Fair when the ability to rouse a lactating sow would come into play in a crowd situation. Inside the hog barn at the State Fair is a nice air-conditioned store called the Pork Schop . Staffed by a team of dedicated volunteers, the shop sells anything and everything with pigs on it. The area features a play place for kids, and, in a separate pen, a real live sow and a litter of pigs. Morgan and I were enjoying some down time at the kids area next to the growing crowd of non-farmers and children checking out the cute little pigs. When one piglet started squealin