Are you a Generous Farmer? (223)

Probably you can count on one hand the farmers that visit this blog occasionally. But, regardless of the number, I want to do this post today on a "vehicle of giving", that I have come across and am currently using to the benefit of both myself and the benefactors of my giving.

If you click on the title here it will take you to the web site of this vehicle. It is called the "Foundation for Christian Stewardship". And basically how it works, and works well is a farmer can give an amount of grain to the Foundation, and then direct the foundation to give the money to the church or churches, and Missionaries or Ministries of his choice, as long as they meet basic standards set forth by the foundation.

Why do this you ask when I can just write a check for my giving desires and have it over with? Well glad you ask. By giving grain, you can still use the deductions for growing the grain in your farm expenses but you avoid paying federal and state and county income taxes and social security taxes on your giving amount. Because you don't report the value of the grain in your income nor do you report the value in a deduction on your tax papers. But it is legal to still report the cost of growing the grain within your farm expenses. What this means is that you can without costing you one red sent actually give maybe 30% to 50% more money to these organizations of your choice from a liberal viewpoint..Or from a conservative viewpoint you could give the same amount to your choices and actually cost you maybe 30% to 50% less...However you look at this and to what level a giver you want to be is of course up to the individual...I guess truthfully sometimes I look at it one way and sometimes the other maybe depending on how good a year I feel I am having.

I actually started doing this maybe 15 to 20 years ago after reading an article in the Indiana Prairie Farmer magazine on this subject. The article stated that the practice was legal and beneficial to all if one chose to do it. I began delivering a certain amount of grain to the grain terminal in the name of a certain church. I sometimes then directed the church to give a portion of it to maybe a missionary or two that I wanted to support. But some churches do not like to be involved in dispensing money to others in this way. But this foundation that I found this past year works so much better and is designed to do just what we wish to do and that is give a portion of what we have been blessed with back to the work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Gifts of Grain is a service of the Foundation for Christian Stewardship. The local chapter is here in West Lafayette Indiana with a phone number of 765 807 2810 and its web site is

www.giftsofgrain.org

I just wanted to share this opportunity with my fellow farmers, I think perhaps there is opportunity to also do a similar thing with other types of property and stocks etc....Have a great day out there....

Consider forwarding this to any Christian farmer you may know that could benefit.

The 2010 Cowrolla...very safe...(222)

They say necessity is the "mother of invention" and I think Toyota has acted exspediantly and responsibly by rolling out their latest new car....This Cowrolla as seen to the right in the picture is not going to have any runaway or braking problems....I look for other companies to follow suite on this before years end...

Corney you say? Well yes, but we needed a chuckle and relief from the current day to day news stories...My buddy Jim sent this my way an hour ago so blame him if you think its a little on the lame side...

How about those Butler Bull dogs...beating Syracuse tonight and taking them into the final 8????? Gosh I hope they win again this week end and could finish in the final Four...Would be so cool for them to play right at home in Indianapolis next week....the hometown Cinderella....Go Butler

Spring has sprung for sure here in Indiana, today a Fed Ex truck dropped off three Persimmon trees and 3 exotic grape vines to be planted. Just what I probably did not need but remember how excited I get about persimmon pudding? You betcha and that's just about wild persimmons...Hold the phone when and if I ever get any big fancy Japanese varieties...One is even called Chocolate, man now that will be some kind of persimmon pudding for sure.

The grapes, well they will be fun never heard of any of these varieties so it will be fun to nurse them along and see what they look like and taste like a few years down the road....You would think with over 400 trees I have planted here that one would call it enough, but I guess not, always room for something new....

It's bed time in Hoosierland.....

A Heapin big Helpin of Communism (221)

Well today I watched Mr. Obama sign the Health Care Bill on TV. He laid it on pretty thick about how wonderful it all was...I wish he had told the truth and said, "here you go America, have a nice big heapin helpin of Communism"....

So a lot of Americans are probably feeling like, 'well maybe it will be OK'....Well America wait till you get the bill for this...Of course you won't find out the bill till after the fall elections, you did not elect idiots last election, just very liberal smooth talking politicians, smart enough to get past these mid term elections before we have to figure out how high the bill will be....

I wonder what is next, maybe cap and trade, immigration, hard to tell but rest assured they all one by one will be ways of spreading the wealth around...Yes these clowns are out to do that and do it well, call it what ever you want and like it if you like, but for me it's communistic and I for one don't like it at all...

But he did promise change and by golly were getting it....and the euphoria will prevail for some till we get the bills, hang onto your money folks as Uncle Sam will be calling....

Can you believe it? Our Congress????(220)

If pro is opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?
Congress!
Men's restroom House of Representatives,
Washington , DC

This was meant to be a joke but turns out as of maybe tomorrow it will be true...I can not believe that congress is about to pile this boondoggle of a health care bill upon us..We are steeped in debt that may very well take our financial system and all our finances DOWN....and they still insist on adding more red ink to our system...

And somehow passing this bill without actually having to vote on it???? Is that to keep voters from pinpointing who needs to be voted out??? I think so... Well my prayer will be if these liberally handicapped bazzoons pass this bill and the equally liberally handicapped President signs it into law that somehow the voters of the nation will have their day this fall and we retire these guys.

And then we urge the new class of legislators to repeal this mistake and while they are at it repeal the special benefits of being a member of congress....I would vote for or will vote for a man or women who states, "I am against the congress getting any type of special benefits"....

This whole system is reminding me of the Roman empire where these senators just all became little almost kings and the whole system came crashing down around them...Today one of Rome's attraction is the big broken down Collisium that still remains from a time when they would go there and enjoy watching Christians being ate by lions....Will some day a Capital Building collapsed be something that bears an equal reminder...I hope not but we are headed that way and congress is about to put their foot even more on the accelorator...

Whizzer Time and Fishing Time (219)

Just found this picture that relates I guess in a way to yesterdays story about two Whizzers...I see this picture was taken during my Whizzer ONE days...so it was the first vacation so far of my young life...taken on my 15th Birthday on a lake in Wisconsin on Aug. 25th 1953..My mother wrote on the bottom, (Phil, Jack and Ralph getting ready to go fishing)...So when it was taken I had enjoyed my Whizzer getting to work all summer in that first job...but prior to returning to school and then my not so hot encounter with the intoxicated gentlemen turning into the Dayton Cemetery in Oct. of 1953...

The handsome dude riging a fishing pole is Ralph Hengst, my brother in law and also his daughter Phyllis, mother of Rick and Kirk Callahan, and Roxy Winnings...A very fine lady who passed a few years ago from breast cancer. Matter of fact of all the people who were in this party my Parents, Sister Frances and Ralph and Phyllis, gosh they are all gone, all passed away. My dad just did not care for fishing at all, I don't think I ever seen him with a pole..I did see him shoot some carp once with a .32 calibur rifle in the stream in our farm...he liked shooting them instead of catching them...And come to think of it I saw him jump once into the steam with a pitch fork and spear some carp...he had his ways to get fish just not legally with a pole...Thank God he was not into dynomite.....

Anyway my love for fishing and maybe then passing that to some of my kids all came down from this man, Ralph Hengst, the best fisherman I ever knew, I think I said at Ralph's Funeral, "the best part about fishing with Ralph was watching Ralph Fish"...You just knew something was about to happen, he just knew where fish were and how to attract them...I picked it up a little as time when on and my son John has picked it up also, maybe better than I, but he also was trained by the master shown here...Not me so much, but Ralph...he was the best....This day and age he would have made good money as a fishing guide...His personality would have carried him even on the days the fish were not biting...I still think of the days not a lot but a few that he and my sister would stop by not too many years ago to fish in my pond, even then, things were about to happen when he picked up a pole....

The Story of two Whizzer Motor Bikes (218)

First off let me say I am back in business here as my camera has been found...No more "cussy darn" going on here...it was in the motor home under a little basket holding a salt and pepper shaker...now I should have known...SP found it for me, truth be known she probably lost it for me also but we won't go there, I may have put it there....but today were talking Whizzer's.........

My title could be Life and almost Death on a Whizzer, as it very nearly was except for a lady maybe an angel who lived just across the road from where my first Whizzer became a twisted total mess as I too almost did....

But lets start at the beginning...these Whizzer Motor Bikes started to appear I guess during World war Two in the early 40's they tell me that you could purchase the motor, gas tank and pulley for your back wheel and mount it on a boy's bike and you were in business...all for about 60 bucks I guess...during the war with rationing and all the government tried to shut them down but the Whizzer people convinced congress that they were necessary cheap transportation to allow people to get back and forth to work...Well after the war as we grew just a tad bit afluent these bikes started to appear around the Dayton Indiana area with kids riding them...boy it looked like fun, and in the spring of 53 I talked my dad into allowing me to purchase one so that I could ride to my off the farm, farm job about 5 miles away each day that summer...gosh I loved that thing...held a full gallon of gas that cost a full quarter of a dollar...and it would go 100 miles on that gas...I would hop on it and start peddling and it would start and away I would go down the road to where ever I needed to go...Life was good...I was just a little short of the 140 bucks needed to buy the two year old model from Glenn Electric in Lafayette but my pops helped me out with the rest...I could hardly sleep at nights for the first week or so anticipating the next days excitement of riding just anywhere..just to feel the air hit me in the face, man I had arrived....

I was only 13 not a legal driver but no one was watching much...Dad told me to take the back roads and not get caught by the State Police so I did...I took old Haggerty lane west from 900 east, all the way past the wild cat creek and on past present day Subaru auto plant to I think it was 400 or 450 east and then south across 38 and 52 to the Kirkpatrick farm on about 450 south I think...took me maybe a half hour each way and I loved the ride each day...it was a good summer and my very first job, don't remember what my wage was but I was working and having fun...Mick Blair was the farmer I worked for that summer and the next summer also...

That fall after school had started I rode my Whizzer to Dayton to play some ball of some sort one Sunday afternoon...Coming home that afternoon I took the chance of riding home on 38 past the cemetery...I followed a very slow old pick up truck through Dayton and after we started down the hill east I could see nothing was coming so I tried a passing manuever around the old truck...As I was even with the truck and passing it the two gentlemen in the truck decided to turn left, without signaling into the cemetery, and came over against my bike sending me carrening into the ditch at the entrance to the cemetery...The old truck had been in a previous wreck and the left front fender was torn and as I hit the fender it tore my right thigh a deep gash cutting it from the knee, almost to the hip all the way to the large bone of my leg...I slid across the gravel drive way of the entrance and landed in the ditch just east of the cemetery gates...I jumped up immediately and looked down at my leg as it felt wet...it was wet alright, and I could actually see my leg bone exposed and my first thought was that should not be that way and I took the two halves of my thigh and pushed them back together over the bone, at which time a huge amount of blood gushed from my wound....I then just sat down on the edge of the road not knowing anything else to do and each time my heart beat a lot of blood came out...I really figured I was a gooner for sure....Out of no where my angel a Mrs. Robinson came out of her house there at Adams Road and 38, ran over and looked at me and turned and ran back to her house...then reappearing right away with a rag and a wooden spoon...she tore it into a turnicut and tied it around my upper leg...took the spoon and put it through the rag and twisted it until the blood stopped running out... she saved my life that October day in 1953....I saw it all happen but was not sure of course I was going to make it.. I remember the ambulance ride to St. E. Hospital in the Baker Funeral Home Hearst I think they called it which double for an ambulance in those days....Four hours and 140 stitches later I woke up, and a new in Lafayette Dr.William Furgeson, told me I was a lucky lad... I then had a months stay, and about 3 more months at home...Leg got totally stiff so took several more months before I was back to normal but thank God and Mrs Robinson that day did come....Feeling returned to the right side of my thigh maybe 15 years later.

So that was the end of my Whizzer days, I thought...lots of years passed by but about I think 2000 or 2001, I was driving past a bike shop on 38 east, and something caught my eye and I thought was that a Whizzer?, I turned around and went in the shop, and sure enough they had started to make them again, and they looked just about like before...Someone my age, had paid the 2200 they were now selling new for and got real winded trying to start it by peddling it....they traded it in on something with a key start...I asked how much an was amazed at the stated price of 750 bucks for a new Whizzer with 69 miles on it...I went home and thought about it for all of about an hour maybe and went back and said, "hey if you throw in a helmet, and take 700 I will ride that puppy out of here"...I rode my second Whizzer home on a cold day in Febuary.....

My wife Linda said to me when I got it home, "did you not almost get killed on one of those, what are you doing"? I jokingly said, "well maybe I am trying to finish the job"...

I was back in the Whizzer business for a few rides and enjoyed it remembering the old days. It was fun till one day someone just for fun passed me at very high speed and almost brushed me...maybe a foot away or less, and I thought of what could have happened if I had weaved just a foot to the left not knowing they were coming by...it took the fun out of it that day...I parked it, never rode it much after that. About a year later I showed the guy I sold it to how to peddle it to start it and it was gone.He was about my age from the West Point area, so watch out for him on that bike..So now, I am Whizzerless and glad of it, thanks for listening....

Wrapping up Naples and Cussy Darn (217)

Each time I re-enter the great state of Indiana (if I have been gone longer than a week or so) I feel duty bound to sing the song "BACK HOME AGAIN IN INDIANA"...Granted when Jim Nabors finally gives up the job of singing it at the 500, they won't come looking for me, I know that and sweet pea knows that too...But never the less, I do it, I sing like no one is listening, well almost...well anyway back to todays story, that happened a couple days ago when we were in the middle of the bridge over the Ohio coming from Lou a vall, as the tucky people say it....Since I had been gone almost 6 weeks I laid the whole two verses I know on her...she was kind, saying "not bad", I knew she was lying....

Going to do a wrap on Naples today, pictures to the right show scenes from the Mullet Festival at Stans Bar in Goodland...the home of the Contest where brave women wear costumes that makes them appear to look slightly like Buzzards...and they do a dance called the Buzzard Lope...making motions much as maybe a buzzard would do having found a nice jucy rode kill along the roadside...they choose a queen each year and it is all in good fun...thousands of people come to this goofy event each year, half of them maybe on Harley's but who's counting...it is a hoot and everyone needs to see it at least once...I guess I personally am tiring of this event and may not bother ever again, thus I better give it some mention here and maybe put it to rest, well unless SP finds some feathers and wants to try her luck at the dance....

More fun than Stans Idle Hour Bar and the Buzzard Lope is Back water fishing just south of Marco Island...Now that is a lot of fun...Just being out there on that gorgeous water is worth the effort...the water just smells good...the blueish green fast moving water as the tide moves in and out is just something to behold...I do love it...Would love to own a place that would afford a boat dock and ocean access to and from this paradise fishing area also known as the 10,000 islands....But I know I am dreaming here, but it is fun to dream of such things...Maybe more practical would be just a small fishing boat to be stored somewhere when not in use...that is just not as much fun dreaming about as the house with gulf water access...it does not hurt to dream now and then as long as one realizes it for what it is, just that...

The fishing holes are many and the fish in them like the sheep head the lady to the right is happy about just make ones day...Being out there is great, if you are lucky enough to catch a few fish it is wonderful...and if you catch enough for a fish fry it is, well marvelous....we usually buy about 4 dozen live shrimp and breaking them in half then gives you 96 chances to land a fish legal for keeping...Sheephead need to be 12 inches long minumum and 16 to 22 gets your excitement level to a peak...the bigger the better but that size you need a net to get them into the boat without chancing them breaking the line lifting them out..

I know from cleaning them that a 16 inch will yeild the same amount of fish as two 12 inch fish. Already I have about maybe 10 months to wait but feel the excitement of casting the line into that perfect spot where they will be...and feeling the tug of a "sheephead bite"...I usually wait till maybe the second or third tug hoping they will get stronger as he falls in love with the taste of the live shrimp before giving a quick jerk on the pole to hopefully "set" the hook in his mouth somewhere to keep him hooked until you work him over to the boat...some times it works, maybe a third of the time, the other two thirds, your just looking at a bare hook to be rebaited for another try...all part of the amazing fun of back water fishing in the salt water...

Once in a while spotted trout are caught, or mangrove snapper, or redfish, or snook or even sand trout...but for the most part the catch is Sheephead and that is fine with me...occasionally a trash fish like the catfish is caught and if I am close enough and the little coons are waiting for a handout I have been known to toss that type fish to them...they love a good day in the backwater too...

Cussy Darn is part of my title here tonight, cause I seem to have lost my new camera I got as a gift for Christmas...don't have a clue where or how but it is missing so pictures for the blog for awhile may be scarce...may have to go back and use the many I already have instead of new ones...someday though I will get another one, as I do like taking pictures and working with them with my photoshop program...and sometimes I even enter photo contest while in Naples, never winning but learning from the process the better ways to focus on subjects, with proper backgrounds, lighting and all the rest that goes into good shots...if it comes down to fishing or photography well you will see me headed out with "poles", not a camera anyway...but a small camera is good to have along with you as those really nice fish always want their pictures taken for some reason...

T'was the coldest dam winter in Florida I have seen in the 17 years I have been there....this global warming is just not working out at all...poor AL Gore if he escapes a good tar and feathering he will be lucky.....but some still think its for real so they will be happy when summer comes and maybe we can hit 100 a couple days in July or August...I did have about 10 days in late January that we hit 80 down there...and one day about a week ago we hit 80 again...other than that it has been in the 60's to 75 most of the time...OK if you had on the blue jeans and not the usual shorts...and you better have a sweater handy cause you usually needed it...

So in closing it's not too bad being "back home again in Indiana" for the most part. It's a little colder but hey cold is cold so I am now here in position to await the first signs of spring...my favorite season of the year...I love the first flowers, the greening up of the grass, the smell of fresh mowed grass, the buds coming out, fish spauning, water lillies first blooms...its all good and just around the corner....

Editor's note....funny thing below I see the Key West Shuttle is advertising on my blog....ha go figure after the story I did about how not to see Key West...maybe google is not as smart as I give them credit..