For those people who raise their own animals for meat and/or dairy products, there is the issue of feeding those livestock, summer, spring, fall and winter. It is especially for winter that one needs to plan ahead and hopefully store enough hay to last until spring.

If you want to contemplate fossil fuel use by a tractor in cutting, raking, and baling hay, then you might be inclined to manually cut your own hay. Yeah, it's labor intensive, but you will have much more control over the finished product.

FDA TARGETING RAW MILK and ARTISAN CHEESE PRODUCERS

The February 6,2013 edition of the QUAD COUNTY STAR, published in Viburnum, MO, 65566, carried a front page article entitled "The Doe Run Company to Modify its Glover Facility for Future Business Opportunities". The story is apparently reprinted from a January 31, 2013 article written by Andrea Mullett.

The article states that the facility will undergo changes as the company prepares the primary lead smelter site for new uses. Doe Run will begin decommissioning idle parts of the Glover, MO, smelter beginning mid-February, in order to prepare the property for new operations.

The Center for Biological Diversity and a local partner notified two federal agencies last week that we intend to sue over their failure to protect the Ozark hellbender, Hine's emerald dragonfly, Tumbling Creek cavesnail and two endangered mussels in Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest. We want the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to revisit the Mark Twain's 2005 forest plan to make changes that will help save endangered species and essential habitats on the forest -- aquatic species that have gained their federally protected status since 2005.

On December 21, 2012, I made an accidental, but startling, discovery as a result of initiating the installation of a small starter system for solar power.  A brief chronology is below.

November 25, 2012

Dear Editor,

Last week, it was reported that Missouri Democratic Governor Jay Nixon and Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill were “disappointed” that an Ameren UE /DOE plan to build nifty modular nuclear power plants was killed.

This ia a "TALE OF TWO VEGGIES".

Yes, this is about a very sweet Moschata variety of winter squash known as Yamiken, and about an ordinarily very sweet beet known as the Zelenolistnaja variety.

We grew both this year as we do every year where possible. OK, this year was a true test not only of gardening skill and perseverance, but of the ability of various crops to withstand the record-breaking heat wave and drought.

Most folks do not realize that peanuts can be grown in climates much cooler than that of the American state of Georgia. We grow them in Missouri and they are grown much farther north as well.

Got grape juice? If not, you can make your own from your own grape arbor or even wild grapes. I've done both and prefer wild grapes as they require least maintenance. If the vines are too high in the trees, you might need to cut down the vines and wait a year or two for recovery and grapes at a level you can reach.

As a child I thought all radishes were either small spherical reddish spherical things called globe radish, or smallish white cylindrical things called icicle radish. Fortunately then I was rather ignorant in that area.