Commentary

I wish there was a vaccine for parents, administered around the time their children start talking, that provided immunity to kidfluence.

What does it feel like to face foot-and-mouth disease? What does it feel like to have your farm quarantined? To have an entire geographic region closed to animal movement? To lose generations of livestock genetics in the blink of an eye? To receive little compensation for dumped milk or for meat? For all we know about farming here in the United States, we know little about the terror, the frustrations, of farming in the midst of a major animal disease outbreak.

When a Kentucky reader stopped by Farm and Dairy's booth at Farm Science Review, we chatted a bit about the extreme dry conditions down there, and the lack of pasture and feed for livestock.

ATVs. We love them, use them on our farms and occasionally do a little joy riding. But they're also the enemy, for in the hands of a trespasser, they often tear up crops and fields and woodlots.

The four-color photo on the front page of the local daily paper immediately caught my eye, but not with a reaction the editors desired.