Top 10 Dayton Media on Twitter

I took my popular Dayton Media Twitter list and did another analysis this week to determine the most frequently followed Dayton journalists on Twitter. Here are the top 10.

1. WHIO TV7 - 1,779 followers
2. Dayton Daily News - Hal McCoy - 1.522 followers
3. Dayton Daily News - 1,507 followers
4. WDTN TV2 - 1,351followers
5. Dayton Daily News - Ohio Politics - 1,056 followers
6. Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Wine - 927 followers
7. Greenville Advocate 360 - 903 followers
8. WDTN TV2 - Kennan Oliphant - 826 followers
9. WKEF TV22 - JeffBoth - 770 followers
10. WHIO TV7 - Rich Wirdzek - 729 followers
    
    *Followers as of Nov. 15, 2009.

A few observations on this list:

• Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Food falls off the list to number 14 overall. Previously, Fisher was the only Dayton journalist to have TWO Twitter accounts in the top ten--and perhaps the only Dayton journalist to have two accounts at all.
• The list changed very little since October, with @jeffbooth1as the only newcomer.
• WHIO TV7 maintained its lead over Dayton Daily News - Hal McCoy.
• Honorable mention on this list goes to WHIO TV7 - Gabrielle Enright who comes in at number 11 and has been very innovative in her use of Twitter to cover the news.
• Everyone's Twitter pal, Kennan Oliphant remains the most prolific individual media Twitter account, now with 5,338 updates.
  

To see how all the media on my Dayton Twitter list fared, see my spreadsheet.

I Never Liked Those Cows Anyway...Sniff

Next week the cows are leaving. Thank God.

Unable to sustain feeding, housing, breeding and milking our 40 cows twice a day, my father-in-law made the decision to stop milking. The cows will be leaving. They will not be going to another farm.

I never liked those damn cows anyway.

Every time I tried to take a shower, they would drink and use up all the water pressure. They were always bawling in the night when I was trying to sleep. Every two days a semi-tanker would drive under my bedroom window at 3 a.m. to pick up the milk; it took months before I stopped waking up to the diesel engine humming outside.

One time they got loose and ran all over the neighborhood. Actually, they did that several times.

And when it got really wet, they stunk.

Those cows were a nuisance. They chained the whole family to this farm, preventing us from taking vacations, attending family events. Did you know each cow produces 100 pounds of manure a day?

Who needs those cows? Who needs little calves running to the fence out of curiosity about your upturned hand? Who needs homemade ice cream so rich no one noticed when I forgot the vanilla flavoring? Who needs to run out their kitchen door with the measuring cup just to get a quick cup of milk for a recipe? Who needs freshly washed heifers lying on a bed of straw at the county fair?

I never liked those damn cows anyway. So why am I crying now?

Farmer's Dictionary

You've heard of the Farmer's Almanac. That's the book that farmers consult to determine the best route from the Middle of Nowhere to Des Moines. What? Oh, yeah, driving directions and map come from the Farmers' Atlas. The Farmer's Almanac is the book other people consult to determine the weather--farmers just watch their local TV news station for weather. It works out well because farmers also LOVE sports.


Since the kids are asleep, the satellite TV isn't working and Husband is in line at the elevator (see definition below), I thought I would provide a handy reference for those of us/you who are unfamiliar with basic agricultural terms. Hence. The Farmers' Dictionary.

elevator - The elevator stores and sells grain. All rural men are contractually obligated to visit the local elevator at least once a weekend. During harvest, local farmers bring their grain to the elevator to be stored and eventually sold.

gravity wagon - A type of grain wagon designed to narrow at the bottom, allowing all the grain inside to flow out when the valve is opened at the bottom.

cow - Female bovine who has had one or more calf

sow - Female swine who has had one or more litters of pigs

ewe - Female sheep who has had one or more lambs

popper - Aluminum box that fits on the back of a pick-up truck. Designed to haul pigs.

This is by no means a complete listing of agricultural terms, but a good start. Join us again soon to learn more from the Farmers' Dictionary. I'll leave you with a few terms that farmers never use.

Terms/phrases not used by farmers:
- vacation
- day off
- repair man
- new
- Hello, I'd like to order flowers for my wife

Mending Fences

When you live on a farm that last made a fencing purchase in 1972, sometimes the animals are able to escape. Most times, Husband deals with the escapees on his own, my only evidence of wandering cows the "pies" they leave at the back door.

Sometimes the little escape artists are so cute you just have to watch them explore the big world outside their pen. This is cuter to me than my in-laws who have to shoo little pigs out of their garden and flower beds.


One time we came home from being gone all day and saw suspicious manure/mud wiped on our back door. Apparently, the pigs had escaped from their pen, leaped into the nearest puddle, and then decided to pay their respects to the farmer and his family.


This past summer Justin and Morgan ran in the house to breathlessly report that there were cows in the barnyard. Only half believing them I walked outside in time to see a herd of mature Ayshires dashing down our gravel driveway toward the road. Husband raced past them and turned then back toward the house, and they stampeded right past us again. After detouring through my father-in-law's garden, they eventually returned to their barn.

Sometimes the animals are loose by design. These ewes (mother sheep) are grazing near Husband's old basketball court by the pig pens. Ah, the old basketball court by the pigs pens--isn't that where most kids learn the sport? Anyway, the sheep are there because Husband's father let them out. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure why. I guess he figured the ewes wouldn't wander far without their lambs.

Yes, most women have a lot to worry about when the phone rings in the night or the police knock on the door. But farm women have one more thing on their mind--broken fences.

A Tip for Dayton

I can't stand it when people get all indignant and can't see the humor in things. Nothing is more unappealing to me than when an individual or an organization is so self-focused that they can't or won't allow for any self-deprecating laughs.

That said, this farm wife from Dayton HATES, HATES the "cow tipping" shirts that greet visitors at the Dayton (we offer connecting flights to Canada) International Airport.

Oh, you haven't seen them? I tried to take a photo during my most recent trip:



Right after I snapped the photo I was told by the Paradies Shop cashier that I wasn't allowed to photograph the shirts--they are copyrighted, apparently.

The shirts greeting visitors to Dayton--our suggested last-minute gift items to take home to loved ones--they say "Nothing Tips Like a Cow." So you see my quandary. It is sort of funny. It says, "hey honey, look what I brought you back from the middle of nowhere." It's Ohio, nothing here but cows, get it?


Call me no fun, or boring, or unappreciative of our strong agriculture base (of which I am a part), but I can't stand these shirts. So much so that on the way home I snuck up and took more photos through the shop's closed bars, with a friend standing guard.

So what's my problem? Why does the farm wife, of all people, dislike these shirts? Because I also work in public relations and branding. Because Dayton is struggling. We are struggling to grow our business base. We are struggling to retain the companies we have. And when companies leave, what is their excuse for leaving--that no one sees Dayton as a business destination. You know, it is rumored, that the non-Dayton CEO of a certain Dayton-founded company calls his employees in Ohio "the corn people."

WELL MAYBE IF WE DIDN'T REINFORCE THAT WITH COW TIPPING SHIRTS AT THE AIRPORT IT MIGHT HELP. Sorry.

I did a mini-interview with the Paradies Shop cashier and asked her, since the Dayton Airport is owned by the City of Dayton, who decides what goes in the stores. She said that Paradies has a Dayton-based manager who does the purchasing.

Let me just put forth a crazy idea. What if we invested a lot of money and had an out-of-town branding company come up with a unique way to graphically represent our current vision for Dayton with also a nod to the past. If they came up with something good, it might catch on and become the basis for a city branding campaign.

Nah, Dayton would never do that...


Yeah, it's just too bad we don't have ANYTHING better to graphically represent our city than an up-turned cow.

Token Farmer

The fact that I straddle the worlds of corporate America and agriculture is a theme of this blog but it has really come home to me this week with the number of friends and family who have stopped us to get our opinion on Ohio Issue 2.

Some have been apologetic for "bothering" us about this, but really we're the only farmers they know. I have been happy to help via Facebook message or e-mail but at the request of a good friend and fellow blogger, I decided to post about how we are voting and why.

First, let me summarize by saying that we are voting YES. We have the sign in our front yard proclaiming our intentions. Second, if you disagree with me, then fine. I'm not writing this to change anyone's mind--only to reach people who are undecided and value our opinion as real farmers.


I'll start by pointing out that the vote-no-people, the Humane Society of the US, is a vegan organization who (by their own admission) have the end goal of eliminating consumption of meat and dairy. One tactic is to make farming so difficult and food so expensive that people look for alternatives. Also, they are NOT affiliated with any actual humane societies and spend only token money on helping dogs or cats.

Even though some materials say small farmers are opposed to Issue 2--that is simply not true. We are a very small farm but we are in favor of Issue 2. It's true, as the critics note, that this board was rushed into existence chiefly to keep the HSUS from imposing some draconian rules on Ohio agriculture (see motives above). But we truly believe that consulting large animal vets, the head of agriculture education at Ohio State and Ohio consumers (all on the proposed board) would be a better way to manage our livestock care issues.

Here's a real-life example of how the changes proposed by well-meaning animal lovers could affect pig farms... They want to eliminate gestation crates that don't permit the sow to turn around. Husband doesn't use these partly because we would have to build an entire new expensive barn to accommodate and we don't have the volume of sows to justify. BUT since he doesn't use them, he has to stay up all night, almost every night from December through February to make sure that the sows don't squish the babies as they are born and so they don't freeze to death (gestation barns are climate controlled). If Husband had hundreds of sows like a farm that provides meat to the grocery, this would be impossible to manage and every day piglets would be getting stepped on by their mothers--which is very painful and usually rips them open.

This is my long-winded way of saying that farmers came up with these methods not out of meanness but out of a desire to raise as many healthy animals as they can quickly and economically--something we enjoy every week at Krogers.

So tell your Facebook friends and your crazy neighbor who e-mails you about the evils of "factory farms" that you heard it straight from a farmer--vote YES on Issue 2.

What Farm Kids Do for Fun

Even when you live in a place called Farmersville, there is still a disconnect between farm life and the experiences of most people you meet. Fortunately, our children are happy ambassadors of rural living.



This most recent episode of What Farm Kids Do for Fun takes place at our annual fall party. With five "hosts" (my children and nephews), the party has grown bigger than last year's party. We had 23 kids, plus parents at the farm to navigate the straw maze, decorate pumpkins, and enjoy the hay ride (it's really straw!).


Farm kids and their friends know that something as simple as playing in the leaves can be the best way to spend an October afternoon.


My petulant princess and her two rakish pirate brothers enjoyed themselves immensely. Check out more photos of the day here: