Dayton Gets Schooled on Ag

Ahh, Poop Day, God's gift to farm wife bloggers. My latest submission to Dayton's online hub, Dayton Most Metro, not only shares important Poop Day advice but provides definitions of key agricultural terms.

Would you click if the headline was Key Agricultural Terms. I didn't think so.

Winter Wonder Farm

Yesterday we got eight inches of snow. My driveway is not scraped; my back porch remains icy. Here on the farm, all the shoveling and snow removal is focused on the livestock. Snowed-in farm wives, minivans and sidewalks are not a priority.

A self-proclaimed fair weather farmer, I ventured out today with Morgan, sacrificing my cozy sweatpanted existance to bring you a winter weather farm report. I even caught the farmer out hamming it up (get it!).

By the time I got out there, the shoveling was done and feeding time had begun. These hungry sows (mama pigs) were glad to have a cleaned off spot in their pen to eat dinner.

Right now we are in baby pig season at the farm. I know it seems like a better idea to have babies in the spring, but since we will be selling the majority of the pigs to 4-H'ers for the county fair and to other farmers as breeding stock, we want them mature (250-280 pounds) by August/September for fair season.

Can you believe this sweet little guy will be a big hog in six months?

Or these? I love the little Herefords. Thanks to Husband's hard work, they can come out of the little house they share with their mother and not get buried in snow.

Fortunately, this little one and her brothers love to shovel snow. If I can just get them strong enough to put the snow blade on the John Deere, we'll be all set.

Spring Training 2010

This weekend was baseball / t-ball sign-ups for our home town league. Justin couldn't wait to get signed up for his second year of t-ball with Daddy signing up to be head coach.

Serving as head coach of a t-ball team is a little like being assigned to herd cats. Thankfully Husband has the patience of an angel.

This patience was tested later this weekend when Justin insisted on going outside in freezing temperatures to take batting practice.

A Few of My Favorite Blogs

It's been nearly two years since I sat down at the computer during a blizzard and created this blog. A college professor told me once that the the best way to improve my PR writing skills was to read good writers and it seems that the same would go for blogging. I have become a fan of a number of good blogs and Web sites but here I share a few of my favorites and how they've helped shape this site.

There are two national sites I love that are just too important to ignore but I also admire local bloggers who aren't as famous but still give me inspiration.

Dooce

Ok, so maybe not the most original choice but I, like many others, find Heather Armstrong's style and ability to find self-deprecating humor in everyday life very entertaining.
Why I love this blog: It's a peek into another Mom's life that is very irreverent. Her frankness is refreshing and her writing is superb.
What I learn from this blog: Headline writing is a lost art. Use creative phrases to draw people in.
Does she know I exist: No
Why I am insanely jealous: Do I need more than two best-selling books and an estimated advertising income of $40,000 A MONTH?

The Pioneer Woman

In four years Ree Drummond took her blog from obscurity to national awards to a 23-state cookbook tour. What's not to admire. Why I love this blog: The blog is about a woman who can see rural life with an outsider's eye. She's married to a handsome farmer and has a bunch of very active children who love to be outside. Aside from her gorgeous red hair and mastery of the kitchen, we could be twins (ha!).

What I learn from this blog: It's all about the pictures. Show the 98% of people who are not involved in agriculture what goes on behind the scenes.

Does she know I exist: Well, we corresponded once when her site broke my computer. She was very kind in helping me get things fixed. I have not yet been invited to The Lodge.
Why I am insanely jealous: Doesn't every woman want to completely redesign a separate guest home on their property. I want her sense of style (and her budget).

Mommin' It Up

Dayton area mommy bloggers Jenny and Emily are everywhere. They tweet, they blog, they review products and they travel to all the major blogging conferences.

Why I love this blog: Jenny and Emily are down to earth and fun. The writing on the site is warm and friendly but no-nonsense. They joke about being "kind of a big deal." And they are.
What I learn from this blog: Don't knock mommy blogging until you've tried it. There are people out there who want your help to connect their brand with an audience.
Do they know I exist: YES. I have met both Emily and Jenny and find both to be just as friendly and open as they come across on their site.

Why I am insanely jealous: They just announced that they both are getting brand new appliances from Frigidaire.

Soy Boy Mama

She'll probably laugh when she sees I've put her on the same list as Dooce and Pioneer Woman, but Soy Boy Mama is an important influence on my blogging.
Why I love this blog: Soy Boy Mama posts slices of life that make me laugh out loud. She has a unique style of writing and a dry wit that I love.
What I learn from this blog: Don't wait until you have the perfect 300-word post in mind before blogging. Throw it out there and have fun. UPDATE: Soy Boy Mama is pretty darn near perfect. I only meant that I tend to want to create essays instead of blog posts.
Does she know I exist: YES. She's the one who told me I needed to start a blog.
Why I am insanely jealous: She managed to post every day in November as part of National Blog Post Month and she gets comments on almost every post.

Thanks to these talented bloggers for serving as my inspiration.

Gettin' Funky with Soft Scrub

When I was making the case that I should be included in the ultra-exclusive (only 200 bloggers picked!) Soft Scrub Club Captain  list, I told them that I lived on a farm and things get messy here.

I didn't want to scare them or I would have confessed that I have to wipe out the inside of my washer every week. Yes, you read that right. I have to clean inside my clothes washer or else farm funk will build up inside the lid. You don't even want to know what kinds of things are on the clothes to cause this.

Right before my free (disclosure of product gratis) sample bottle arrived, the pipes in our kitchen froze. Not only did our old pipes freeze, our drain froze too and water and gunk began building up in the garbage disposal. I thought it would be a good idea to turn it on, which caused the funk of 40,000 years to gurgle up into the other drain. Delicious.

Fortunately, I had a full bottle of Soft Scrub and a healthy skepticism of their claims that this bottle works upside down. So I sprayed and I foamed and I tried to hold the bottle in a position in which it wouldn't work. It always worked. And the sink got clean. Very clean.

Thanks to Soft Scrub and its easy-to-use, nice-smelling product a miracle happened at my house this weekend. I cleaned both bathrooms and the kitchen.

Did I mention about the foaming and the spraying. This crazy bottle does both. I experimented with each but found that spraying works most of the time, with a little foaming action good on spots that are very icky.

Like where your five-year-old missfires.

The best part, if you've read this far, is that I have plenty of Soft Scrub left in my bottle for next weekend's cleaning (ha!). So if you want a free coupon to try this yourself leave a comment and I'll do a drawing. It may just be between you a that Korean SEO spammer, so you'll have a good shot.

And in case your laundry also contains clothing soiled with pig poo, pig afterbirth, pig snot, barn filth, matted straw and corn dust, don't worry Soft Scrub can keep your washer gleaming.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

When I first started this blog, I did it to have a creative outlet. I was very tired of spending my days writing about my B2B employer's leading innovative solutions.  I never had any goals for this blog about making money from selling ads or any type of sponsorship.

Along the way I heard about these very savvy women bloggers known as the mommy bloggers, a term some embraced, others decried but all were willing to have tattooed on their a$$ if it meant a free trip to Blogher.

I kept hearing about the trips, the clothes, the free toys, the Twitter parties with giveaways and finally I said to myself and my good friend and fellow blogger M, maybe we're doing this wrong.

One day, on a lark, I signed up for Mom Select, a company that connects mommy bloggers and companies. I thought it would be good research for my career. I also used career research as the excuse for applying for my very first mommy blogger adventure--becoming a Soft Scrub Club Captain.

Well, Big Butter Jesus on toast (this phrase may be copyrighted by Soy Boy Mama), they picked me.

As Bugs Bunny would say--and oh God, most of the mommy bloggers are too young to have seen Bugs Bunny--if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

So stay tuned. I took pictures of my filthy sink.

Guy Reads - Wild Hog Edition

Wow, it's been a long time since we had a Guy Reads segment, I had begun to worry that intrepid ag reporter at the Dayton Daily News, Ben Sutherly, had been permanently reassigned.   

But never fear, last week the Dayton Daily News ran its annual OMG there are wild pigs in Ohio story (covered here expertly last year too).

This year's headline: Wild hogs could be past point of elimination in Ohio. This is a serious story for Husband because wild hogs can carry disease and if they came onto our farm they could wreck our feed, tear up our farmland and de-flower our gilts (virgin pigs--I'm not kidding).

It's amazing to think that there are hundreds of wild pigs in the state. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (not sure why they are involved), wild pigs cause 27,000 auto collisions a year nationwide.

Photo: http://www.huntinghog.com/

In the comments section of the Dayton Daily News story, many were comparing wild pigs to coyotes, both wild animals that seem to know no boundaries with humans and encroach even in developed areas.

This is definitely not good. Oh, yes, it could be disasterous for the farm but I mean this is not good for me. How am I going to be a niche blogger with pigs in her back yard when everyone has pigs in their back yard.