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Here comes the new year
By Richard C. Snell Barton County Extension Agent Here we are in the last week of 2007! Just what will the new year bring? It should bring hope of new opportunities that we have never seen. A song that should challenge us all, comes from John Lennon way back in 1971. Happy Xmas (War is Over) gets played a lot on pop radio stations around Christmas even though it was kind of a protest song in the Vietnam era. Generally, John and I didn't see eye to eye on most things but I do like some of his songs. Some of the lyrics for Happy Xmas are: So this is Christmas And what have you done Another year over And a new one just begun And so this is Christmas, I hope you have fun, The near and the dear one The old and the young. A very Merry Christmas And a happy New Year, Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear, And so this is Christmas, For weak and for strong For rich and the poor ones. My focus is on the new year, since Christmas is over and we can't change a thing about the past year. We can only learn from it. His one line that causes me to reflect is--What Have You Done? I have done a lot, it's just that sometimes we are so busy, that we don't have time to do the right things and do things right. When I write these columns I am usually preaching to myself and some of you are the choir and can run circles around me in terms of doing things. I hope you and I spend 2008 being grateful and treating people right and having good relationships. "Do as I say not as I do" because I know what I am telling you is right. My prayer for you is that things will be GREAT in 2008! The Wichita Lineman Last week I was giving thanks to all the electric linemen who restored the power. I referenced the Glen Campbell song, The Wichita Lineman. Most major cities have a song about them and I guess that's the one for Wichita. There were several more thoughts I wanted to finish up with. One was the part about, "I hear you singing in the wire." On the Internet, many people think this means it had to be telephone lines. This is not necessarily true since if you have ever been out in the country away from the city noise, you can hear the electric wire humming from the flow of electricity. So he could have imagined her voice through electric wires. Secondly, some of my younger readers may think--Is he crazy? Telephone lines are below ground cables. Well, they are now but weren't just a few years ago. Telephone poles and lines were similar to electric poles and wires. Another thought that I had was that by just human nature, it is hard to realize the suffering that other people go through until it happens to you. We can say we know about the Greensburg tornado. But until it happens to us, we can only imagine. Before that there was Hurricane Katrina. A good example of this is that we have whined in central and eastern Kansas about ice storms and blizzards and floods this year. The people in western Kansas are probably saying, "Now you know what it was like last year when we had no electricity for a month and had several years of drought in a row that hurt farm income". My final thought is the part about "And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time, And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line." The only one you can have for all time or will be there for all time is God. By the time you read this, I hope that the Wichita Linemen and the other linemen are all back home and the work is complete. It is my hope, that even though the song means he is still there and working for the public and listening for his girl, that really he, you and I will be on the line listening to what God has to say to us in 2008. He is the only one that can get you through the tough times. Farm lease meeting The Barton County Extension Office will be holding a meeting on farm leases on Monday, Jan. 7, starting at 1:30 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Barton County Extension Office meeting room, at the corner of 12th and Baker Streets in Great Bend. All farm tenants and landowners are encouraged to attend. I will go over the Kansas Farm Lease Law and Dan O'Brien, northwest area extension economist, will go through a spreadsheet on determining rental rates. He will also discuss trends in dryland and irrigated cash and crop share leases, as well as pasture leases. There is no cost for the program. Please call 620-793-1910 if you plan to attend so we can plan for more space if we need to. Did you know? We will be holding a no-till crop fertility meeting in Barton County on Thursday, Jan. 10. Details later. --The Kansas Soybean Expo will be held on Jan. 8 in Topeka. --The Farmers, Agriculture, Conservation and Technology conference will be held Jan. 8 and 9 in Liberal. Two of the speakers will be Ron Hanson of the University of Nebraska and Phil Needham who does a lot on intensive wheat management. Those two speakers alone are worth the cost to attend. The registration fee is only $50 before Jan. 2. --The Western Nursery and Landscape Association Trade Show will be held Jan. 6 to 8 in Overland Park. Date: 12/27/07
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