Guest Blog

The Idaho Farm and Ranch Museum holds a Live History Day every September. At this event they showcase the history of rural Idaho, complete with their replica “provin’ up” shed and enough cream separators to supply butter to all of Jerome County.

Of all the farming projects I’ve undertaken, our home garden has been the least profitable.

Prussic or hydrocyanic acid (HCN) is a natural compound that can sometimes build to toxic levels in plants. Among forage crops, plants in the Sorghum genus (including sudangrass, forage and grain-type sorghums, sorghum-sudangrass hybrids and johnsongrass) are most likely to cause this problem.

Being very small farmers, we don’t own brand-new equipment. The men of my family are good mechanics who can keep older machinery running rather than spend the total worth of every crop we’ve harvested in the past 15 years on anything straight off the assembly line.

Plants can be affected by micro-organisms of several types including bacteria, viruses and fungi. Most have what scientists refer to as “perfect” reproduction, i.e., spores are released into the air and can then move to other locations and other plants, resulting in infection at new locations.

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you are a thousand miles away from the cornfield.” When Einsenhower gave this speech, he didn’t have this hopeful farm girl in mind, but recently I learned he should have.