I’m fortunate to be old enough to have grown up in the age before cell phones, personal computers, the internet, social media and “Tic Tac,” or whatever they call it. My media entertainment was primarily relegated to the static-prone, antenna-received Northwest Public Broadcasting (NWPB) channel we had beamed in; Channel…
We’ve all been there. Sitting at the local café/coffee pot/rural community news center when a strange vehicle pulls into town. “That’s the new kid” one of the local farmers says. “He’s taken over the old Smith place.” Folks smile and shake their heads, bless his heart but he doesn’t know…
Just the other day, someone asked me if there was anything that surprised me in my year of being WAWG (Washington Association of Wheat Growers) president. I answered that I was a farmer, and that I’m used to things sometimes going sideways on the farm operation, and I’m used to…
Whew! Another year around the sun that we have harvested and seeded! Now it’s time to wind down and watch the wheat grow. As my late dad would say, “It’s time to round up all the scrap iron and put it in one pile,” which meant getting all the farm…
Traditions. We all have them. From Christmas traditions, to wearing the winning game socks (religiously) in a high school Friday night football game, to flipping aebleskivers every Sunday morning for the family. People love their traditions, and it’s no surprise that farmers have their own. When I was farming with…
For the July issue of Wheat Life, I’m handing the President’s Perspective reins over to my wife, Teri, to talk about being a farmer’s wife. —Howard McDonald There is an old saying that goes, ”happy wife, happy life,” but in the case of the farmer’s wife, it is equally important…
Way back in the day of my father and generations before him, farmers didn’t talk about mental health because most folks were too proud or embarrassed to talk about their struggles. It was viewed as weak. But farmers have the enormously stressful job of “feeding the world,” which comes with…
Myself and the rest of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers leaders have been doing a lot of press lately. One of the questions we get asked over and over is why we don’t increase the price we sell our grain for to deal with the rising cost of inputs,…
According to the calendar, spring has sprung, but as I write this, we are still freezing up here in Douglas County, so our winter wheat hasn’t woken up yet. Even though the crop is still dormant, I’m needing to make decisions that will greatly affect the upcoming growing season. This…
How hard would it be to grow your wheat without applying fertilizer? You’d get a crop, but it probably wouldn’t be a great one, and with the rising cost of inputs, you’d be lucky to break even. Continue trying to raise a crop year after year without using fertilizer, and…
