Albin news August 2, 2010

Albin News Readers,

We are in the final month of summer and I'm starting to think about fall plans. My wife and I have a baby on the way and both drew elk tags for some hunting in October. I'm wondering if any of you would like to try your hand at writing the Albin News for a week. There's not much prestige to be had, but there is a little cash incentive. I have no idea what the circulation is or how many people read the Albin news, but I know for sure it's over a dozen. At least a dozen people have told me how surprised they are that I'm writing the Albin news. I'm pretty busy this week too so will keep it short and sweet.

In community news Betty Ann McLaughlin had special company for her birthday this week. Her only living sister Nancy Stiller and husband Andy Stiller came from Northern Minnesota for most of the week. They also brought their daughter Cindy Stiller and grand-daughter Jenny Watt with them. They had a nice time catching up and getting away from tourists. Andy and Nancy live near the boundary waters where a lot of tourists come this time or year. They stayed away from Cheyenne Frontier Days.

Diane Lerwick had a baby shower Saturday morning from 10 to noon to celebrate the birth of twins Anna Marie and Kenneth Andrew. A group of a dozen or more attended and had a good time holding the babies and talking.

Tim Malm continues to make progress through daily care and therapy. Once again, Dixie Malm has been doing a great job of posting updates on Tim's condition. To find these updates, go to caringbridge.org and search “timmalm.” This is Dixie's latest update:

Psalm 33:20-21...We wait for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In Him our hearts find joy. In His holy name we trust.
The verbs here are wait, find, and trust with the nouns being help, shield,and joy.  Sounds so easy...and we're trying hard to totally follow His Word. Thank ya'll for the daily strength and encouragement with your prayers, comments, cards, etc--that's keeps the 'fuel' in our hearts.
Tim had a full day starting with two mornings sessions and three sessions in the afternoon.  He followed verbal commands and muscle isolation with toe-touch kicking a ball with each foot twice and we also used a different chair that 'stood up' with Tim for balance and strength.  Please pray for the right arm to completely relax and straighten because they are looking at possible muscle injection and a series of different casts for the arm.  We're praying that pool therapy will loosen and relax, but wholly that God would relax that arm. His left thigh/knee joint area has bent more, but again, keep praying that if there is any bone ossification that He would just dissolve any for full range of motion.  Tim is sleeping well through the nights so praise and thank God, and continue to pray for total healing and restoration!  BELIEVE 

Albin's Master Gardner Ann Sanchez had this tip for those of you who would like to try growing their own fresh garlic!

I’m feeling pretty excited about my garden this week. I just harvested my first crop of garlic. I bought my garlic bulbs from the farmers market, but you can also buy bulbs from the seed catalogs or even at the grocery story.

Grow garlic in a spot that gets full sun and has loose crumbly soil. Plant your garlic in September or October. This allows the plants to develop a vigorous root system before cold weather. Break the bulb apart and plant each clove with the pointed growing tip up and the flat root end down. Plant the cloves from 2 to 4 inches deep. Space them 4 to 6 inches apart. Keep the cloves watered for about 3 weeks. Not much happens in the fall above ground, but in the spring the plants will take off. What I found fascinating was the hummingbird head shaped flower scapes that formed at the top of the plant. First the scapes made a loop then they straighten out as the plant matured. The plants were ready to harvest when half their leaves turn yellow and fell over. Digging up the garlic was fun and easy. Now the bulbs are drying or curing in single layers in a well-ventilated spot.

Growing garlic has another great advantage. Hail storms did not affect the end product.

In ag news, the wheat price spike has now spanned more than $2.00/bu. This is a very large movement especially considering is started at just above $4.50/bu. In terms of percentages, the price of wheat has jumped nearly 50% and hasn't set a top yet. This is the third spike of this magnitude that we have seen in the past two years. This first one was in the winter of 2008 and the second was June of last year. All three were precipitated by the possibility of a food shortage and magnified by speculator money. The first two dropped as quickly as they shot up, suggesting that we are in a new market environment of big price swings. I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that we as level headed farmers have the social and economic responsibility of counter balancing the flighty speculators. We don't know when or how much the speculator money will swing the market, but I think it's safe to say the market will continue to move more than we're used to. It will move up and down more than it logically should. We can't get discouraged by the extreme lows or overly excited by the extreme highs but patiently wait for the market to move in your favor and then boldly sell only the crop that we plan to produce. If we're lucky, the speculators will keep sending some price spikes our way and we can keep selling our crops for more than they're worth. The more the market moves, the more the speculators will want a piece of the action. All it takes to start a stampede is for a few of those speculators to strike it rich by guessing right.

I mentioned last week that there was a drought in the black sea region. This is true but I haven't been able to find much solid data on this. I've heard a lot of educated guesses but they vary a lot. The bottom line is that the black sea region produces less than 5% of the World's wheat. The united states produces roughly twice as much wheat as Russia and we are having a very good wheat year. Maybe the local markets near that region should be sharply higher, but I can't see how the markets here should be too concerned. All the local elevators agree with this as they have raised their cash basis to negative $1.94 at Lindbergh at $1.91 at Burns and Pine Bluffs. For those of you unfamiliar with the cash basis, it is the difference between the cash price paid at the local market (i.e. Lindbergh elevator) and the futures price at the location of the trading floor (Kansas City or Chicago). The cash basis near Albin is figured off of the Kansas City Board of Trade's futures price for hard red winter wheat. The cash basis for the Albin area has historically been about negative $0.60. It's essentially what the farmers pay the elevator to store, market, and ship their grain and is supposed to be less than what it costs to ship grain to the location of the trading floor. At this point, the elevators have been charging a high rate because all of the wheat markets are flooded and they have to sell at a discounted rate just to get their bins cleaned out and ready for corn harvest. They know that they won't be able to sell wheat for much so every time the speculators at the Kansas City Board of Trade raises the the wheat price, the elevators raise the basis. This really isn't how these markets are designed to work.

Wheat harvest has progressed to the irrigated wheat this week. The stripe rust seems to have taken 10-20 bushels per acres off of most of the irrigated wheat. Considering that most farmers applied fungicides to their wheat, this is tough loss. If the fungicide application cost was around $20/ac and the yield loss was $65/ac, the average profit margin loss for the area was around $85/ac because of the rust. Hopefully some of you wheat farmers are able to take advantage of the bump in wheat prices to make up for this!

The GDUs for 2009 and 2010 for April 15 – August 2 (baseline 50 deg F) are 1192.5 and 1394.5. The amount of GDUs needed to finish a corn crop in our area (assuming a corn variety rated around 89 days) is 2100 GDUs. At this rate, we should easily be able to harvest corn in October!