I’m starting to feel older than dirt. And I swear there is soil in our garden that I knew when it was rocks. Oh, how a few decades can change your outlook on life!

At age 25: “Sure, I can ride that horse. Haven’t you got anything tougher than that?”

It’s not often a contest winner shares his secrets of success with all of his contemporaries, especially when the contest carries a top cash prize of $5,000.

But Dan Arkels, a LaSalle County farmer who is the first Illinois grower to produce a verified 100 bushels-per-acre soybean yield, feels sharing his secrets is simply keeping with the tradition of the Illinois Soybean Assoc. (ISA) Yield Challenge competition.

March 16-22, 2015

There is no foliage on the trees yet; only here and there the red bloom of the soft maple, illuminated by the declining sun, shows vividly against the tender green of a slope beyond, or a willow, like a thin veil, stands out against a leafless wood.

-John Burroughs

Lunar phase and lore

March 15, 2015

Background Scripture: John 16:4b-15

Devotional Reading: 1Samuel 3:1-10