Horse-drawn carriage crash kills Kentucky woman

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A Lexington woman who owns a horse farm with her husband died from injuries suffered in a horse-drawn carriage accident.

Authorities say Elizabeth Lampton’s buggy crashed when the horse pulling it got spooked. Four passengers riding the carriage were ejected. Lampton was admitted to a hospital on Friday with a head injury and died Saturday afternoon.

Lampton, 74, owns Elmendorf Farm with her husband, Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. Another woman in the carriage suffered a broken leg. The two men suffered minor injuries.

Illinois-shaped corn flake sells for $1,350 on eBay

CHICAGO (AP) — Two sisters from Virginia sold their Illinois-shaped corn flake on eBay Friday night for $1,350.

“We were biting our nails all the way up to the finish, seeing what would happen,” said Melissa McIntire, 23. “There’s a lot of relief involved.”

The winner of the auction, which lasted more than a week, is the owner of a trivia website who wants to add the corn flake to a traveling museum.

“We’re starting a collection of pop culture and Americana items,” said Monty Kerr of Austin, Texas. “We thought this was a fantastic one.”

Kerr owns TriviaMania.com and said he will likely send someone to Virginia to pick up the flake by hand, so it won’t be damaged. This isn’t the first corn flake that Kerr has tried to buy. He said he purchased a flake billed as the world’s largest, but that by the time it was delivered it had crumbled into three pieces.
McIntire and her sister Emily, 15, listed the corn flake on eBay last week, but eBay canceled the auction saying it violated the website’s food policy.

The sisters restarted their eBay auction, advertising a coupon redeemable for their corn flake, instead of the cereal itself. The McIntires said they’ll likely use the money for a family vacation.
Copycat items have popped up on eBay, including corn flakes shaped like Hawaii and Virginia. There’s also been a potato chip shaped like Florida, and Illinois corn flake paraphernalia, including T-shirts and buttons.

Honey bees appear to be plentiful in Ohio this year

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Honey bees are plentiful in Ohio this year - good news for farmers who rely on the bees to pollinate more than 70 crops, including apples, pumpkins and strawberries.

About 85 percent of honey bees across the state survived the winter, experts say. Last year, a cold snap and a puzzling illness killed off about 1 billion, or 72 percent, of Ohio bees. Farmers are cautiously optimistic for 2008.

“It’s still early,” said James Tew, a beekeeping specialist at Ohio State University’s agricultural research center in Wooster. “If it turns cold again and stays cold, the bees will eat all their honey and starve to death.”

But no one is saying the Colony Collapse Disorder, which leads bees to abandon their hives, is gone. Scientists are still struggling to understand what’s behind the problem. The disease wiped out 400 of commercial beekeeper Joe Blair’s 2,000 hives this winter.
Blair, who owns White Star Farms in Fairfield County, lost 1,000 hives last year. He makes his living supplying bees to orchards and farms to pollinate crops.

“I can cover my pollination,” he said of his hives this year. “That’s all that counts.”

Bees are essential in development of the nation’s $14.6 billion in fruit and vegetable crops each year. In Ohio, the crops were worth hundreds of millions of dollars in 2006.

Colony collapse has killed billions of bees in 35 states. It helped kill 38 percent of the nation’s 2.4 million bee colonies last year, according to an Apiary Inspectors of America study published last year in the American Bee Journal.

Retired Hoosier farmer donates land for conservation

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — A retired farmer worried about Indiana’s shrinking agricultural acreage has donated the development rights to his family’s 140-acre farm to a conservation group dedicated to preserving farmland and natural areas.

Eugene Myers, 89, stood outside a barn on his South Bend area property last week as he announced his arrangement with Wood-Land-Lakes Resource Conservation and Development Inc. to preserve his farmland long after he is gone. “We need farms around yet,” he said. “I’d like to see it preserved.”

Myers is believed to be the first St. Joseph County farmer who has used a conservation easement to preserve his land, said John Newsom, regional manager for Indiana Farm Bureau.

Under the agreement, Newsom said Myers can still leave his land to anybody he wants to in his will, and it can still be bought and sold. But the development rights have been donated to the not-for-profit Wood-Land-Lakes.

The Angola-based group’s coordinator, Kathy Latz, said it was the conservancy’s responsibility to make sure Myers’ land is never developed.

A future owner could let it return to its natural state, but the owner can’t allow any of the acreage to be developed for stores, factories or more than one house, she said.

Wood-Land-Lakes was formed in 1994 to preserve farmland and natural areas in Elkhart DeKalb, LaGrange, Noble, Steu-ben and Whitley and adjacent counties. It now protects more than 1,000 acres from development across northern Indiana.

Myers and his wife, Mary, lived in a farmhouse on their property until May 2007, when they moved to a retirement home. Mary died in September, and Myers started working in October on the conservation easement.

“I think she’d be very much in favor of it,” he said of the conservation agreement.

Myers grew up on 100 acres of the property, farming with his father. In 1939, he bought the additional 40 acres. He used the land, which he now rents to another farmer, to grow corn and soybeans and raise chickens for the eggs they produced.

Dead, malnourished animals found on Michigan farm

SIX LAKES, Mich. (AP) — Authorities in Montcalm County say they have found dead and malnourished dogs, pigs, sheep and goats at an abandoned home.

Authorities say they were alerted to the home in the community of Six Lakes after a neighbor sent photos of the animals to WZZM-TV, which contacted police. The Grand Rapids Press reports investigators have removed five dead animals.

Police say the family that lived in the mobile home on the property has moved away, but someone returned Wednesday to drop off a dog and some food.

Animal control officers will forward the results of their investigation to the prosecutor’s office, which will decide on whether charges will be filed.