Chris Hardie

It’s harvest season; large combines are making short work of picking, husking and shelling millions of acres of this year’s corn crop. But before combines arrived in the 1950s most of the crop was stored as cob corn in a corn crib.

Clearly the survival of dairy farms is in crisis. Are we better off with more mega-dairies and fewer smaller farms? It depends who you ask.

Do you believe in ghosts? It’s easy to be skeptical in the daylight. But when darkness falls, it’s an entirely different story.

Weather in Wisconsin has been unpredictable this year, and unusually wet. Recent snow flurries reminded of just how long and strange the trip has been.

Gardening is farming. We take the good with the bad. It’s never perfect. But this year’s harvest was particularly pitiful at the Hardie farm.

James and Margaret Hardie came to the area now known as Hardie’s Creek in 1854. Four generations have now toiled in these hills.

That 1957 baseball was a special sports memento from a special year. With one swing of the bat, Chris Hardie and his brother lost it.

These past few weeks watching, listening and celebrating the Brewers made me think of that magical Sunday afternoon in 1982.

Many take to the woods in the spring for the popular morel mushrooms. But autumn is actually the better season for fungi like honey, oyster, bearded or combs tooth, sulfur shelf, hen of the woods, shaggy mane and chanterelle.

There comes a point in farming when we all make difficult decisions. We need to put aside the emotional connection and view it from a business perspective.