Free Republic

<p>Accompanying the routine payments and price forecasts sent to some Northeast dairy farmers last month were a list of mental health services and the number of a suicide prevention hotline.</p> <p>The Agri-Mark dairy cooperative got the resources out to its 1,000 farmers in New England and New York following the suicide of a member farmer in January, and one the year before.</p>

Last week, at least two dozen producers who ship milk to Dean Foods in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Ohio were told they have until May 31, 2018 to find a new home for their milk. “Unfortunately, Dean Foods has made the difficult decision to end milk procurement contracts with a number of farmers in about 90 days,” says Reace Smith director of corporate communications at Dean Foods. “We regret this decision had to be made.” If this sounds familiar that’s because, almost one year ago, producers in Wisconsin were told by their processor, Grassland Dairy, that they...

The world needs to do more to prepare for the next huge volcanic eruption, a team of leading scientists says. The devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and the Tōhoku earthquake in Japan in 2011 highlighted some of the worst-case scenarios for natural disasters. But humanity has not had to deal with a cataclysmic volcanic disaster since at least 1815, when the eruption of Tambora in Indonesia killed tens of thousands of people and led to a ‘year without a summer’ in Europe and North America. Such world-altering blasts rank at 7 or more on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)...

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin––Five years ago today, on March 6, 2013, two pit bulls raised from puppyhood in a loving home environment killed Daxton James Borchardt, age 14 months, and badly injured his babysitter, Susan Iwicki, whose pit bulls turned on both of them. “The horrific attack started,” Borchardt recalls, “while Susan was carrying my son at the hip and letting her dogs back in from a potty break. Susan’s well-raised, loved and cared-for pit bulls ripped my son from her arms. A metal gate was ripped from the gatepost during the struggle. This unprovoked, prolonged, and unstoppable attack lasted an entire...

A robot wolf designed to protect farms has proved to be such a success in trials that it is going into mass production next month. The "Super Monster Wolf" is a 65cm-long, 50cm-tall robot animal covered with realistic-looking fur, featuring huge white fangs and flashing red eyes, Asahi Television reports. It's been designed to keep wild boar away from rice and chestnut crops, and was deployed on a trial basis near Kisarazu City in Japan's eastern Chiba prefecture last July. When it detects an approaching animal, its eyes light up and it starts to howl, Asahi TV says. Its manufacturers...

A three-mile strtech of road was ploughed by Devon farm workers to ensure the RD&E's executive director and a consultant radiologist could get to work this morningDevon farmers are being hailed as heroes for bringing in doctors and nurses to work today so that they can care for patients. GP Susan Taheri swapped her usual mode of transport today for a tractor to get Bow Medical Practice near Crediton. It was driven by local farmer Chris Burrows who has been among the many caring people across Devon to have shown true community spirit by volunteering to take health workers to...

Police arrested a tomato grower in Aichi Prefecture on Thursday on suspicion of stealing about 160 Chinese cabbages from a nearby field, as the price of the leafy vegetable has remained high in the country since late last year. Ikuo Shiono, 40, is suspected of taking Chinese cabbages worth ¥80,000 ($750) on Jan. 29 and 30 from a field in the city of Toyohashi. According to the police Shiono has admitted to the allegation, saying he thought he could sell the produce at a high price. He also said he was involved in three other Chinese cabbage thefts in the...

A British Columbia resident who adopted a potbellied pig named Molly from the SPCA and then ate it has been banned from future SPCA adoptions. Molly was one of 57 potbellied pigs to be seized following an animal cruelty investigation on Vancouver Island a year ago. SPCA staff say they spent months nursing the pigs back to health before they could be adopted. Someone adopted Molly in January, but the SPCA has been informed the pig’s owner ate the animal last week. Lorie Chortyk, a spokesperson for the B.C. SPCA said staff are "extremely upset" because they did everything in...

A runaway cow that avoided captivity for weeks died Thursday after it was caught and put on a truck to be taken to a farm, a local official said. The red Limousin beef cow fled Jan. 23 as it was to be transported to a slaughterhouse. It gained celebrity status as it defended its life and freedom, tricking searchers, swimming from island to island and roaming a lake-filled region near Nysa, in southwestern Poland.

President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday promised measures to help prevent foreign investors buying agricultural land in France after a string of international controversies over Chinese purchases. “For me, French agricultural lands are strategic investments on which our sovereignty depends, so we can’t allow hundreds of hectares of land to be bought by foreign powers without us knowing the aims of these purchases,” Macron told a crowd of young farmers at the presidential palace. He was referring to news last year that a Chinese fund had bought 900 hectares of land in the cereal-growing Allier region in central France, following an...

It’s reviled by city slickers, but revered by chefs. A vintage postcard of a pigeon plant. Wikimedia Commons ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Brobson Lutz remembers his first squab with perfect clarity. It was the 1970s at the now-closed French restaurant Lutèce in New York City. “I came from North Alabama where there was a lot of dove and quail hunting and I knew how tasty little birds were,” the fast-talking Southerner recalls. “I’m not even sure if I knew then if it was a baby pigeon or not. But I became enamored with them.” When he returned home, however, the New Orleans-based physician...

The Kumano-zakura, photographed in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, in March 2017 (Provided by the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute) Photo/Illustraion WAKAYAMA--A botanist says he has identified a new species of cherry tree in the Kii Peninsula, which, if verified, will be the first to be discovered in the wild in Japan in about a century. The early-blooming “Kumano-zakura” (Kumano cherry) is thought to be distributed in Wakayama, Nara and Mie prefectures over an area measuring 90 kilometers from north to south and 60 km from east to west. Toshio Katsuki, 50, who heads the cherry tree preservation team at the...

This wild turkey wasn’t too pleased with traffic on Riverside Boulevard in Sacramento’s Land Park neighborhood on Thursday, Feb. 15th.

You think your job is a grind? Try working at Whole Foods, which is apparently a pretty tough place to clock in every day. “I wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares,” an anonymous staffer told Business Insider, which spoke to 27 current and former workers. “The stress has created such a tense working environment. Seeing someone cry at work is becoming normal.” Crying? There’s no crying in supermarkets! Seriously: What’s the problem? Seems the Austin, Texas-based chain, which was bought by Amazon last summer, has initiated a new inventory system called order to shelf (OTS) that...

People in Mayilattumpara, a village in southwest India, could not sleep at night. Because of habitat loss, wild elephants would enter their village to look for food, destroying crops and farmland. The villagers tried to keep the wild elephants out with electric fences, deep holes and plants believed to keep the animals away. They even tried beating drums. Nothing worked! The repeated destruction of crops led some villagers to stop farming. But the situation turned around last year. That is because residents have finally found what keeps the elephants away: honey bees. Elephants, it turns out, are afraid of loudly...

We might sometimes talk about eating crap on a night in, but that’s nothing compared to the more literal crap future astronauts could well find themselves chowing down on. That’s thanks to researchers at Penn State University, who have been using a research grant from NASA to develop technology for breaking down solid and liquid waste, and transforming it into food that’s hygienic and safe for humans — albeit something you probably won’t be serving at a dinner party anytime soon. The resulting foodstuff is high in both protein and fat, and apparently not dissimilar to savory British sandwich spread,...

It looks like the scene from a military action movie: A helicopter flies low, buzzing just feet above the ground. Two men in full gear lean out the side, taking aim at fleeing targets. They line up the sights and pull the trigger, then leap off the helicopter to intercept their foe. But this isn’t a battle, and their targets don’t shoot back. Amazing video from Arizona shows this scene playing out in real life, with a few details you might not expect: The men in the helicopter are from the Game and Fish Department, and they’re using special net...

Is it just me, or are the Democrats sounding like North Korea today?

Full Title: LONG AND WINE-DING ROAD World’s oldest man dead at 113 – Francisco Nunez Olivera passes away in Spain having attributed his long life to a glass of red wine a day Francisco Nunez Olivera passed away around 10.30 last night at his home in the village of Bienvenida in Badajoz, south-west Spain. He is due to be buried in his native village around 5.30 this afternoon. Bienvenida mayor Antonio Carmena confirmed Francisco’s death this morning, describing it as a “shame for the entire village and the whole world.” He told local media: “In recent years he has meant...

CINC could bring back Assange AND Snowden as material witnesses to DC under diplomatic 'pouches' as we are friendly with both Russia and Ecuador.