Dirt Road Charm

Motherhood, Agriculture, and everything in between

Friday, June 13, 2014

Country Fair Blog Party...Happy Fathers Day and Dairy Month!

Good morning from Nashville!  After a great night down on East Broadway and listening to live music all night long at the legendary Tootsies I could think of nothing better to do this lovely morning than to bring you this great link up :)   With fathers day in just a couple days and June being Dairy month what better way than to find great recipes to celebrate with or a wonderful gift for dad than this great link up full of just those things!

Here are last weeks winners:
AG


Food


DIY


So go on and share your great ideas that could make the best fathers day gift or that recipe that would make a great addition to fathers day dinner.....and remember to use a ton of butter, cheese, and milk to support those dairy farmers!!
Enjoy!


Friday, June 6, 2014

Blog Party!!!

It's Friday......and who doesn't love a good party?  These two things clearly go well together to start off this lovely weekend!  Here are a few of the Grand Champions from last week's party:

AG




Recipes




So now with summer pushing its way upon us I have been getting crafty with my outdoor patio area and need some great ideas for benches and a fun cooler......send your DIY projects this way!!!  As well as you yummy recipes.  I find throughout the warmer months I tend to eat a ton more veggies and fruit.  It is way more refreshing on those hot days!

Be sure to follow all the lovely ladies hosting the party:





Thursday, June 5, 2014

Robots, Drones, Big Data.....Oh My!



This year I was honored to be asked back to cover the events of the Alltech Sympoium as a guest blogger.  I absolutely love this event because it is full of information and actually keeps your attention.  Which is normally a pretty hard task for me......you know the classic hold your head up by resting it in on your hand in attempts to make it look like you aren't napping through the session.  Yeah that has yet to happen here!  This year's symposium was all about the What if......


Founder and Owner of Alltech: Pearse Lyons


I love technology and I love hearing about what is coming down the pipeline when it comes to awesome gadgets and technology that will help the Agriculture industry be more responsible and efficient.  During this year’s Alltech symposium I got to hear about just that and the future is looking quite exciting!!

 My favorite session was: A Farming Revolution, which discussed drones and GPS and what the possibilities look like.  Majority of the drones that are available today to the average buyer are a small drone with 4 propellers that has the ability to take a photo over your field or location.   That is cool and all and has come a long way from where we were before which pretty much consisted of climbing the nearest silo or antenna tower to look out across the field and farm. 

Some of the ideas of what the future of drones looks like was mind boggling to me and makes my inner tech geek excited!  Some of the ideas and even projects being tested include the idea of having drones keep real time over long periods of time by hovering over the field or farm (kind of like a blimp).  How great would it be to be able to see exactly when your crop started to mature or when a certain disease was really spreading throughout your field?  That is valuable information to be able to capture. 

One of my favorite ideas was multiple small drones in large numbers flying over your fields at all times and even going so far as being able to suck up harmful insects and recycle them into fertilizer to help eliminate the use of insecticides and even recycle weeds into fertilizer to replace herbicides.  How amazing is that?  The best part is that it’s a serious possibility for the future of farming. 

One of the key statements that was said multiple times throughout the session is that farmers really need to be open minded to technology innovations and try to look beyond the practices that have been in place for multiple centuries.  While these practices have been successful we still need to be more efficient to be able to feed the 9 billion by 2050.  Also stated was the fact that farmers need to work together to share ideas and advancements and I couldn’t agree with that statement more!  The more we work together as an industry the better we are as a whole!

This year’s symposium did such an amazing job of really making you think “what if”.  The possibilities for the future of Agriculture really are endless.  I leave you with this question that was asked to us….. “Do you want to be the disruptor, or do you want to be disrupted?”

Cheers!