There will be a corn crop next year and farmers will continue plowing their fields, milking their cows, feeding their chickens and selling their goods at market.
But I won't be around to report on it. The newspaper is ending this weekly farm column.
As I look back over a long career, I think about the respect I developed for farmers. They work hard and work smart or they don't survive.
They are part of the largest industry in the state. They feed us at a fraction of the cost of food in other nations while constantly battling the uncontrollable threats of Mother Nature.
As a reporter, I sought to point out the contributions of agriculture to our economy and to our way of life. I tried to give farmers a louder voice at the bargaining table of government.
As I scan through a pile of farm story clippings, here are some things that stand out:
* The incredible change of attitude on the part of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation toward farmers.
After blaming farmers for most of the ills of the bay for years, the environmental group admitted its past mistakes in 2006 and put its clout behind legislative initiatives designed to keep farmers in business. It concluded that an acre of farmland was better for the health of the bay than an acre of residential development.
* A story in 1998 that pointed out Maryland was on the verge of becoming an island surrounded by states that had approved dairy compact legislation that would allow for the establishment of a minimum price farmers were to be paid for their milk.
The article resulted in the General Assembly doing an about-face and passing dairy compact legislation here after the Senate had killed the bill.
I was flattered when former state Agriculture Secretary Lewis R. Riley told a meeting of the Maryland Farm Bureau that my story might have saved the state's dairy industry.
Unfortunately, the next year Congress outlawed all dairy compact legislation.
* A recent story pointing out that MidAtlantic Farm Credit, a cooperative banking system operated primarily by farmers, had hardly any of the financial problems of other lenders that caused the current credit crisis.
While other lenders in Maryland reported nearly 8,000 foreclosures during the three months that ended in September, MidAtlantic had less that 12 during the entire year throughout the Mid-Atlantic region it serves.
