How much corn do cows eat when cows are eating corn?

They can eat a bushel and a peck, a barrel and a heap, or, and I’m not talking in my sleep, they can eat very little. It depends how the cows are raised and what they are fed.

Cows are natural grazers, and their natural foods are the grasses of the fields. The stomach of the cow has many parts. The first part is called the rumen. The rumen is the chopper-upper, the part of the stomach that knocks about and breaks into pieces the grasses, and there the digestive process starts. Cows are ruminants because they chew the cud, the partially digested food regurgitated from the rumen. Sheep, antelopes, deer and giraffes do the same and are related to the cow. Bacteria in the rumen help the process, and life continues for the grass-fed cows grazing in their fields.

Farmers want cows to grow faster. It takes a lot of grass to grow a cow to market to market to sell a fat cow. With corn in the diet, the cow grows faster and fatter. So home again home again market is done, but with more jingles in the pocket from the sale of that sleeker and heavier grain-fed ruminant. Care must be taken here. Cows are not natural corn eaters. There was little corn growing in the pastures of their past. Serious stomach distress can result if a cow is switched too quickly or too completely from grass to grain, from stem to corn. The rumen is adaptable, though — it just needs a little time to appreciate its newly found sweet. Corn is candy to the cow, and the cow, hey, diddle, diddle, will jump over the moon for its treat.

Corn is big business. Corn is the most widely produced U.S. feed grain. Uncle Joe plants more corn than wheat, sorghum or cotton. Corn is Joe’s #1 crop. Corn is the #1 crop in the U.S.A.

Cars love corn. As much as cows have developed a marketable taste for corn, automobiles have demonstrated an even greater demand for the corn crop. Ethanol is a gasoline additive, and ethanol is well and efficiently produced from the corn cows crave. The environmental advantages of ethanol’s chemical structure and the role the two-carbon alcohol molecule plays in improving the pace of our combustion engines have fast promoted ethanol as the fuel enhancer of choice. With its newly gained popularity, ethanol production has skyrocketed, and that production is in turn fueled by truckload after truckload of newly harvested corn.

In the 2013-14 growing season, some 37% of the U.S. corn crop was spirited away for ethanol distillation and production. The next biggest chunk, 33% of the harvest, was served up to animals for treats. The ration to our cows, beef cattle and dairy, was 15%. It is true that the leftovers of ethanol manufacturing, the DDGS or Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles are routed back to agricultural uses, including feed. Our hungry cows received some portion of that DDGS — of the leftovers. Even with that, the writing on the wall is clear: The car is now king of the field, and the cow has fallen from its leap of prominence. Hey, diddle, diddle, the auto has run away with the moon.

Hickory Dickory dock, The cow ran up the clock, The clock struck thirty-seven, The cow fell from heaven, Hickory Dickory dock.

There’s a new king in town. Enjoy the ride in your grain-fed car.

Grandpa Jim

“This isn’t a house, this is a place you are very much at home.”

I wrote that late at night. The grandkids were asleep in their beds. It was after Christmas Day and before New Year’s Eve. The missus and I were exhausted from almost five straight days of grandkiddom — ages 10 months, almost 4 years and 10 years old. Their parents were upon a much-needed vacation. The house had been broken-in good. For a born neat-nick, I should have been upset and frantic. I wasn’t. I was tired and at ease in the way children hit you when they’re asleep and look to the world like angels. I knew there was a chance I would not survive the morrow, but I was content in the reverie of a moment’s peace before the baby cried, the 4-year old jumped onto the bed and the ten-year old reported how the refrigerator could work better. Everything was okay. If I woke in heaven, that was a good thing. If I woke in bed, there was always a repairman. Right?

I did wake – right here at home.

The kitchen faucet broke as the parent’s plane landed at the airport.

With damp feet, we waved goodbye and wished all a very Happy New Year.

We cried as the car drove off.

At a friend’s house for New Year’s Eve, we played a game. Each of us wrote down on a slip of paper a New Year’s resolution for 2015. We folded the secret wishes and gave them to the host. One at a time, a paper was read. We all took turns trying to guess who wrote that one.

In an way, I was pleased when no one guessed mine.

“Spend more time with the grandkids.”

That’s my resolution for 2015.

Almost everyone else had travel resolutions.

I wonder if we’re going on vacation.

Will it be the the two of us?

There are some very nice things about cruse ships.

One, they come with their own repairmen.

And two, the last port of call is almost always close to home.

Have a good start to the New Year, don’t sweat the small stuff and have fun with the kids – whatever their ages.

Grandpa Jim

For some, the land of Tibet may not seem that far away.

There is a young man whose nights are plagued by strange dreams of the present lost to freezing icy flows and the hurtful sounds of scratching classroom lessons. For him, will this New Year be more of the same? Could things change and be different? In his life? In his dreams?

At mid-day tomorrow, you will have the chance to read and see what happens on that fateful New Year’s Eve.

“The Young Man Who Discovered He Was Not From Tibet” is the 2015 New Year’s Story.

There is in all writing and reading something of one or another’s real life.

Wonder, read and find out yourself for this next New Year’s day.

2015 approaches – prepare for the festivities.

You may yet be surprised.

Grandpa Jim

I wait to welcome the New Year.

Into every life, there needs to be some new cheer.

But, who puts it there? Who is responsible for the bubbly effervescence?

Enter the Sudses, Commander Sudsy and his trusty second-in-command, Second.

Bubbling is their game, and New Year’s Eve is the big pop that puts them over the top, replenishes their reserves and makes them fit and ready for another year of fastidious bathing and festive partying.

Only, something happened, sales are down, and the bubbly of the New Year is in jeopardy

What can be done? Will the start of 2014 be flat?

“The New Year’s People” was last New Year’s first story of the year to welcome and introduce 2014. For your reading enjoyment, the Sudses, their plight and the amazing solution will be posted tomorrow about noon. Don’t miss the fun.

For this New Year 2015, a brand new New Year’s story will be posted here early next week. It is the story of a young man who seems to have lost his birthday.

Until then, be content with a good bubble of a story to read.

Tomorrow, Captain Sudsy, sir, tomorrow.

See you then.

Grandpa Jim

There is a misconception going about that Santa Claus is not real.

Since Christmas Eve is fast upon us and may have arrived at your house, it is timely to face the voiced criticisms of Father Christmas in order to dispel the fanciful notion that Kris Kringle is somehow not real.

For answers to the Jack Frost critics, why don’t we turn to the jolly old elf himself?

In 1947 and again in 1994, Santa personally appeared on the silver screen in two versions of the movie, “Miracle on 34^th Street.” His responses in those movies are instructive and illuminating.

Can reindeer fly? Only on Christmas Eve. A quite practical response, don’t you think? So, don’t look out the window for flying reindeer on any other night. Visit those friendly deer at the zoo or park or at work in Lapland. Then, let them fly on the one night they do take to the sky. And, as we know from the poem, “The Night Before Christmas,” there have been recorded sightings.

Where are Santa’s workshops? At the North Pole, of course, where all believe. You can’t see them, because they’re invisible. I thought everyone knew that. As they say, it never hurts to revisit the obvious. Imagine, thinking you could see the buildings from space or crack through the ice in a nuclear submarine and find the elves at work. There is a train, as you know, for special children on that special night. If you’d like a peak, jump on board the movie, “The Polar Express,” and off you go for the adventure of a Christmas Eve.

How does Santa do it all in only one night? Well, if a second were a day, a minute a year, and a night a millennium, then there’d be enough time to visit all the boys and girls in one night and still have time left over for a round of golf with the Easter Bunny. It is helpful to listen to the source himself. Saint Nikolass or Sinter Klaas or Pere Noel or Babouschak has many names and speaks many languages, sign language and Dutch included. You can hear him speak and see him sign in the movies. Or, if you’re very brave, you can creep out late on Christmas Eve, peer around the corner at the twinkling stars on the Christmas tree, spy the presents wrapped and displayed below, and turn your ear to the twinkle of a sleigh bell and a happy “Ho Ho Ho” lifting over your house into the night air.

Oh, it is a wondrous night, and one I always remember, each one.

One last question was not answered in the movies. It was suggested but not asked directly when Susan sighed and commented to Mr. Kringle, “My mother got me all the presents I asked for last year.” The question she was thinking was, “Why do I need Santa Claus? My mother buys my presents, doesn’t she?”

Now, that is a vexing question.

The answer is really quite simple. Yes, your parents and relatives and friends and family members do buy presents. Those are your presents when you fall asleep on Christmas Eve. But, there are many boys and girls around the world who have few or no presents for that special night. Santa Claus knows this. When he slips down the chimney or climbs through the window, he has in his bag the very same presents your others have wrapped and displayed for you. Santa quietly takes those for his sled and places under the tree your gifts from Santa Claus, cleverly designed to look to everyone else exactly like the ones they wrapped or placed. This is a great secret of Christmas. On his sled, with the help of his elves, the time weavers of Christmas, your presents are magically transformed to presents of touch and thought for other boys and girls around the planet. This is a great magic of Christmas. It is a truth known in the hearts of mommies and daddies through all the lands, and it is why I believe in Santa Claus.

So, as you see, Santa is there for us all.

There is no child he forgets.

He remembers each,

And every one.

I Do Believe.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!

Grandpa Jim

Is Christmas down the road and around the back?

Do you have the feeling you’re not really here? It seems you are, but could you be someplace else? You don’t know why, but things just don’t seem to fit together. What is going on? What’s about to happen?

The preparations for Christmas can be tiring and trying. So much to do, and so little time to do it in. The body begins to wear down, the mind starts to fade, and the days run together. What was sensory becomes fleeting. What was fleeting slows to a stop. You wonder if that really is you going from store to store, driving from place to place and smiling from person to person.

Have you lost your mind? Is your heart not in it? Has your soul paused? Is your strength gone? If so, why — to what end and for what purpose?

It may be time for a story to piece it together, to answer what can and needs to be done to help.

The new 2014 Christmas story, “David King,” will be posted on the homepage just after noon tomorrow.

Questions can be healthy, and answers can themselves be actions.

Sometimes, it’s not so much to choose,

As to do.

Grandpa Jim

“I am with you and always will be.”

Christmas Day is just a week or so away. Christmas Eve a day less.

Yesterday it rained. Gobs and gobs of wet stuff from the sky. Chilly, if not wintry, glove-and-cap weather. My granddaughter and I braved the elements to search for last-minute toys for a few children whose names had somehow slipped from the list and a special gift for one child whose birthday arrives soon after Santa’s late-night visits. I can hear your sighs of “What a shame, he never gets any birthday gifts.” There is a true ring to that latent lament. “Here’s your Christmas and birthday gifts combined,” he or she hears, only to find one present where two ought to have been. Now is the time for all good men and women to quit typing and keyboarding and run to the stores for an extra gift for our treasured few whose birthdays lie on the calendar too near the day of annual gift-giving. We salute you, the close-calendared boys and girls, and promise to remember your day, even though it falls so close to the day of great exchange.

To exchange is to give someone a part of yourself.

Today’s opening quote, “I am with you and always will be,” is from a nightly exchange between the Husband and the Wife in the 2013 Christmas story, “The Picture and the Card.”

“You are in my heart and always will be” is the couple’s morning exchange.

Only, as you will see when you read the story, this may not be needed on a certain morrow’s morn.

Keeping with our new tradition of posting the Christmas stories of years past, tomorrow afternoon I’ll post “The Picture and the Card” on the homepage.

Some places are more special than others. Perhaps there is a place and a time when everyday is Christmas Day, where the exchange of ourselves is once, always and forever, and no birthday can ever again be missed.

Grandpa Jim

Where I sit, it’s eight days until Christmas, seven to Christmas Eve. The time is now not so long.

Last night, we shopped the mall late. The merchants were closing their doors. And still they came. We came. To push and purchase, grab with glee, hurry home, and wrap and wait for the day and its eve. There is a bustle and scurry to the season. It is, I think, quite normal, and not a bad thing. But it can be distracting. There seems little time to sit quietly in a comfortable chair and watch and listen to the sights and sounds around us.

The old farmer, Frankie, did just that. In “The Christmas Song,” the Christmas story from two years ago, Frankie saw and heard a new Christmas. In the quiet, he founds doors opening, pens falling and songs playing, happenings that shouldn’t have and hadn’t for some time — if ever. The strange occurrences of Frankie’s story are imbedded in the memory of the old farmer and in the tale. They linger in the falling snow and sparkling lights of a country Christmas.

Next Monday, the 22^nd, three days before Christmas, a new Christmas story will be posted on the homepage. Until that time, let’s revisit the last two Christmases for the web site — this is the third Uncle Joe Christmas. And let’s start with Frankie’s story from Christmas 2012. You can always find Frankie under Other Stories, but tomorrow morning I’ll post “The Christmas Song” on the homepage. In a day or two, I’ll follow with the Christmas story from 2013. Of course, next Monday you’ll get the newest of the three, the 2014 Christmas story.

It is a special season: Time to enjoy the waning of this year, to look forward to the newly numbered approaching months, and to remember the times passed from our midst. Old friends and dear family live in our memories and in our hearts. In their ways, as Frankie learned, they wish us well now and through our future days.

Good reading, and keep a watch for more.

Grandpa Jim

I sit in the cool as the winter cold seeps through the glass of the front windows. The blinds are raised to allow those passing by to glimpse the tree, the old nativity and penguin village.

For the season, the tree is simply decorated with a few of the myriad accumulated trinkets. The remainder rest at peace in the attic above the garage.

My new favorite ornament is a Waterford amethyst ball discovered in a glassed cabinet in the back room of a secondhand store and purchased for a song (a bargain).

Around the corner, tucked in a quiet alcove, shepherds, angels, two cows, a donkey and five sheep gaze at a newborn babe in a manger, the doting parents bent in wonder.

Off in the distance, across the side-board top, at least 24 inches away, stand three wise men or magi or kings of the east, cradling gifts beneath the child’s star and before their tethered camels.

This nativity is old. One of the camels is a replacement spied on the basement shelf of a used bookstore years ago and recognized as a contemporary dromedary. I paid the exorbitant price of $1.50 for the new member of the family. An older kin has the original price of 15 cents marked in pencil beneath its base. Those were the days when common cents was worth something. Who knows what the next camel will bring?

No Christmas is complete without a penguin or two or three.

My first granddaughter began building Holiday houses some five years past. They were lonely, and I had a small penguin collection, so it seemed a natural fit. Things haven’t been the same since. This year that same granddaughter insisted on an elf, which you may spy interloping up there, on the shelf. She also liberated my refrigerator monkey with its held heart. If you look closely, you’ll find him. It seems the small simian favors the company of elves and holiday-hatted penguins.

When I wander the winter wonderlands, both inside here and out there on the street, peeking through the windows and admiring the decorated lawns, I feel a curious sense of timelessness.

Yes, this is our house, and those are our neighbors’ homes. With the decorations, though — I don’t know.

In the crispness of the evening and the twinkling of the lights, there linger a haunting smile and distant laugh that drift through the night with an air of far-away lands and ancient remembered peoples.

In its earthly cage, my mind lifts and relaxes.

A faint ringing of bells tolls the approach and presence of Christmas.

I see the peak-capped time weavers at work before their crowded and brightly colored benches, humming a happy tune of a night’s sleigh ride, dashing reindeer, a jolly old elf, a plate of cookies and gifts carefully placed under the tree.

With them, we wait, watch and hope.

There is magic everywhere.

And with you each,

Peace.

Grandpa Jim

Who put the “Merry” back in “Christmas?”

The red-cheeked nephew burst from the bright snowy cold into the dreary, drab, dusty office.

“A Merry Christmas, uncle!” he shouted with glee.

“Bah!” the squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, hard, secret, solitary, cold, shriveled, stiff, frosty old Scrooge said, and added, “Humbug!”

“Christmas a humbug, uncle. Surely, you don’t mean that?”

“I do mean that, nephew. You keep Christmas in your way, and let me keep it in mine.”

“But, uncle, you don’t keep it.”

And, he did not. Scrooge had not kept merry or Christmas for many a year, not since he was a young man filled with fresh joys and basking in the smile of a young lady’s love. He’d left that sweet girl for the empty success of the pursuit of money, and he had not been merry since.

Thus opens “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. First published in 1843, the short novel, or novella, is probably the best known and most read Christmas story since the first in Bethlehem years before. Dickens, himself, lived and wrote in London, England, in the times of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Victorian age, as it was called, was a time of unprecedented growth and wealth. Sadly, it was not so for all. There was much poverty and much reason for many not to be joyous in the long dark at the approach of the winter solstice and the turn of the season.

Charles Dickens had known poverty in his youth, and his eyes had seen the want and need of the common people in the streets and along the byways. For them, Christmas had lost much of its luster. Like Scrooge, the tired workers, the searching fathers and pleading mothers, the thin ragged children had become, much against their own wishes, cramped and small and bereft of joy.

The writer saw this, and he wished Christmas well and renewed.

Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in its small way, in a worn section of the old town, in the tiny house of Bob Cratchit, with the smiling and crippled Tiny Tim, accompanied by the wails, frowns, laughs and silence of four quaint and varied apparitions, to do just that, to help make Christmas merry again.

To return to the story, the miserly Scrooge turns to his nephew and throws at him this challenge: “What good has Christmas ever done you?”

To which, the nephew responds with these, some of my favorite words of the short story and the Christmas season:

“’There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew; ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmastime, when it has come around – apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be kept apart from that – as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pockets, I believe it has done me good and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! . . . So A Merry Christmas, uncle! . . . And A Happy New Year!’”

To which, Scrooge, who has yet to encounter his ghosts, responds dismissively, “Good afternoon,” and mutters under his breath, “Bah. Humbug.” There is, of Christmas, much for Uncle Scrooge to learn, and he will before the night is over and a new day dawns for him in the old town.

Perhaps there is something to be had for each of us to read, or re-read, that spooky tale of Christmas specters and late-night visitors.

I like the idea, and I started my re-read these two nights past.

There are still many evenings until the eve night.

May it find us wiser and wishing all:

“A Merry Christmas! And A Happy New Year!”

“And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”

Grandpa Jim