Elaine and I were active in the Nebraska Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society for a number of years. However, we hadn’t attended an Annual Meeting until last week when it was held at Beatrice, NE. Though the meeting began on Thursday afternoon and extended through Saturday morning, we only participated in the Friday events. It was a full day. John Hay-UNL talked about the history, problems and future of Wind Power in Nebraska. Robert “Matt” Joeckel, UNL presented a program on Rare Earth Minerals, the Humboldt Fault and the Mid-Continent Rift. A panel discussed cover crops and the state-of-the-art technique of using a combination of plants including radishes. It’s amazing how much you can learn in four hours. After lunch we toured the Prairieland Dairy in the Firth, NE area. They are producing 12,000 gallons of milk every day from 1,350 cows. It is a very environmentally friendly operation involving 9 families. (We purchased our first bottle of Prairieland milk here in Seward yesterday after seeing how it is produced). Our tour went on to the Adams Ethanol Plant. They process 60,000 bushels of corn per day producing some 3 gallons of ethanol per bushel. It is a very complicated, closely controlled, distilling and production process. The tour went on to the Flat Water Wind Farm but we elected to forego that stop and drive home. It was a full, most interesting day. We were enlightened by what we learned, met some new people and enjoyed visiting with old friends.
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