Ag Day double play for Peters couple

Sunday, March 15, 2015
Saraellen and Harl Peters display their awards as Friend of the Farmer and Hall of Fame Farmer, respectively, following Saturday's 2015 Putnam County Ag Day Breakfast. (Photo by ERIC BERNSEE)

It was all in the family Saturday morning for the major awards at the 2015 Putnam County Ag Day breakfast.

Culminating the Ag Day program at the Community Building on the Putnam County Fairgrounds, the annual Hall of Fame Farmer Award was presented to Greencastle area farmer Harl Peters, while his wife, Saraellen Peters, was honored with the 2015 Friend of the Farmer award.

"This year is a little unique," presenter Darrel Thomas understated before revealing that Harl and Saraellen Peters were taking home top honors. "We have a livestock individual and a grain individual, involved with community events, at the museum and with the Soil and Water Conservation District."

Ag Day keynote speaker Barry Fisher, the state soil health specialist, gets a little help from Elaine Peck as he tells the Ag Day Breakfast audience Saturday how he uses Putnam County soil as part of a demonstration he takes across the state and around the country. (Photo by ERIC BERNSEE)

Harl Peters is considered an innovative local farmer who works 1,400 acres of corn, wheat and hay north of Greencastle while tending to a herd of Angus cattle as well.

His wife, meanwhile, was a longtime member of the Putnam County Soil and Water Conservation District team that included featured Ag Day speaker Barry Fisher, now the state's soil health specialist.

In fact she praised Fisher as one of the reasons she found her former Soil and Water Conservation District position so enjoyable and rewarding.

Harl Peters, meanwhile, recalled how he got his first real taste of farming while staying with his grandparents one summer when he was 10."

His grandfather put him on a three-bottom plow working a 300-acre field with the so-called Tricycle Tractor.

"There was no air, no radio and no cab," Peters said, recalling how he looked back after his initial half-mile pass to think, "I'll never get this done."

That was agriculture in the days before much innovation, cell phones and farm equipment amenities. Farners worked dawn to dusk, using what they had to work the land.

"You just had to do that in those days," Peters reasoned.

"My point is," he added, "things have changed. We've come a long way, baby."

Ag Day emcee Ken Carrington, meanwhile, noted that many things have not changed, including the roster of the pancake makers for the annual ag breakfast.

Reading from a 20-year-old Ag Day program, he noted familiar names like David Bruner, John O'Hair, Rodger Winger and Barry Fisher who are still involved to this day.

"A lot of things have not changed," Carrington said, "but a lot of things have. Although the menu hasn't, we're still serving pancakes and sausage."

Introducing Fisher as the state's "go-to guy" for soil issues, Carrington called him a "pancake maker" as well.

Maintaining good soil health, Fisher told the Ag Day audience, isn't something you can go order on Amazon.com and receive at the front door in three days.

Instead, he assured, it takes a "lot of extra management, homework and innovations to equipment and land."

Disturbing the soil less and tolerating "almost zero erosion on our land" are two core principles of good soil health, Fisher said, suggesting all that amounts to "almost a total change in the mindset of some farmers."

He stressed that you can't sustain agriculture without good soil health.

Fisher, who travels not only Indiana but much of the country dishing up dirt on soil issues, praised Putnam County farmers for working at maintaining good soil habits and challenged them to continue building local ag leadership and keep the agricultural priorities historically in place locally.

"A lot of the innovations we see across the country start right here in Putnam County," he said, "so you should be proud of that."

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    A Respectful tip of the hat to our flatland neighbors that till the soil.

    -- Posted by ridgerunner54 on Mon, Mar 16, 2015, at 7:40 AM
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