[Marilyn]

Are y'all having to store your own grain this year? The farmers around here couldn't send their grain to the big storage facilities, they are all still full up, so the farmers have bought these huge white insulated bags and are storing the grain in the bags in their fields. They look like hugh white catepillars scattered on the turning rows. The bags cost thousands of dollars, but it's cheaper to store this way than to pay the silos and trucking. I think the farmers are waiting for the demand to increase and the prices to go up. They not only had to pay for the bags, but the equipment to fill them and to empty them. They are reusable. Not all the farmers invested in the handling equipment. The ones who did are selling their services to the ones who did not.

I work with a farmer's wife, and she keeps us up on what is going on and explained what the big white bags were all about. The have to put electric fences around them to help keep varments away. Her husband owns combines and sells his harvesting services as well. He retired from the phone company last year and is doing the farming full time now.