Hillsboro Old Settler Days Celebration
Due to the big celebration in downtown Hillsboro, our office will be closed from Noon on Wednesday August 18th and closed all day on Thursday August 19th. Our office will reopen at its regular time on Friday August 20th.




----NO AUTO DISCOUNT BENEFIT----
Illinois Farm Bureau DOES NOT have any auto discount at this time with any company. When the auto industry had their problems last year the auto industry did away with any discounts that they had with Illinois Farm Bureau.

If this should change we will place a notice here on our website and a notice in The Journal-News newspaper.

Thanks to everyone that stopped by our tent at the 25th Montgomery County Fair. Over all the weather wasn’t too bad this year. OK, maybe Saturday was a little hot.

We want to thank Sievers Equipment Co., Timmermann Implement Co. and Vandalia Tractor for once again furnishing equipment to display at the fair along our tent. Thank you very much!

Wally DeLong was the winner of our drawing for a Montgomery County Farm Bureau thermometer.

The kids at the fair sure enjoyed spinning the wheel to win a prize along with receiving crayons, coloring book, and balloons. The crayons were made our of soybeans and the coloring books were all about the farm.

The Montgomery County Farm Bureau had their float that looks like an old fashion barn at the fair too.

Thank you for your respond to send letters to help our local locker plant. We have mailed over 4,000 letters from our office in support of Paris Frozen Foods. Hopefully, this will stop a huge expense to the many smaller processing plants. It would be a sit back to the very few lockers left around our state.
Again, thank you for taking the time to sign and mail in the letters.


Next month we will be holding our Defensive Drivers Course. Check the ad for more detais.

I got a very concerned phone call the other from our local locker plant owners. I was wondering if you had heard anything about it yet.



Are You Prepared To Validate Your HACCP Plans?

After 12 years of HACCP, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety Inspection

Service (FSIS) is changing the rules or its interpretation of the rules once again. This entire issue took

AAMP and the regulated meat industry by surprise. FSIS is now asking all federal establishments to

prove that the supporting documentation they have for their Critical Control Points (CCPs) is valid by

conducting validation studies of all CCPs. The Agency is quick to point out that they are not asking

establishments to perform challenge studies, a very costly investment, but rather validation studies.



If the rules are implemented it will add a huge expense to the many smaller processing plants. It would be a sit back to the very few lockers left around our state.



Check out the “American Association of Meat Processors” at their website http://aamp.com/ for more information and sample letters that can be used when writing comments.



Also copies of a letter and addresses to write to can be picked up at our office or “Paris Frozen Foods” in Hillsboro

Last fall’s problematic harvest now has farmers struggling to figure out how to handle their grain removal from on-farm storage bins. In the last two months, there has been a definite rise in the number of falls from grain bins, one entrapment fatality and an ever-present danger of more to come this spring as we empty those bins. In Illinois, 5 people lost their lives in grain storage in 2008 alone, and over the past 22 years, more than 2.5 people have died each year.

Most farmers know that grain bins can be extremely dangerous, but sometimes it’s easy to forget basics of grain bin safety. Also, there is an increased risk if someone who is inexperienced is using them or playing in them, especially children.

People can become caught or trapped in grain in three different ways: the collapse of bridged grain, the collapse of a vertical wall of grain, and entrapment in flowing grain. Moving or flowing grain is involved in all three. People who work with grain – loading it, unloading it, and moving it from bin to bin – need to know about the hazards of flowing grain and how to prevent a grain entrapment situation. Remember, just because it has been done many years the same way, doesn’t mean that this time it will be safe.



This message is brought to you by the Center for Rural Health and Farm Safety at Carle Foundation Hospital. For more information, please call (217) 383-4606, email us at farmsafety@carle.com or visit us on the web at www.carle.org/farmsafety.
For Additional Information check "Latest News" in the right hand column on this page!

Meet: Candidates of the Illinois 49th Senatorial & 98th Representative Districts of Illinois

Hear: Each candidate will have 15 minutes to speak and 2 minutes to summarize after each candidate has spoken. The members of the audience are then welcome to visit with the candidates.

When: January 27, 2010 7:00 P.M.

Where: Knights of Columbus Hall, 11198 Illinois Route 185, Taylor Springs, Illinois

Sponsored by: Montgomery County Farm Bureau

For More Information: Call 217-532-6171

After opening the link to UCR & Dot Number go down in the article and click on the websites to take you to the ICC and USDot sites to download their applications. It saves having to type in the addresses.

Good luck with harvest this fall & have a safe harvest.

Attached is a picture of the Montgomery County Court House with a trolley car out front. I remember my dad talking about taking the trolley when he was a kid. Do you have any interesting stories to tell? We would like to hear them.

Since we’ve been working on our building I’ve heard some interesting stories about it. Did you know that our building was where the fire wagon & horses were kept for Hillsboro? The archway can still be seen in the new brick work that was done on the north side of our building. The “Table of Knowledge” talks about when it was closed down and the horses were taken a couple miles north of town and that when the fire alarm would go off the horses would still go crazy. They were ready to respond to the fire, so the new owners had to move the horses further north so they couldn’t hear the alarm any more.

Do you remember when our building was “Lingle’s Garage”? Or how about when FS had the gas station on the south side of the building with the gas pumps right on the corner?

How about when there was a fire in the building? How did it start? Who occupied that part of the building then?

Several people have told me stories of coming to dances for “Rural Youth” in the back part of our building. That was where they met their husband or wife.

When we were having electrical work done this past week, the panel was marked “Litchfield Electrical”. Do you remember them? Do you know of any other stories about our building? Please come in and tell us. We would like to know about them before they are forgotten forever.

Do you have any pictures of our building way back when? We would sure like to make a copy of them for our records if you do.

J. Robert Lentz, Manager