News and updates about Texas A&M AgriLife LEVELLAND – The Texas AgriLife Extension Service office in Hockley County will conduct two pesticide applicator-related trainings beginning in February. One training will be their annual “Last Minute CEUs” training, set from 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. Feb. 25 in the South Plains College Founders Room in the student center located on CM Sanders Drive, Read More... More Info...  

AMARILLO – A “Calving and Proper Drug Use” clinic will be conducted by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Potter County Feb. 13 at the AgriLife Extension office, 3301 E. 10th Ave. in Amarillo. The clinic will begin at 9 a.m. and conclude around 3 p.m. A $20 registration fee includes lunch and will be Read More... More Info...  

AMARILLO – Renda Nelson has been hired as the Better Living for Texans regional program manager for the north region of Texas AgriLife Extension Service, according to the program’s state coordinator. Nelson started Feb. 1. She will serve all counties with Better Living for Texans programs in the Amarillo, Lubbock and Vernon districts. Her office Read More... More Info...  

Articles in and around South Texas including San Antonio real estate trends. Focus on San Antonio and South Texas area events, festivals, places, food, cooking, happenings, even some Texas history and folklore. Collaborative thoughts and observation Cold-Weather Supper – Chili and Cornbread San Antonio online Home Search by Celia Hayes On those few days in South Texas when the weather is cold, dank and rainy, our thoughts for what to have for supper turn to something solid and warming: chili, which goes with cornbread like chocolate and peanut butter, like popcorn with the movies, and like salsa and corn chips. Over the years, we've experimented with various chili recipes – there was one from the Sunset Favorite Recipe books which called for angostura bitters and beer, another rather good but strictly vegetarian one which featured kidney beans, fresh corn and zucchini squash – but the absolute best chili recipe we have discovered was taken from Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman, which was showcased on the Food Network a few weeks ago, and which we experimented with by adding some of the alternate ingredients. It makes a good, meaty and flavorful chili, without much fuss. Basic Winter Evening Chili Brown in a large skillet or Dutch oven: 1-2 lbs ground lean beef and 2 cloves chopped garlic. When the meat is done, drain off any excess fat, and add: 1 tsp dried or ground oregano, 1 Tbsp ground cumin, ¼ tsp cayenne pepper, and 1-2 Tbsp chili powder, and an 8 or 14 oz can tomato sauce. Stir together, cover the pot and simmer for an hour or so. If the mixture gets too dry, add ½ cup water – but we used beer instead. While the meat mixture summers, mix in a separate bowl ¼ cup masa (corn flour) with ½ cup water. At the end of the hour, add the masa/water mixture to the chili, along with two cans drained red kidney beans, and a medium-sized can of Rotel diced tomatoes and chilies. Simmer together for ten or fifteen minutes, and serve with grated cheddar cheese and chopped green onions and cornmeal muffins on the side. Cornmeal Muffins This recipe comes from my ever-faithful Joy of Cooking 1975 edition, and we used real butter and Lamb's Stone Ground Yellow Cornmeal, (which is manufactured locally, just up the road in Converse) and baked it in a cast-iron muffin pan. Pre-heat oven to 425, and lightly brush muffin pan surfaces with oil or melted butter. Put pan into the oven to heat also. Combine together: 1 cup all-purpose flour, ½ tsp baking soda, 1 ½ baking powder, 1 tsp salt, and 1 Tbsp sugar. Yes, I know that hard-core Southerners consider sugar in cornbread to be an apostasy In another small bowl or glass measuring cup: 1 ½ cups buttermilk or ¾ each cup water and yoghurt, 1 egg, and 3-4 Tbsp melted butter. Combine, and pour into pre-heated, sizzling-hot pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Made with Lamb's Cornmeal, the muffins came out with a crispy crust and a very tender center, and hardly needed anything else spread on them. The only cornmeal that made better was some stuff that I bought at Wimberley Market Days from a vendor who had a little portable grist-mill and ground corn and wheat flour on the spot – but hasn't been seen there for a year or so. HEB stores have Lamb's Corn Meal now; it costs a bit more than the usual, but it's worth it. Bon Appetite! More Info...  

We will be selling this 196.5 acres of good high quality productive tillable Iowa farmland at auction on March 3rd at Knoxville Iowa.  A great farm with some good outbuildings and lots of good productive dirt.  A great first farm with lots of possibilities or additional acreage for your operation.  The farm is available to the [...] More Info...  

TEXAS' EXISTING HOME SALES UP 4 PERCENT  COLLEGE STATION (Real Estate Center) – Sales of existing single-family Texas homes in December were up 4 percent from a year ago, according to the most recent Multiple Listing Services (MLS) data compiled by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. More than 16,500 homes were sold, data showed. The median home price was $150,700, about the same as a year ago, and the state's overall inventory was at six months. December 2011 MLS data for many Texas cities are available on the Center's website. Here is a sampling (data current as of Jan. 30, 2012):   Sales Change from Last Year Median Price Change from Last Year Months' Inventory Austin  1,738 up 11% $188,200  down 2% 4.2 Beaumont 151 up 2% $114,000 down 14% 11.1 Brownsville 39 down 33% $86,800 down 22% 12.4 Dallas 3,315 up 3% $162,800 up 1% 4.7 El Paso 420 down 9% $97,900 down 27% 7 Fort Worth 645 up 5% $112,500 down 6% 5.2 Houston 5,048 up 7% $160,400 up 2% 5.9 Midland 134 up 17% $184,000 down 1% 3.3 San Antonio 1,393 up 3% $148,400 down 6% 6.6 Sherman- Denison 84 up 22% $96,700 up 3% 8.8 Temple- Belton 115 up 4% $120,700 down 13% 7.9 Tyler 198 down 5% $130,800 up 1% 11.4 Victoria 74 up 37% $131,100 down 2% 3.8 Waco 153 up 2% $116,200 down 1% 9 Wichita Falls 81 down 31% $102,300 down 9% 7.6 Texas 16,505 up 4% $150,700 no change 6 More Info...  

SATXBlog Crossword Puzzle #1  Crossword Puzzle #1 by Myles Mellor Print and Solve the Crossword Puzzle. We also have a daily interactive crosswords puzzle, too! Across 1. 60s rock group, with Corner5. Slight9. Partition14. Lion's beard?15. Type of insurance for owners16. Pointed arch17. Nose out18. Tapi endings19. Rich tapestry20. Place for pessimists23. Virgo mo.24. Cries at a circus25. Keen28. Swimmer's gear30. Banned pesticide, for short32. "Star-Spangled Banner" preposition33. Tongue35. Conundrum37. Invest in a risky fashion40. Witch41. Bean42. Greyhound, e.g.43. Magazine revenue source44. Come back again48. Go up and down51. Supporting52. Grassy area53. Investing term that came from poker  57. Salad oil holder59. Old audio system60. Horse course61. Where to get a fast buck?62. Fall locale63. Anatomical network64. Experiments65. Used to be66. Four's inferior   Down 1. Cells in the sea?2. Improvised3. Captivate4. At no point in time, contraction5. Native American people6. Scottish water areas7. Mosque V.I.P.8. City in Arizona9. Drenches10. Wading bird11. Great musicians12. "Desperate Housewives" actress, first name13. Court matter21. A chemical salt22. Deserter26. Romeo or Juliet27. Blunder29. Distinctive flair30. Beach sights31. Angry outburst34. Investor's alternative35. Inquisitive people36. Look at flirtatiously37. Constant38. Flower starts39. Belladonna poison40. ABC's rival43. Amazement45. Plant46. Fertility goddess47. American sharpshooter49. Driving hazard50. Common carriers51. Flute player54. Consider, with on55. Cover up56. Legal wrong57. PC component, for short58. Delicacy   Click for the Answer to Today's Crosswords Puzzle #1. | Press Here to PRINT More Info...  

Checkout the Online Services of the State of Texas Website by Randy Watson I drove by the DPS Licensing office yesterday and there was a line out the door and around the building. Luckily, I didn't have to get my driver's license renewed, but what if I did? Could I renew my license on line? Hopefully, so... I wouldn't want to wait in line at the Driver's License Bureau if I didn't have to. So, I did a quick check online to find out what all can be done.  This is just a sampling of what you can do online at the Official Website of the State of Texas ... but, here is some of the more popular tasks you can do on the Official State of Texas Website. Need to renew your Texas CHL or Concealed Handgun License, renew your Physicians license, renew your RN license, renew your insurance agent license, pay the CHIP enrollment fee, pay your Houston Traffic fines, pay your Mesquite water bill or order a birth certificate. More and more people are finding the State of Texas websites. Check out some of the many things that other Texans are doing at texas.gov.As of Saturday, January 28, 2012, here are some statistics: 4098 Texans renewed a concealed handgun license online last week   186 Texans renewed their physician license online last week   366 Texans renewed their registered nurse license online yesterday 1425 Texans renewed their insurance agent license online last week 2075 Texans paid the CHIP enrollment fee online last week 104 Texans paid their Houston traffic tickets online last week 1867 Texans paid their Mesquite water bill online last week 1920 Texans ordered a driver record online yesterday 445 Texans ordered a birth certificate online yesterday 4102 Texans renewed their driver license online yesterday P.S. I am sure that there are lots of other services that you can use the State of Texas website for as well... such as paying business/sales taxes. Data collected from the Official Website of the State of Texas. More Info...  

We will be offering this highly productive, high CSR 191 acres m/l of Iowa Farmland at public auction on February 25.  The farm will be offered as one tract and is almost all farmland.  The seller will retain the hunting rights for a 20 year period when the rights will rejoin with the property.  Look [...] More Info...  

Never Too Early Garden Start  … in the spring to begin reviving the garden. But if I knew then what I know now about the topsoil in the yard around my San Antonio home, when I first moved in, I would have hired someone to come in with a small bull-dozer and scrape off the top few inches of topsoil. Then I would have had a third of it put back into place, and mixed with another generous third of sand and a final generous third of well-rotted compost. This is what I have finished up with in most of those places where I have plants growing, by the way – doing it at the very start would have saved a lot of time and trouble. The prevailing topsoil around my neighborhood is clay – splendid for making adobe bricks from. It’s dense, heavy and soggy when wet, and as dense as a conblock brick when dried out. With a pick and a shovel you can plant things in it – but getting them to thrive and grow is another thing entirely. In any event, one either has to amend the soil considerably – or just say the heck with it and plant things in pots. Growing things in pots has the advantage of being able to move them around, to arrange for best effect – rather like trying out various bits of furniture inside the house. Anyway, last summer’s project to revive the garden is continuing – it’s not at all too early to begin planting a vegetable garden. We went out to the San Antonio home of Antique Rose Emporium on Evans Road and invested $20 or so in leafy vegetable starts: lettuce and mizuna, red sorrel, bok choy and spinach, and so on. I had excellent results a few years ago, growing salad greens from seed (in pots, of course!). It was really nice to be able to go out with a pair of kitchen scissors and harvest a few leaves of mache or baby romaine for a fresh salad. This is just a start; we have three huge grow-boxes on hand, and will use them for more vegetables, later in the spring. I finally took a close look at them, for the first time that my daughter brought them home. Now we know why they were in the trash – someone had drilled drain holes along the bottom, which I suspect pretty much destroyed their usefulness. Ah well, this is what duct-tape and plastic cement were invented for. So much for using them to for the salad greens; I just hauled out an assortment of good-sized pots from the vast collection, filled with potting soil plus a peppering of fertilizer … and there we are, all lined up along the south-facing wall of our San Antonio home. This is prime gardening territory, as far as my yard goes: it gets sunlight most of the day – when the sun is shining, of course – and is sheltered from winds. So far this year, we haven’t lost anything to cold winter weather. I actually believe that my yard remains about ten degrees warmer than the forecast winter low temperatures. Eventually, this area will be wall to wall vegetables, just as the frame for the topsy-turvys will be. That’s how I’ll be spending the next couple of weekends – what about you?     More Info...  

For those of you that are deer hunters and run trail cameras you know the excitement of a complete surprise.   I don’t know anybody that doesn’t pull trail camera cards and run home with a pocket full of hot cards hoping there is some new surprise on them.  In Iowa I love the late muzzleloader [...] More Info...