SP418-V-Healthy Children: 27-28 Months

No one needs to tell you that the toddler years are busy years. They are busy for your toddler who is into everything, and busy for you, because you have to chase, protect and train her. With all this activity and stress it may be hard to remember that these first three years are probably the most important time in your child’s life. You have the opportunity now to help your child become a responsible, loving, accomplished person. Try to enjoy these busy, important years. Be good to yourselves. Take time out when you can and share child care with others when you need a break. Enjoy your child’s development and celebrate her accomplishments with her. Reward yourselves too for your successes, and don’t be hard on yourselves for mistakes. All parents make them. When these busy toddler years pass, believe it or not, you will probably look back on this special time with pleasure and nostalgia. For now, do all you can to make the most of these important years

W199 Tennessee Master Gardener Volunteer Handbook

The Tennessee Master Gardener Program is a University of Tennessee Extension volunteer program that provides the public with quality home horticulture and gardener-related information through educational programs, examples and demonstrations. Master Gardener volunteers are a diverse group of people with extraordinary talents and abilities which hosts educational and community service projects across the state of Tennessee and the United States. Volunteers are trained with 40 hours of horticultural classes and, in return, volunteers give their community 40 hours of volunteer service through their local UT Extension Office. Master Gardeners are required to maintain a connection to their local UT Extension Office and continue their education annually

PB1754-Agritourism in Focus - A Guide for Tennessee Farmers

This guide has been developed to assist Tennessee farmers and agri-entrepreneurs in evaluating agritourism enterprise opportunities, planning agritourism enterprises, and dealing with issues and obstacles faced by existing agritourism enterprises. It also serves as a resource for professionals working with existing or potential agritourism entrepreneurs. While this guide cannot guarantee success in planning and managing an agritourism enterprise, the concepts it contains are important in enhancing the potential for success. This guide contains 10 chapters and an appendix dealing with topics critical to the success of agritourism operations. It is designed to be interactive, allowing users to work through exercises and relate the material presented to their specific situations. The order in which topics are presented is not intended to imply the relative importance of one topic over another. All of the topics discussed are important, and many topics are interrelated

SP461B Finding Work - Career Change - Build a Future on Your Past

Homemakers, older workers, farmers and selfemployed individuals entering or re-entering the job market today have the opportunity to engage in a productive, rewarding job search. Success in re-entering the job market or changing jobs comes down to two things: (1) developing the right attitudes about your abilities, and (2) organizing an effective job search. The key to success is preparation. Preparation means more than writing down your name, address and education. Preparation means learning to recognize past experiences, talents, skills, abilities and volunteer work that can help “sell” you in today’s labor market. Life experiences will be your most valuable resource to turn into tangible assets. It means translating “life skills,” then becoming a confident, potential employee. Maturity and life experiences are pluses many employers are looking for

SP700-B-Ethanol: A Primer

Ethanol has become a major player in alternative fuels over the last few years. Our nation uses approximately 384 million gallons of gasoline each day. That amounts to more than 140 billion gallons each year. The United States imports approximately 60 percent of the oil it uses. A significant portion of that oil is imported from countries that are not stable and are in volatile parts of the world. Many citizens feel that from a national security standpoint, it is in the nation’s best interests to reduce our reliance on foreign sources of energy, such as oil, and move to renewable, domestically produced fuels. Ethanol is one of these renewable fuels that can be producedwithin our nation’s borders. The feedstocks, conversion and distribution all take place within the country. With recent federal legislation, national goals are to replace 30 percent of our petroleum consumption with biofuels, such as ethanol. Tennessee currently has, installed or under development, about 480 million gallons per year of ethanol production capacity. It is projected that between corn-based ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, Tennessee has the potential to produce at least 1 billion gallons of ethanol each year, replacing 30 percent of its gasoline consumption. Ethanol is an ethyl alcohol that can be used as a liquid fuel. It is made up of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon (CH3CH2OH ). Ethanol is made by fermenting sugars or converted starch into alcohol. The chemical makeup of ethanol is the same, whether it is made from grains or plant materials. It is primarily produced from corn grain, but can also be made from the sugar in cellulosic biomass. Cellulosic biomass is simply plant material from which sugar is extracted. Ethanol can be burned, much like gasoline, to produce energy that powers vehicles and machinery

W175-12 Common Landscape Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

No one today would doubt that we live in the Information Age. It would be nice to say that some credit should be given to people submersing themselves in well-written books and magazines, but let’s face it— we can find pretty much anything we want on the Internet and from watching a huge variety of do-it-yourself cable programming. Yes, there is so much data at our fingertips that it doesn’t take too long before we have the confidence to believe we can do everything ourselves. One of the areas where folks feel most tempted to bypass the advice of professionals is in the creation of gardens and landscape design. It’s very true that gardening is an extremely rewarding endeavor and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with creating a beautiful space is unmatched, but there are still some key guidelines to consider. What follows is my observation of the 12 most common landscape mistakes and some “cut-to-the-chase” advice on how you may avoid them

W150-Using Milk Somatic Cell Count Information

The level of mastitis infection in a dairy herd can have a significant impact on herd profitability. Losses due to mastitis include decreased milk production, increased treatment costs, discarded milk, premature culling, death, decreased genetic potential, decreased reproductive performance, load rejection due to violation of somatic cell counts (SCC) or antibiotic residues and loss of milk quality premiums (3, 9, 12). Most producers easily relate clinical mastitis with these losses. However, subclinical (or hidden) mastitis may actually cause more losses in a herd than clinical mastitis. Since the animal does not exhibit typical symptoms of the disease, the problem is often overlooked. A tool that producers can use to determine if subclinical mastitis is a problem in their herd is SCC. Somatic cells have long been utilized to gauge the infection status of the udder. Understanding their role in mastitis and how to use SCCs to estimate production and profit losses will allow producers to make better management decisions

SP488-A-Enjoying Each Child as an Individual

We expect adults to be individuals, to have likes and dislikes, to be good at some things and not at others. But it often surprises us that children are unique individuals with their own tastes, styles, and abilities. All children have different rates of development and different personalities. Knowing this can help us be patient. We can show our children that we really care about them by accepting each child as an individual. Remember that some children are easy to care for and not very demanding. Others are fussy and difficult to care for. You may have children who are very different from one another even though you’ve tried to treat them the same. One child may cry a lot when he is sleepy or off his schedule. Rather than seeing your child as “bad,” accept the fact that your child’s body requires that he stay on a schedule. Some children are more difficult to care for, and it doesn’t mean that the child is bad or that you are a bad parent