This year’s winner of the Butler Eagle Bowl at the Butler Farm Show offers a lesson that can help more people feel closer to farming.

Most people would assume farmers work on large tracts of land, But this year’s winners, Paul and Maria Worst and their family live in Connoquenessing Township, on just six acres. Yet despite what sounds more like a suburban homestead than a farm, the Worst family had 107 entries at the farm show. The Worsts raise 23 chickens and an extensive vegetable garden.

About three quarters of the ir entries placed in judging.

The Worsts demonstrate that being involved in farming does not require hundreds of acres.

Changes in farming seen all across the country have found more small, often specialized, farms developing around large cities to serve restaurants with fresh foods. It’s part of the “farm to table” movement.

Smaller farm operations are more likely to grow organic vegetables and produce livestock without the growth hormones or heavy antibiotic use found in large, industrial-scale farms.

The Butler Farm Show Awards Committee noted the Worst family “demonstrates the changing landscape of the traditional family farm,” particularly in working smaller plots of land very efficiently.

Realizing that a family living on six acres can win the Eagle Bowl should encourage others to start or expand their backyard gardens, venture into specialty herbs or learn more about raising livestock.

It is duly noted that Frank Brogan will take a $30,000 pay cut to become the new chancellor of Pennylvania’s State System of Higher Education. but even with a pay cut, his $327,500 annual salary will still make Brogan the highest-paid state employee. Neither should it be a slam against Brogan that he’ll receive more than $192,000 a year in pension benefits from Florida, where he’s the current chancellor of state universities and former liutenant governor under Gov. Jeb Bush. Brogan’s anticipated regular pension payments, more than $16,000 a month, will be in addition to a lump-sum payout of $622,000 he’ll get when he leaves his Florida post. At age 59, he can expect to collect those regular benefits for many years, even decades to come. The compensation seems excessive, particularly at a time when Slippery Rock University and 13 sister universities in the State System are struggling to control rising costs and pressure to increase tuition. It’s ironic that in September 2012 the State System identified the continuing growth in health care and retirement costs as its greatest challenge to long-term viability — and the man coming in to address the problem is receiving a hefty pension on top of an equally hefty paycheck. It just seems odd that a public employee who spent a career accruing entitlement to a massive pension now has a mission that might include justifying why others shouldn’t qualify for as much compensation as he’s getting now. Kampai “Ba’sal’a’ma’ti” is how you say it in Farsi, the Persian native tongue. It’s “salud” in Spanish, “prost” in German, “kampai” in Japanese.All are different languages for the same word, “cheers,” which we extend today to Butler Area Public Library for introducing this past week a new language learning resource called Mango Languages.The Mango tutorial program offers beginner and intermediate lessons in more than 30 languages including French, Arabic, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew. The multimedia program uses images, voice prompts and other tools to grow a vocabulary and knowledge of a foreign country’s language and culture.Mango Languages can be accessed from the library or from a home computer. You can find a link to the program at the library’s homepage: http://www.butlerlibrary.info.The Mango lessons are free, but you’ll need a library card number to gain access — which means you’ll need a library card if you don’t already have one. And as always, a Butler County Federated Library System card is free to county residents.Free language lessons: Na zdrowie to that!