Not related to football at all

How's that for truth in advertising?

But, yes, with the smackdown in ChiTown coming up Monday night between our beloved Green Bay Packers and Da Bearz -- yours truly will be in attendance, by the way -- I am taking a moment to talk about something else: Farm Aid.

This is the 25th anniversary year for this venerable organization, known to most as that outfit comprised of Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and, lately, Dave Matthews, that puts on a concert every year. But, oh, dear reader, it has done and is doing so much more for the family farmer and for the quality of food we each shove down our pieholes every day.

Next weekend, Saturday, Oct. 2 to be exact, the big concert takes place at Miller Park in Milwaukee, WI. It's the first time the fundraising concert extravaganza has found its way to America's Dairyland. Why it took so long, who knows? But it's arrived...better late than never.

Anyway, I've added a banner link for the Farm Aid website in the righthand column of this blog...which, if you haven't perused things over there lately or at all, I encourage you to do so. Lots of good things there: you can subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog, send the URL to a friend, follow things here on Twitter, go to the PackerFansUnited.com store to find cool stuff for yourself or others, and get info about organizations worthy of your consideration.

But back to Farm Aid. Having grown up on a farm myself, you might well expect that I'd have a fondness for the family farm. And you'd be right. Like many whose career path led them away from the farm, I still am concerned about the sad state of things for the small farmer these days. But what to do? Well, you can find resources on the Farm Aid website for starters. You can look for opportunities to buy locally: your fruits and veggies, as well as meat, poultry, eggs, and so on. Check out the farmers' markets which might pop up once or twice a week in your neighborhood, depending upon the time of year.

In fact, there is a term which is starting to be used for those folks who prefer to eat locally grown/produced food: locavore. Who knew? While this blog is read by folks all across the globe (true!), for those who might be around the small southeastern Wisconsin city of Delavan on Saturday, Oct. 16, you can even attend a LocaFest from 1-3 p.m. where you can taste local wines, cheeses (this is Wisconsin, after all), breads and more, as well as see a movie about the locavore movement. It's all happening at 104 E. Walworth St. in Delavan. If you leave hungry, it's your own fault.

So, in closing, thanks for allowing me to go off-topic a bit. We'll get back to the business of the Pack vs. Da Bearz shortly. For now, please consider supporting Farm Aid and your local farmers any way you can. We need them around.