This is Bill Felker with Poor Will's Almanack for the first week of Middle Fall.

Not so long ago, I ran a story contest in my farm almanacs, and I received many unusual anecdotes - a description of poisoned chickens coming back to life, and a wild outhouse saga - among others.

The very last story I received was postmarked in Saskatchewan, and it was called "Perfecting My Porridge." The writer gave no return address, no name other than J.W.

Here's what J.W. said:

"I was hired to keep house for a man on a farm in west central Saskatchewan. He had a few chickens and took the eggs into a large town a few miles to the east.

Energy and transportation experts are heading to Columbus to discuss ways to encourage production of compressed natural gas vehicles and develop low-emission natural gas fuels.

A summit hosted by America's Natural Gas Alliance will be held Tuesday at Ohio State University. It will be patterned after an energy summit convened by Republican Gov. John Kasich last year.

The governor's office and Public Utilities Commission of Ohio are coordinating the event.

Kasich has set a goal of expanding the state's use of natural-gas vehicles that are cleaner and can run at lower cost.

Governors in Oklahoma and Colorado have recently launched an initiative to encourage production of compressed natural gas vehicles for their state fleets.

Poor Will's Almanack for the fourth week of Early Fall

Since I started my record of the weather and natural history, I have my kept notes together for each day of the year -for example, all the October 2nds from 1979 through 2012 in one place. With that organization, I've been able to see how, in spite of the separate character of each 12-month cycle, and the possible changes in the climate, the progress of the seasons remains nearly identical from one year to the next.

That arrangement of observations also makes clear the replicable nature of the days themselves instead of their linear succession away from one another. In my daybook, the notes from one afternoon are often interchangeable with those of another afternoon, the same day 10 or 20 years later.

Advocates for the federal health care law are celebrating the start of the countdown toward October 1 of next year, when 1.5 million uninsured Ohioans can start shopping a health insurance marketplace called an exchange. But there’s still a lot of uncertainty about who will set up and run that exchange.

Advocates for the law say Ohio has a lot of low-income people without internet connections or unlimited cell minutes, and a lot of people who don’t read, speak or understand English well, and many will never have had insurance. Kathy Levine is with Ohio Consumers for Health Coverage.

Poor Will's Almanack for the third week of Early Fall.

A cardinal sang a little after 7:00 this morning, sang off an on for about an hour. Crows came and went. Robins started peeping their migration signals outside in the honeysuckles about 8:00. When I walk the alley after breakfast, I heard starlings whistling and chattering toward downtown. Sitting in greenhouse working in the middle of the morning., I listened to the tapping of a yellow-bellied sapsucker on the siding of the house, an old friend returning from spring on the way back to Tennessee.