Russian Chat Rooms

News Nearby: Eye Kandy Boutique Brings Fashion Finds to Harmony.

When Kandy Barkley was scoping out the Center of Harmony as a potential location for her clothing boutique, it wasn’t just the space that caught her eye—it was the refrigerator.
“When I came in here, I fell in love with it,” she said.
To be fair, this isn’t just any old refrigerator Barkley is talking about. It’s an antique, floor-to-ceiling decorative cooler that once was used by a butcher in the former Otto & Gert’s building in the heart of historic Harmony.
“It actually functions, too,” Barkley said.
Today, the unique piece occupies a prime space in Barkley’s new clothing boutique, Eye Kandy.
Located inside The Center of Harmony—which also houses several other businesses and an event space—Eye Kandy opened Aug. 1. The boutique features women’s clothing at a variety of price points, handbags, belts and other accessories.
“It’s more one-of-a-kind stuff,” Barkley said of the boutique’s style.
A Seneca Valley alumni who grew up and lives in Harmony, Barkley said she carefully chose each piece in the store to reflect comfort, style and a flattering fit—for all body types.
“The main thing when I look at clothes is how it will look on a women’s body,” she said.
Prior to opening Eye Kandy, Barkley was vice-president of finance at her family’s business, Knichel Logistics in Gibsonia. After taking a break from the business to deal with a health issue, Barkley said she found herself wanting to do something different.
Enter Angela Dawson.
The owner of A. Dawson Apparel Group, which specializes in women’s wholesale clothing and accessories, Dawson, of Jackson Township, is a clothing representative for about a dozen brands.
Barkley, who is friends with Dawson, said she began selling Dawson’s sample items from her own home in trunk shows. It wasn’t long before she decided to open her own boutique.
“I thought wow, this is great,” Barkley said of being inspired to open her own shop. “Everyone loved everything so much.”

Good Dirt Gone Dry Wilting Corn Crop as Food Costs Rally.
Tom Flora walked into one of his corn fields in Delphi, Indiana, last week to survey land that until last month he expected would yield a bigger-than-average harvest. Eight rows in, he declared the crop a total loss.

“I’ve never seen this,” 63-year-old Flora said as he fingered the wilted brown leaves on a four-foot corn stalk that was half the normal height for this time of year and had cobs almost devoid of kernels. “This is good dirt here, but not this year. It’s too dry. I doubt this will produce anything.” The worst Midwest drought since 1988 is baking farms from Arkansas to Ohio and threatening corn output that the U.S. said last week will be the second-largest ever. The price of the grain used in food for people and livestock is surging at a time when retail-meat costs already are near record highs. Global food prices are poised to rebound from a 21-month low in June because of weaker-than-expected supply in the U.S., the world’s largest corn exporter, the United Nations said July 5.

With forecasters including AccuWeather Inc. predicting worsening conditions in the next month, corn traded in Chicago surged by $2.665 a bushel since mid-June, or 53 percent. The rally is adding to pressure on the livestock industry because cattle feedlots are already losing as much as $200 an animal. Sanderson Farms Inc. (SAFM), the third-largest U.S. poultry producer, said every 10-cent corn increase boosts costs by $2.21 million.

Corn advanced 22 percent this month to $7.7225 on the Chicago Board of Trade, the most among 24 commodities in the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index, which rose 5.2 percent. The MSCI All-Country World Index of equities fell 0.9 percent and the U.S. Dollar Index gained 1.8 percent. Treasuries returned 0.9 percent, a Bank of America Corp. index shows.

‘Irreversible Damage’

Drought conditions in the southwestern half of the Corn Belt, which runs through the Midwest and stretches from the eastern Dakotas through Ohio and Michigan, are going to get worse, after causing “irreversible damage” to some crops, according to AccuWeather. At least 50 percent of the region will have below-normal rainfall and above normal temperatures in the next 30 days, said Dale Mohler, an AccuWeather meteorologist.
“You need an inch of rain a week to get a good crop, and you’re going to be getting half an inch or less most weeks through mid-August” in the southwestern part of the Corn Belt, Mohler said by telephone from State College, Pennsylvania.
On the 2,900 acres he farms in Indiana, Flora said he will probably make claims on his crop insurance that will pay about 85 percent of a historical yield on the land.
Before the drought, Flora bought a 560-horsepower Deere & Co. (DE) 9630 tractor that cost him $360,000. “I would cancel out, but they have my old tractor resold in Illinois,” he said. “If not for that, I would think about backing out because cash flow is going to be hurting pretty bad this year.”

Tractor Sales
Randy Allen, the store manager at the Wright Implement, a distributor of Deere farm equipment in Crawfordsville, Indiana, said he’s already seeing a decrease in sales. A new planter can cost $300,000, while a combine fetches as much as $500,000 and a tractor is priced at about $200,000, Allen said.
Less than 5 percent of normal rains fell in the past month on ground farmed by 60-year-old David Adcock near Atwood, Illinois. The lack of moisture probably will cut the farm’s yields in half to about 100 bushels an acre, said his son John.
“There was a point in time we had a potential for a world record corn crop if we had the rains,” David Adcock said in an interview at his farm. “We’re scraping on the bottom of the bin already. It’s going to be a big, big deal.”