Is your land a member of your family? Do you commune with it and find comfort in its presence? If someone wanted to buy it, could you sell without remorse? Farmers and ranchers sometimes find these questions hard to answer. For as much as they feel the historical...
As I move through life, my attention falls more on my offspring than on myself. Perhaps that is because their lives are more active and entertaining. It may also be that we want to share their lives as a means to feel passions and emotions that have moderated in our...
I was in my glory as host of AgriTalk, taking calls and harassing a mild-mannered psychologist about his claim that finding happiness is more up to us than the world around us, when a man from Tonkawa, Okla., called in with a poem he?d written and would like to read....
We moved from Kansas City to Des Moines this year and, during packing and unpacking, we found a lot of valuable items that we forgot we possessed. The proper term for these heirlooms, of 32 years of marriage and 56 years of life, is ?junk.? But it's ?our junk? and it...
I was shopping for razor blades recently and found that they are incredibly expensive. I found the best deal was to buy a new razor with two of the new three-blade cartridges. I?ve heard that you can buy the blades cheaper at a big membership/discount store, so Sunday...
I eventually knew that I'd have to come face-to-face with my primordial urges and buy a chain saw. It is in my genetic predisposition that I possess the most feared and respected wood cutting tool in the history of civilization. Finally, last weekend, in a moment of...
As you may know, I've moved to Iowa. Gail, my wife of 32 years, might refer to me as "Circuitous Root," as we started in Oklahoma, then moved to Kansas, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., back to Missouri and now, 11 years later, I'm a reporter at WHO Radio in Des Moines...
The conversion of corn to ethanol is booming. U.S. production plants, located mostly in the Midwest, are approaching 5 billion gallons per year and new facilities are popping up faster than corn stalks. Yet, there is a continued undercurrent that says we are being led...
Should there be a hunting season for mountain lions?Did I get into a time warp and miss something here? I first heard this during a (exciting) resolutions portion of a county Farm Bureau meeting in Iowa, where I thought I?d be the most entertaining part of an evening...
If there is one defining characteristic of American agriculture, it is that the inventors and innovators never rest. The improvement of equipment and production systems has beennon-stop since hand seeding gave way to the planter, binding yielded to the combine and...
