On my first “official” day as managing editor here at Ozarks Farm & Neighbor, I got a little mud on my boots and a little cow slobber on my hands.
It was good to be back on the farm.
As most of you know by now, I’m the new kid on the block at Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. Being the new “kid” is a little scary, but everyone here has welcomed me. It has been a great transition for me to OFN.
As Lynzee Glass wrote in her farewell column, I might be new at OFN, but I’m no stranger to agriculture.
I grew up in Dallas County, Mo., just outside of Buffalo. Our family operated a commercial cow/calf operation, which my father, Larry Turner, continues today. We also raised hogs for a number of years, and I worked for several years for a Dorset sheep producer.
Some of my favorite memories are going to county fairs with my heifers and market hogs. I continued my love of fairs for many years, working as the Dairy Cattle chairperson for many, many years at the Dallas County Fair, and by working with the Missouri FFA Association while I was in college as a show chairman at the Missouri State Fair for various species. Today, I am more of a spectator at the shows as I watch my nieces and nephew.
I hold a degree in agriculture communications from Missouri State University, and landed my first newspaper job in 1997 in Lexington, Mo., as a general assignment and sports reporter.
After a few years there, I missed the hills of the Ozarks, and my family, and ventured back home to Dallas County. My husband, Bill, and I make our home just about 12 miles from where I grew up.
Since leaving Lexington, I have continued my journalism career with weekly and daily newspapers, but I could never find enough time to write many stories relating to farming and agriculture. Each time I was able to write an ag story, I remembered how much I just wanted to talk to people about farming and what they were doing at their place. Farm-related stories were always so much more fun, and interesting, to me than writing stories about city council debates. I’d much rather spend two hours in a pasture than inside city hall any day.
Coming to Ozarks Farm & Neighbor has given me the opportunity to write stories about agriculture and those involved in the agriculture industry each issue. For me, that’s pretty exciting stuff.
There are more than 500 million family farms in the world and those family-owned operations produce about 56 percent of the world’s agricultural products. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to share with the world just how we do things here in the Ozarks.
I look forward to what is ahead for me here at Ozarks Farm & Neighbor, and am thankful for the opportunity given to me to join the team here.
I would like to encourage readers to contact me if they have any story suggestions, other questions or just to say “Howdy” to the new kid.
Julie
