Change can be easy, or it can be hard, but all things change.
Without beating around the bush, this is my final edition of Ozarks Farm & Neighbor.
It’s been wonderful, but I’ve decided to retire from the journalism industry after nearly 30 years in front of a computer monitor. I never wanted to win a Pulitzer Prize for my work; I just wanted to tell the stories of the folks I interviewed. I’ve done that countless times, and I now find my own story starting to get a little lost.
Words can not express how much I have enjoyed the almost 10 years I have been with OFN and all the folks I have met along the way. I have been welcomed into homes, fields, pastures and barns across the Ozarks and always made to feel at home. Thanks to OFN, I have made new friends and reacquainted myself with people I hadn’t seen in years.
After decades in the journalism industry, covering almost every other type of news, OFN allowed me to spend my days writing about agriculture. It has been incredible, and there were lots of adventures.
I have gotten lost, so lost that even GPS said it didn’t know where I was going, in three counties (I’m surprised I didn’t get lost more, actually), been warned not to wear any fragrances or hair gel because it could cause the bee hives on the property to swarm (a visitor who used some sort of scented hair gel end up in the hospital with multiple stings to their face and head), met a world champion Guernsey, learned that goats can and will bite to get your attention, gotten the side-eye from several chickens, been offered a live turkey to take home, taken beef orders for a producer when he got a call and didn’t have a pen or paper, learned a song about milking cows from FFA members, spent some time with two jumping mules, and walked about 2 miles out of a densely-wooded, very hilly area in 100-degree heat after a side-by-side breakdown. All in a day’s work at Ozarks Farm & Neighbor, and part of the fun.
I have tried to be an advocate for agriculture in this space, and having a bully pulpit to express my views and let off a little steam has been great. Some readers will be happy to know that I’m still banned from the social media pages of multiple animal liberation organizations and PETA. I plan on continuing to be a burr under that saddle for many, many years to come, and I will continue to share the story of agriculture in any way I can.
I plan to continue to work at a few livestock shows and will again share hundreds of pictures of kids with their livestock or other fair entries. I think I am part of the scenery at the shows I’m involved with.
I also plan to continue to write but try a different writing style. I have all kinds of ideas floating in my head and have been encouraged to expand my horizons for several years, so I will be exploring those options at some point. Who knows, maybe The Adventures of Nell and Friends will come to fruition.
There will be new adventures ahead, but those I have had at OFN will never be duplicated.
I would also want to take this opportunity to welcome new editor Debbie Elder to OFN. Debbie lives in Southwest Missouri, and is originally from Miami, Okla. She and her husband Mark run a herd of Beefmasters, and Debbie has a very diverse agricultural background. I got to know Debbie through fairs, of course, and I think she will be a great addition to OFN.
Thank you for allowing me to share the stories of folks in the Ozarks; it has truly been one of my greatest pleasures, and I’ll see ya all across the fence.
Julie Turner-Crawford is a native of Dallas County, Mo., where she grew up on her family’s farm. She is a graduate of Missouri State University. To contact Julie, call 1-866-532-1960 or by email at [email protected].
