Editorial / Opinions

It’s been a pretty good summer, all things considered. I know some of you are wishing you would have got the rainstorms others of us have, and I hope it rains on all of us again, soon.

In  the summer of 1960, I was fresh out of Arizona State University and had my military requirement completed after doing a hitch at basic with the Arizona Air National Guard in San Antonio.  My partners Monty, Sumner Smith and I laid plans for Monty and I to come back to see about getting settled in Northwest Arkansas. We would need jobs to support this invasion, so with Sumner still to finish college and his military obligation, the two of us set out for the hills.

It’s been a pretty good summer, all things considered. I know some of you are wishing you would have had the rainstorms others of us have, though. I hope it rains on all of us again, soon. For the most part, though, I’m still seeing pastures that look pretty good, and I’ve passed some soybeans and corn that look great.

Horses, horses everywhere.

Hordes of people are still moving to the countryside in search of a better way of life. They love the seclusion and privacy that rural living provides most people. They cherish the quietness that exists on most days.  They appreciate the darkness of the nighttime, with a view of the starry skies unobstructed by the lights of the city. They love everything about that first year in the farmscape, until… tick season arrives.

I got asked to volunteer for quite possibly the best volunteer position there ever could be a few weeks back. I was asked to judge a county fair pie contest. Everyone who knows me knows I love sweets. Pies, cakes and candy, I've never met a dessert I didn't like.

The first time I heard about trout fishing in Arkansas was 1960. I was in basic training for the U.S. Air  Force in San Antonio, Texas, Lackland Air Force base. It was a special feature story in a Sunday edition paper about flying into a resort in Arkansas (no doubt Gaston’s Resort) and catching huge rainbow trout with trout guides in jon boats. The section really cued my interest, I’d done lots of trout fishing in Arizona growing up. But five to seven pound rainbow trout sounded unbelievable. Part two, I was moving to northwest Arkansas as soon as my basic training was over.

After my last back surgery a few years ago, I questioned my wife as to why the nurses were constantly asking me my name, where I was, and what day it was, for the first few hours after I awoke from the operation. Being a nurse herself, she informed me that those questions were just simple, basic ways in which healthcare professionals can assess the general mental status of a patient; not knowing the answer to one or more of the questions would raise a red flag alerting the nurse to investigate further.

Decoration Day” must be exclusively an old-time southern tradition. Many of my friends here in Missouri didn’t really know what it meant when I said I was heading down to Arkansas a few weekends ago for “Decoration.”

Once I told Judd McKnight, the great sheep rancher  of Roswell, N.M., my plans to complete grassland research on my own farm, in search for a Western grass that could adapt itself to Ozarks conditions. My interest in this venture whetted, I began watching closely other, similar developments. It was the first year of the old Soil Banks, and I saw a man take the worst rundown field in Greene County, plow it up, lime it and bring up the fertility count, and plant fescue. Despite the progress of my Western grasses, they were mere shadows of the neighbor’s fescue, so, while I didn’t intend to plow up my experimental plot, I determined to put my entire farm in fescue, never again to grow a row crop and not even to put up hay. I reasoned that I could devote what would have been hayland to cows, and use the profit from the cows to buy hay for the entire herd. My machinery would consist of one tractor, one mower, one wagon and a pull-type combine to get the seed off my fescue.