Editorial / Opinions

When I grow up, I want to be a weatherman. What else, besides being an economist, can you be wrong more than 50 percent of the time and still keep your good-paying job?

It was one of those evenings when you really want to just sit down in front of the computer or the TV and let the evening slip quickly away. Instead, I let Ryan coax me out of his house to go for a walk. On a place he rents, a wet-weather spring had sprung, and I was a little intrigued to see this phenomenon myself.

The normal thing for me to do on the Sunday morning after the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Conference, held in Oklahoma City, is to fly to Washington D.C. There I join my fellow directors in the nationwide rural electric coops talking to our congressmen and senators about how things are going at home. I know, I know, there’s plenty of sentiment about D.C. in the rank and file folks back in Arkansas and Oklahoma. But here you can’t let party lines or other things derail you. 

I come from a long line of “horse traders.” That’s the term my father always used to describe someone who was very astute at making good deals – and he was among the best I’ve ever seen.  Shrewdly, he could have more fun out of making a good deal on a truck, or tractor, or a bottle calf purchase than normal people could have on an exotic vacation or a day at the ballpark. For so many years, he was afraid he had not passed on that trait to his only son.

It was one of those evenings when you really want to just sit down in front of the computer or the TV and let the evening slip quickly away. Instead, I let Ryan coax me out of his house to go for a walk. On a place he rents a wet-weather spring had sprung, and I was a little intrigued to see this phenomenon myself.

What makes a cowman?

I come from a long line of “horse traders.” That’s the term my father always used to describe someone who was very astute at making good deals – and he was among the best I’ve ever seen. Shrewdly, he could have more fun out of making a good deal on a truck, or tractor, or a bottle calf purchase than normal people could have on an exotic vacation or a day at the ballpark. For so many years, he was afraid he had not passed on that trait to his only son.

I think you know that we here at Ozarks Farm & Neighbor stand with the farmer when it comes to politics and policies that threaten our shared way of life. The Humane Society of the United States has tried to gain a stronghold in Arkansas and Oklahoma through ballot measures in the past. In Missouri the HSUS is starting its first ballot initiative this year. We want to keep you informed and attuned to these important happenings, because as you know, every success the HSUS gets, the greater the threat is to our way of life as livestock producers. Make no mistake; the HSUS is not just about saving puppies and kittens from abuse. They want to end production agriculture as we know it, crippling the American farmer so we can no longer feed our own countrymen and women. We can’t bury our head in the sand. We as producers must continually be willing to fight back.

When my ex-boss at Tyson's, Jerry Delozier's, boys were teenagers, they discovered a skunk with a litter of kits under the slats in their breeder hen house. The slats were in ten foot by two foot sections. These slats were nailed on 2 by 6 runners and lined up the chicken house for the hens to get up on, with a scratch area in the center.

Sam and Jake work on a large cropping operation down in Central Arkansas. Well, I should say… Sam still works there.