Editorial / Opinions

One of my favorite things about the Ozarks is when one-season ends and another one begins. It doesn’t seem to matter what season is ending and which is beginning, I am anxious every time. I am not one of those people who prefer one season to another. By the time each seasons gets here I am ready for it.

I have some wonderful memories of coon huntin’ when I was a youngster. There was nothing quite like a crisp, cool, late autumn night, joining up with a bunch of the neighbors to follow that melodic cadence of, “the best coon hound in the county.” Of course it made no difference which neighbor I’d joined up with, because we were always following, “the best coon hound in the county.”

Recently, I was reminded about the significance our Founding Fathers played on agriculture. It’s truly inspiring.

By the time you get this issue, Storm Isaac will either have kissed you or went by without a tear. The folks over at Clinton, Ark., must have gotten more rain than the Arkansas/Oklahoma border had as we waited for the big storm. Some friends called to tell me the large Bar Eoff Ranch is green. That’s eight miles west of town. Of course those folks were Tonto and Beverly Shepherd from Winslow, Ark. They wanted me over there on Sunday for the 20-year plaque ceremony that we were set to receive. I’d sent Dan and Peggy Eoff a note that I sure appreciated all they’d done for me, but Pat and I weren’t any younger and we’d skip the Chuckwagon Races this year.

Twice, during the past year, I have wished for a tool that is no longer available to the average consumer. Last winter, when my farm was infiltrated by a pair of obnoxious beavers that had dammed the creek and created flooded fields, and again this summer when a large corner post broke off and the hole needed to be re-dug in drought-hardened soil, I found myself longing for a mere quarter of a stick of dynamite.

Recently, I was reminded about the significance our Founding Fathers played on agriculture. It’s truly inspiring.

My wife often reminds me that I’m not living in the same world of my childhood. In that world, most everyone I knew was either raised on a farm or no farther removed from farming than one generation. In other words, everyone I came into contact with, on a daily basis, knew what farmers did and how they lived.

Summer traditions. For some, summer traditions may be loading up and going to the lake on Memorial Day or family barbecues on the Fourth, but for me, summer just isn’t summer without the Louisburg Picnic.

In 1960, my partner and I came to the Ozarks, in a pickup truck pulling a Uhaul trailer. And through those years I have seen some good years and bad when it comes to farming. In 1963 after taking a turn at teaching, I went to work for Tyson Food as a field man and continued to farm. That fall and the next year were classified as “dry.” Many shallow wells went dry and poultry famers faced some tough times if they owed on a poultry house.

Because I was born in 1952, I have no recollection of the severe drought and scorching temperatures of that year and the two that followed, but I heard my father talk about them until the day he died. Every time we’d experience a sustained dry spell or a few days of unusually high temperatures, dad would always say, “It’s bad, no doubt, but it’s nothing like the summer of 1954.”