Co-op People

Folks throughout western Ohio — in and around the area served by Midwest Electric — have become accustomed to seeing the Freedom Train chugging around area fairs and festivals.

With a vintage Coca-Cola bell clanging and small American flags flapping in the summer breeze, the train transports youngsters and adults along midways, across parking areas, and even through livestock barns.

New Knoxville-area resident and longtime co-op member Gary Katterheinrich created the 65-foot train 10 years ago after he retired as manager of Neil Armstrong Airport.

When Scott Hagan remodeled his home, he and his wife, Amanda, picked reclaimed barn wood for the staircase and fireplace mantle. It was an obvious choice, given Hagan’s history.

Dairy farming is not an easy life — the hours are long, milk prices are volatile, and smaller farms are rapidly disappearing as the industry consolidates. Kyle Sharp, the owner of Stoutsville-based Sharp Family Dairy, knows this all too well. His day starts at 4 a.m., and it’s often past 8 at night by the time he’s finished milking his herd of just over 70 cows.

It’s easy to find Joe Bodis’s property in Huron County, a few miles southeast of New London, Ohio. Just look for the house surrounded by “weeds.”

In actuality, those “weeds” are a carefully planned and developed island of wildlife habitat in a sea of corn and soybean fields. “When I first moved in, neighbors used to stop and ask when I was going to mow the weeds,” Bodis says. “Now they ask what things they can do on their property to attract wildlife.”

A retired pharmaceuticals salesman and member of Firelands Electric Cooperative, Bodis moved to his 5 acres in 2002.

Along a narrow road that snakes through the woodsy hills north of Zanesville, Ripple Rock Farms sits on 15 country acres where Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative members Craig and Traci Bell have lived for several years.

Ken Duerksen envisages art amid decay. He rescues cast-off wood pieces from burn piles and salvage yards and transforms them into beautiful objects, including organic sculpture, tableware, furniture, chopsticks, and bento boxes.

Keith Taylor epitomizes a jolly calm when he ushers his guest into the White Pillars Christmas House before hours on an early fall morning. With Christmas still three months away, he and his wife, Yolanda, are preparing for the seasonal rush, confident that what they have to offer not only competes with, but surpasses, what one may obtain in a sterile online transaction.

Graduation Day, as it is for most who walk the stage to receive their diplomas, was a proud one for Matt Sutton last year.

Not only was he receiving his engineering degree from Ohio Northern University, but he also was able to showcase a program that has become part of his legacy at the Ada school.

Rebecca and Ben Wever, members of Marysville-based Union Rural Electric Cooperative (URE), attended their first co-op annual meeting this year, and they say it got them thinking more about the electricity they use.

Rebecca says she and Ben are keenly aware of events and factors that affect their energy bill, so the meeting was of particular interest. “My husband and I may be a little bit unusual there, but we want to protect our piece of paradise,” she says. “We always want to know why we pay what we do.”

Bridgewater Dairy, a family farm in Montpelier, Ohio, has 3,000 dairy cows that produce 30,000 gallons of milk daily. They also produce an estimated 15 million gallons of manure each year.

A decade ago, Chris Weaver, Bridgewater Dairy’s chief operating officer, started turning his farm’s animal waste into something valuable — electricity — by installing an anaerobic digester.

“I wanted to manage the animals’ manure with an eye to helping the environment,” Weaver says. “I also wanted to improve the comfort of my cows. An anaerobic digester lets me do both.”