It’s a good kind of problem for farmers to have: After an unexpectedly seasonable winter and growing season, the Champaign Berry Farm in Urbana produced an unexpected bumper crop of one of its mainstays this year.
“We saved a certain section of the orchard for the gleaners,” she says. “I told the [professional] pickers not to pick those peaches. We like to give back to the community and to those in need. That’s one of our purposes in life.”
With her quick smile and no-nonsense air, Brandi Anderson is warm and approachable, with two friendly St. Bernard dogs wagging their tails by her side.
Her world includes her husband, Nick, three little girls (ages 6, 7, and 9), and, at any one time, more than 100 head of black Angus cattle, 48 turkeys, and 350 chickens, all on their 13-acre farm near Mechanicsburg. Hogs are kept at her sister-in-law’s farm down the road. They also have two bulls (with rings in their noses), three dogs, a horse, and a cute little pony just for fun.
Emily Bania has been a member of an electric cooperative for as long as she can remember. Growing up around Belle Valley, she and her family were members of Marietta-based Washington Electric Cooperative.
Emily’s story is typical for co-op members. They get their electricity from, and pay their bills to, one of Ohio’s 25 electric distribution cooperatives; usually vote in the election for the co-op’s board of directors; and maybe attend the annual meeting of members. They might even get capital credits in the form of a check or a bill credit at the end of the year when the not-for-profit co-op’s revenues outpace its expenses.
One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime.
Pink Ribbon Girls serves five regions: Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus in Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; and the Bay Area in California. The organization’s sights are set on expanding their reach to other regions throughout the country, to ensure that no one has to battle breast or gynecological cancers alone.
As Hohenstein can attest, breast cancer affects more than the individual — it affects the entire family.
As the Farm Science Review celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, the state’s premier agricultural education and industry event will both highlight its own history and keep its focus on educating for the future.
Eventually, the electric cooperative tent got so popular that the co-ops decided to pool their money and erect a permanent structure on the grounds in 2008.
It was a sunny, clear-blue-sky day on June 16, 2018. It also was a day that would forever change the lives of Leah Fullenkamp and her family.
While he was driving his tractor on the roadway, a distracted driver — shopping on her phone and, based on crash reconstruction analysis, distracted for a full 16 seconds — plowed into the tractor and took John’s life.
From that moment, everything changed. John’s death left Leah to raise their children, ranging in age from 8 months old to 9 years, by herself. “I lost my husband, my partner, and the father of my children,” Leah says. “Life got hard — really hard — and it happened instantly.”
More and more people get behind the wheels of cars these days with a phone or a sandwich in hand — or in any number of other attention-hogging situations — and give less and less of their concentration to driving safely.
From mere property damage to ruining — or ending — lives, some of those costs are easier to figure out than others. According to a survey of electric cooperatives in Ohio, for example, it costs $2,576, on average, to replace a pole that has been damaged in a car crash. Generally, that’s paid by the driver’s insurance, but not always. There are other costs, too.
For customers of an investor-owned utility like AEP or Dayton Power and Light, communication with their electric company probably extends no further than paying their bill or finding out how long an outage might last.
“Members who are engaged are the ones who will attend the annual meeting — for more than just the chance of getting a bill credit,” says Michael Wilson, director of communications at Logan County Electric Cooperative, based in Bellefontaine. “Without engaged and educated members, the cooperative business model could not exist.”
After a long, demanding day at work as part of a line crew, some of our electric co-op team members tackle a different sort of assignment. Swapping their hard hat for a coach’s cap, they’re in for a whole new ballgame.
Andrew Ruffing, apprentice lineman at North Central Electric Cooperative based in Attica, sees many similarities between his day job and coaching football. “You’re part of something bigger than yourself. That resonates in both sports and linework,” he says. “You learn to work as a team, to work toward a common goal.”
On any given day, 360,000 chicks roam the high-tech henhouse at Meiring Poultry Farm in Fort Recovery.
The four-story henhouse uses an elaborate lighting system that Knapke can control from his smartphone to simulate dawn and dusk. The system controls individual lights within the building, creating total blackness to bright-as-daylight and back again so the chicks become adjusted to the “natural” dawn and rising of the sun to a sunset that draws them into the roosting module where they nest for the night.
