Clusters of apples begin to decorate trees in Dennis Thatcher’s orchard throughout each spring and early summer, promising the reward of sweet fruit and jugs of freshly pressed cider in the fall.
Thatcher and his wife, Angela, who reside in rural western Logan County and who are members of Logan County Electric Cooperative, established Thatcher Farm in 1972, when he planted a few apple trees. Today, the farm has more than 420 trees that produce 25 varieties.
Belgians — those big draft horses with gentle dispositions — are beautiful. Just ask brothers George and Ted Barhorst of Fort Loramie. The Barhorst family was honored at the 2017 Ohio State Fair for 75 years of showing Belgian horses. Their grandfather, Bernard Barhorst, started the tradition, which continues today.
“I don’t ever remember a time when we didn’t raise, breed, and show Belgians,” Ted says. “We have 12 of them right now.”
Somewhere among the archives belonging to Pioneer Electric Cooperative in Piqua is buried a postcard from a member notifying the cooperative that the power was out at his home.
“…So, the next time that you are out here, please check it out,” says Nanci McMaken, paraphrasing the document. McMaken, vice president and chief communications officer at Pioneer Electric, has seen lots of changes during her 36 years at the co-op, which serves 16,700 members in Champaign, Shelby, and Miami counties — but methods of communication has been a big one.
Being a lineworker is not a particularly easy job; besides the strenuous nature of the work that both keeps the lights on and restores power when there’s an outage, the folks on the poles need to have a knowledge base that ranges from basic knot-tying to electrical engineering.
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of training that goes into becoming (and remaining) a lineworker. Also not surprisingly, Ohio’s electric cooperatives are leaders in the field of lineworker training.
How’s this for a job description? A bit of Sherlock Holmes, plus number-cruncher, technology wizard, problem-solver, with a cheerful outlook and the ability to work well with others — that’s just a partial list of what it takes to become a co-op energy advisor.
All that expertise is just a phone call or mouse click away to get reliable, trustworthy answers to your energy questions.
