For Abbey Garland, the combination of agriculture and electric cooperatives has shaped not just her interests, but also her future.
Abbey has spent much of her life discovering, through an agricultural lens, how leadership and service can work together, and she says the co-op has been instrumental in her personal and educational development.
Jerry Banks has a green thumb — something to which his family could always attest. Now, so can the residents and staff at Woodland Country Manor in Somerville.
Banks and his wife, Kathy, residents of Somerville and members of Oxford-based Butler Rural Electric Cooperative, always had a home garden but expanded their gardening activities when her parents (Homer and Phoebe Polser) moved to the retirement community not far from the “homeplace.”
“They used to tend a 1½- to 2-acre garden,” Banks says. “He was not one to sit around without getting some dirt on his hands, so Kathy and I thought a garden would help with the transition.”
Peggy Kelly first attended the Ohio Renaissance Festival about 15 years ago.
The festival lasts eight to nine weeks, and Kelly, who is a season passholder, says she’ll typically attend six to eight times during that period. She attends often enough that she says her husband knows exactly where she’s headed if she gets up early — and that she’ll be gone for most of the day.
Butler Rural Electric Cooperative member Bill Pyles gave himself a valuable piece of advice after a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: “Never say never.”
“After three days of (watching them make blades), I thought, ‘I bet I can do that,’” says Bill, a self-proclaimed tech geek who works for a company in California.
As it turned out, he was right.
Bill has a wife, Judy (who now refers to herself as a forge widow), four kids, four dogs, and two cats. He’s been a volunteer firefighter for Milford Township for 23 years and is also a part-time beekeeper. He seems to excel at anything he sets his mind to.
After he talked to his wife, he purchased his first small forge for $150. He already had everything else he needed.
Anyone living in a rural area of Ohio knows there’s a problem with internet service.
Lack of high-speed internet access affects students’ ability to learn, individuals’ ability to work, and businesses’ ability to prosper, because every day the world is becoming more digital. Online classes, remote work, and Zoom meetings are becoming more and more the norm, and without broadband, those digital tools are simply unavailable.
There can be no doubt that electric cooperatives will play a part in bridging that digital divide.
When a young woman approached Robbie and Carrie Davis about making the yarn for her wedding shawl, they readily obliged. The bride-to-be wanted the yarn to contain fleece from a specific alpaca, so they created an alpaca-silk blend especially for her.
A cria is a baby alpaca, and the farm’s name was inspired by the couple’s years of alpaca industry experience. They acquired their first alpacas in 2006 and soon began breeding and showing the animals at fairs with help from their son, Jessie, who is now 20 and an aviation technology student at Sinclair Community College. Alpacas don’t shed, so Robbie and Carrie became adept at shearing.
Tucked away in the western part of the state is an idyllic 60-acre farm, complete with chickens, horses, alpacas, and a miniature horse named Jack. The human residents here — like all farmers — tend to a wide variety of daily and seasonal tasks.
ASD is a lifelong condition that affects one in 54 people. Symptoms vary but can include trouble communicating, repeated rocking, and strong reactions to sounds, scents, or tastes. It’s common for an autism diagnosis to include other disorders, such as epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder, ADHD, and bipolar disorder. Depending on the severity of someone’s symptoms, it can be difficult to hold a conversation, maintain a friendship, or keep a job.
The first time you see an osprey dive on a fish is one of those memorable birding moments that last a lifetime. With a wingspan of up to 6 feet, ospreys are not small birds of prey.
As it flies, the osprey will also shake itself, much like a dog, removing water from its feathers. The fish feast is then flown to a large, bulky stick nest and shared with its mate/young, or possibly, the fish is simply taken to a stout tree limb where the osprey alights and enjoys a solo meal of the world’s freshest sushi.
School districts across the country struggled with how to continue their operations through the COVID-19 pandemic. How could they keep kids and teachers safe during in-building instruction?
But the coronavirus did force changes. The district needed to find a way to teach the 230 students who chose online instruction, while keeping those in the buildings safe with increased personal protective gear and gallons upon gallons of sanitizer for hands and high-touch surfaces, as well as other incidentals that came up every day.
“Contrary to what anyone may think, these expenses have not been just a drop in the bucket, and there has not been much help forthcoming from the state or federal government,” Clark says. “All of our COVID-related expenses have really added up.”
While watching RFD-TV one night, Russ Beckner saw a segment that showed a California mom driving a tractor around with her two young kids in the tractor bucket.
When he retired from P&G, that safety mindset carried over as he started helping his son, Jason, on Jason’s farm. People tend to associate farms with peaceful fields, fresh air, and contented cows, but as all farmers know, agriculture can be a dangerous way to make a living — and a farm is a dangerous place to live.
Between eight and 12 people, on average, are killed on farms every year in Ohio. Thousands more sustain injuries. “I became aware of farm injuries locally, statewide, and nationally, and I thought we could make a difference,” Russ says.
