Ohio Cooperative Living

Larry and Gloria Brunk have a pretty good sense of what’s happening at their local electric cooperative. They’ve been members of Midwest Electric, in the northwest part of the state, for more than 45 years and like to keep up with the goings-on at the co-op.

Cooperation among cooperatives is one of the principles upon which our industry is founded. Think of it as teamwork — sounds nice, but it’s more than just a neighborly way to conduct business. We’re more effective when we work together cooperatively to achieve common goals. Ohio Cooperative Living magazine is just one example that shows how team effort really works to hold down costs and improve the quality of our service.

Farm life often is seen by outsiders as slow, easy-paced, even leisurely. Actual farmers, of course, know that’s not the case, as the nearly endless to-do list almost always seems to require 26 hours in a day to complete, even at top speed.

So perhaps folks will be inspired by some of the work going on at Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research — a piece of which will be on display in the Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives Education Center at this year’s Farm Science Review, Sept. 18–20 at the Molly Caren Agricultural Center just outside London, Ohio.

I love this time of year. January, for me, is a time of optimism, when I see all the possibilities ahead of us, which both invite us into the unknown and challenge us to improve.

At the same time, the new year affords us the opportunity to look back at the year that was. Before going into our 2018 priorities, let’s celebrate 2017 — which, looking back, turned out to be a historic year for Ohio electric cooperatives. It was a year in which we:

You probably noticed something different when you pulled this magazine from your mailbox. After months of conversations with our member-owners, cooperative staff, and industry experts, we’ve finished an extensive graphic redesign of your magazine. This, the first issue of Ohio Cooperative Living, is a culmination of those planning efforts.

It’s been several years since we took a hard look at the style and format of the magazine. During our review, nothing was off-limits — right up to and including the name of the publication itself.