Co-op People

All in the family

sbradford — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 20:08:54 +0000

All in the family

January 1, 2025

6S Products in Anna started with five family members, one injection molding press, and a mission to find a niche while building a foundation of trust, dependability, and value.

“We didn’t have a goal of being a large company; we just wanted to be able to personalize and help find solutions for companies when they need it,” says Neil Schroer, who owns the company along with his wife, Genny; two of their daughters, Emily Schroeder and Tracy Platfoot; and son-in-law, Josh Platfoot.

(By the way, entrepreneurial spirit runs through the family: Neil and Genny also have a son, Eric, who manages a local machine shop with his wife, Karen, and another daughter, Jacquelyn, who owns a gluten-free meal prep business.)

The origin of 6S Products, a member of Urbana-based Pioneer Electric Cooperative, goes back a long way. Neil had co-founded and co-owned a different manufacturing company in Lakeview when Emily and Tracy were young, and both worked there as teenagers. When Tracy started dating Josh, he got a job there, too.

When Neil sold his share of that outfit in 1999, the family members went in different directions professionally — ranging from the U.S. Postal Service to real estate and accounting. But they recognized the need for their expertise and the niche market they could provide in plastics manufacturing.

“We stayed out of plastics for a few years and then finally realized there was a role that we could fill,” Neil says. “With our combined experience, we thought we could add value to the industry overall.”

And so they founded 6S Products in 2003 — each bringing different expertise to the business. Josh and Emily, who previously worked as production injection molders, became the company’s plant manager and warehouse manager; Tracy, who had worked in quality control, became the company’s quality manager; Genny handled the accounting and human resources; and Neil focused on building the infrastructure and securing a customer base.

“We sat back and said, ‘OK, we know we can do this, but we have to fill a niche,’” Neil says, “and that was to stay small and agile enough to allow us to change with the industry.”

Primarily a third- and fourth-tier vendor, 6S Products manufactures items such as fasteners, clips, and assemblies that are used throughout the automotive industry in dashboards, doors, motors, and interior areas that, while they may not be seen by the consumer, are a vital part of the finished product.

As with many startup businesses, the early years were not easy.

“We started with one press until we had more sales than that one press could handle,” Tracy says. “We used to have a couch and a TV in the office, and when that press required a constant operator, that couch became a bed. We did whatever it took to keep that first press up and running.”

Today, the company utilizes 15 injection molding presses that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, producing hundreds of different types of products. That translates into millions of parts shipped per month — all weigh-counted and constantly verified, Josh says, to ensure they meet customers’ requirement and standards.

“Twenty years ago, there were people standing in front of a press and making one part at a time,” Neil says. “We believe that adding automation to the newest technology is the key to supplying reliable, quality products and enabling competitive pricing for our customers.” The high-precision presses are the latest available, with innovative, robotic equipment to ensure process control and repeatability.

Still, the company has an average of 15 associates on the payroll (including the five owners) and contracts an additional 15 to 20 sub-assemblers.

“We have a good workforce, and that is really important,” Neil says. “We provide a flexible, family-oriented, clean work environment, and staying small gives us an advantage because we don’t have to layer management and can keep our pricing competitive. Everyone does whatever needs to be done.”

Of course, the all-electric Cincinnati Milacron presses make the electric cooperative an important partner as well.

“I wanted this business to be on co-op lines,” Neil says. “They are great at keeping us informed, and we are pleased with how quickly they respond to get us back up and running if there are outages due to storms or other issues.”

And that small, family-oriented atmosphere means they can get be a little more personally involved with their customers, which Neil says is a benefit for both.

“We recently had a gentleman come into the office who told us, ‘This product is my dream and I want to make it a reality by taking it to market,’” Neil says. “We were able to help him put his ideas on paper and put him in contact with a tooling company to produce his mold. We produced the product for him, and he was able to package and market his dream. It’s a great feeling to be able to be a part of that process.”

Tags

family business

small businesses

Chestnuts everywhere

sbradford — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 16:45:25 +0000

Chestnuts everywhere

December 1, 2024

James Proffitt

Co-op People

Greg Miller’s father, Jay, planted his first bunch of trees on 100 acres in Carroll County back in the middle of the last century.

North America’s once-thriving population of American chestnuts had all but disappeared from the landscape due to a blight at the turn of the 20th century, so he planted blight-resistant Chinese chestnuts.

“He also planted every kind of nut tree that would grow here — and some that wouldn’t,” says Miller, a member of Carroll Electric Cooperative. “He noticed the walnuts and hazels and almonds and everything else weren’t doing so well, but the chestnuts were.” So more land was acquired and in 1972, Jay and Greg planted 500 more Chinese chestnut seedlings, and the Empire Nut Company was born soon thereafter.

At one point, Miller says, a local coal company took note of all those nuts and briefly entered the chestnut game as a side-gig. It soon went bankrupt, however; the folks who bought up the land were looking for deer hunting sites rather than an agricultural specialty crop.

Eventually, though, all those trees began producing high volumes of nuts, and about 20 years ago, Miller began harvesting, processing, and selling the neighbors’ crops — and thus was born the Route 9 Cooperative. Currently, Route 9 processes and ships nuts from more than a half-dozen farms, including one in Kentucky.

Treasure vault

The Chinese trees produce a nut that’s well protected right up until its dangerously sharp, spiked pod opens. Miller says the porcupine-like pods keep animals from eating the nuts too soon, but they also make it difficult to collect the delicious morsels.

“Once they open and the nuts fall out, everything eats them,” Miller says “They’re very high in carbohydrates, have a pretty high sugar content, and are high in oil and protein, so animals love them — and when I say that, I mean everything with four legs eats them, and some with two legs.”

After falling from trees in autumn, they’re collected by hand for processing. They go onto a grading table, where odd nuts are culled (later turned into chestnut flour) and sorted.

Most of Route 9’s crop is destined for the kitchen. Despite the common belief they’re solely a Christmas season snack, they’re a consistent yearlong seller. The vast majority are purchased online and shipped around the country.

“They’re often roasted, but they can be eaten raw, too, and they’re also put in various dishes,” Miller says. “They’re delicious.”

The gathering

Each September, more than 100 residents of the area, mostly Amish, show up to work the peak harvest — which means gathering the nuts by hand or using a rolling metal basket on a pole called a Nut Wizard.

Some customers, however, aren’t interested in ordering online or buying chestnuts that have already been collected. Instead, they prefer to show up in rural Carrollton to get their own. Route 9’s self-service customers travel from Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and beyond to roam the hillside orchards gathering their own fresh-from-the-tree chestnuts.

“They’ll bring their kids out and enjoy just about the best time of year to be outside — late September, early October,” he says. “There’s something I think in humans’ nature: They love to gather things up. And yeah, people do it for fun.”

Huge, 25-pound bags are stored in giant walk-in coolers where they’re periodically hosed down with water while they await shipment. (Miller says they’re comparable to carrots in that you can eat them raw or cooked, and ideally you don’t want to let them dry out.)

Singular focus

In addition to selling chestnuts for snacking and cooking, Route 9 also sells nuts specifically harvested for seed planting, as well as small saplings. Miller also works with other chestnut varieties, including the European and Japanese trees, also grown for food, as well as several varieties planted for wildlife forage or for helping forest an area. That includes creating hybrid trees for specific uses like attracting wildlife.

But while some nut farmers have diversified their crops over the years, he’s found that the hilly, well-drained terrain around him is particularly suited to his specialty. “I just do chestnuts,” Miller says. “It was my father’s hobby. He planted his first trees in 1957 and I’m still doing it today.”

For information or to order, visit www.route9cooperative.com — though this year’s crop of culinary chestnuts is mostly sold out, the co-op is taking orders for fresh-peeled chestnuts, dry-peeled chestnuts, and chestnut flour, as well as seeds and seedlings.

Post Tags

Taking the reins

sbradford — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 19:47:44 +0000

Taking the reins

November 1, 2024

Margie Wuebker

Co-op People

Chelsey Keiser vividly remembers growing up in western Ohio and helping her parents, Darke Rural Electric Cooperative members Mike and Debbie Keiser, raise thoroughbreds at their North Star-area farm.

“My first horse was a pony with a yellowish coat,” she remembers with a chuckle. “I called him ‘Black Beauty.’”

Keiser, now 32, never lost her fascination with horses. A 5-foot, 3-inch bundle of energy, she’s living her dream as a professional jockey, compiling an impressive record that includes more than 400 wins and nearly $10 million in career earnings.

“I’ve loved horses forever,” she says, noting that she learned to ride even before she learned to walk.

As she got a little older, Keiser started helping out by galloping the family’s thoroughbreds as part of their training regimen. “I really enjoyed that aspect of working with horses,” she says. “The hard part was handing the reins off to a jockey at the track.”

She also took up barrel racing — a fast-paced sport pitting horse and rider against the clock on a cloverleaf-shaped course, where the fastest finisher wins.

“I went through high school dreaming of being a jockey,” Keiser says.

After she graduated from Versailles High School, she headed off to the University of Dayton to study nursing — which might not seem at first like a path to the horse-racing profession, but it was strategic. “I had visited nursing homes during high school, and I liked being around older people and loved hearing their stories,” she says. Also, “Most nurses work three 12-hour shifts, and that would give me four days to ride.”

But while her fellow students spent their weekends on campus, she would always go back home to work with the horses. By her sophomore year, she says, she could no longer ignore “the itch.”

After talking at length with her mother, she left school and took a job training horses in Florida. Later assignments took her to Virginia and then Maryland as she pursued the dream that grew stronger with each passing day.

She began her career as an apprentice jockey, or “bug rider,” in March 2013 at Maryland’s Laurel Park racetrack. Her first win came that same month, aboard a 2-year-old colt named Smileforthecamera. In keeping with tradition, her fellow jockeys saluted the milestone by pelting her with water, baby powder, and eggs. She rode the next heat with bits of shell still clinging to her hair.

“Being a female jockey came with challenges back then,” she says. “I had to prove I was as strong as the boys and not get pushed around. I quickly learned to turn off my emotions and accept things I couldn’t change. Now I ride and win just like them.”

She mounted up in almost 600 races that first year, and finished in the money (first, second, or third place) in more than a third of them.

By 2016, she decided she wanted to be closer to family and moved back to Ohio. She currently rides at Thistledown Racino near Cleveland, Hollywood Gaming near Youngstown, and Belterra Park Racino near Cincinnati.

The job is much more than saddling up for races. Keiser is up by 4:30 a.m. almost every morning and arrives at the stable 60 minutes later for what will likely be a 15-hour day.

Taking care of her four horses means time galloping or breezing each of them on the track, four feeding times, and four cooling baths. She hurriedly walks from one pen to another, waving to other stable personnel or talking on the cell phone along the way; there is no time to sit and rest. Often, she’ll log more than 20,000 steps before noon.

“If you don’t take good care of the horses, you won’t get good results on the track,” she says. “Jockey and horse have to work together as a team. You spend hours working toward those couple of minutes that you fly around the track.”

Horse racing, of course, can be a dangerous sport (as attested by the ambulance stationed at every track), and Keiser’s 114-pound frame has sustained numerous injuries in her career — a broken collarbone, a bruised spleen, and a broken sternum among the most serious — but she has no plans to step away.

“I absolutely love riding,” she says. “Winning gives me the highest of highs; losing, the lowest of lows. I would rather have a bad day doing something I love than a good day at something I hate.”

Tags

Darke Rural Electric Cooperative

co-op member

Gathering what's left

sbradford — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 18:29:45 +0000

Gathering what's left

October 1, 2024

Margaret Buranen

Co-op People

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.

“Peaches are very weather-dependent,” says Cathy Pullins, co-owner of the farm and a member of Pioneer Electric Cooperative. “This year we had such a warm winter that the crop was way larger than we had anticipated.”

Obviously, an unexpected bounty is preferred to the alternative, but it still presents some issues to deal with. The farm often donates food to local churches and food banks, but this year’s bumper crop called for something more, and Pullins knew right away what to do with the extra peaches.

“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.”

Gleaning, described in the Bible’s book of Leviticus, is the practice of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested. Sometimes farmers will intentionally leave a portion for gleaners, though sometimes a farmer can’t find enough workers to pick the produce, or a wholesaler orders less produce than the farmer anticipated.

Rather than leave the perfectly good, but unharvested and unsold, produce to spoil or plow it under, the farmer offers it to volunteers who come and pick it and then transport it to a food bank for distribution to hungry clients.

Pullins called Sue Plummer, program coordinator at the Ohio chapter of the Society of St. Andrew in Cincinnati. The interfaith, nonprofit Society of St. Andrew is the largest field-gleaning organization in the country, mobilizing 30,000 to 40,000 volunteers each year to gather unharvested crops. In Ohio, St. Andrew volunteers gleaned more than 60,000 pounds of food from fields and orchards in the first half of 2024 alone. Plummer arranged for some volunteer gleaners to come to the Champaign Berry Farm, pick the peaches, and then transport them to a food bank. They’ve made several return trips throughout the growing season.

“St. Andrew’s is very nice to work with,” Pullins says. “Sue takes care of everything.” When Plummer hears from a farmer that produce will be available for gleaning, she schedules a picking time, then posts that information online for volunteers, who sign up to go to the farm and do the gleaning. Picking shifts last two to three hours.

When Plummer first heard about gleaning, she was running a community garden in Walnut Hills. In 2019, she began working part time for a grant project on gleaning. In 2022 she started working in her current full-time position. Plummer often gets to help with the gleaning. “If I’m needed, I go. I really love it.”

She says that people who volunteer to do gleaning “tend to be individuals, rather than in groups. We get short notice from growers that a crop is ready for picking, maybe only a couple of days. Then it’s a scramble to get people who can show up then.”

Many volunteer gleaners are retired, because they have the most flexible schedules, though plenty of college students come out, mostly in the summer. Older children are welcome if they are supervised by their parents. Fortunately, Plummer has a lot of regular volunteers, but she can always use more, and more farmers donating food, too.

Plummer says the general public would be surprised “at the amount of food we end up getting, at all the beautiful produce we can deliver to hungry people.” In Ohio, most gleaning work begins at the end of June, and then can go
into December for potatoes, root vegetables, and apples.

“The connections I make with farmers, volunteers, people at agencies, that’s the best part of my job,” Plummer says. “Farmers’ work is so hard, to grow what they grow. They don’t like waste. They’re so grateful when they come [to learn about gleaners], because farmers are some of the most generous people I’ve met.”

Tags

farming

vegetables

agriculture

Pioneer Electric Cooperative

Butterfly rescue

sbradford — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 17:08:38 +0000

Butterfly rescue

September 1, 2024

Margie Wuebker

Co-op People

While beautiful orange-and-black monarch butterflies still flutter around area lawns and gardens between May and September each year, their numbers have declined over the years because of some combination of environmental conditions, herbicide and pesticide use, and loss of suitable habitat.

A few electric cooperative members are doing what they can to help the migratory visitors.

“I remember seeing lots of butterflies in my younger days,” says 90-year-old Alvin Brown, a retired dairy farmer who resides near New Bremen. “There aren’t nearly so many nowadays, so we have to do what we can to help.”

Like Brown, Coldwater resident Norma “Skeet” Wolters became interested in helping the monarchs long before the Union for Conservation of Nature declared the species endangered in 2022. Having been involved in the Mercer County 4-H program for more than two decades, she often included butterflies in her nature presentations.

The sight of a monarch butterfly laying her eggs on a milkweed plant sparked a similar interest for St. Marys resident Julie Metz in 2020. She quickly turned to the internet for more information and found a “whole world” of people raising butterflies.

All three conservationists are members of St. Marys-based Midwest Electric.

Brown says monarchs like sweet red clover and milkweed, and when he sees butterflies savoring the clover, that’s when he begins to check the underside of the nearby milkweed leaves, where female monarchs can lay up to 300 eggs, each roughly the size of a grain of rice.

Metz collects the eggs and places them in special containers away from predators like spiders and flies. Five days later, tiny caterpillars emerge. The caterpillars then go into mesh-sided containers to continue their life cycle.

“Those caterpillars eat milkweed like crazy,” Metz says. “That is the problem. The widespread use of herbicide has killed much of the milkweed they need.”

Brown gathers tiny caterpillars from the milkweed patch and places them in large screened-in cages. His hand-built cages are different from commercial cages in that he has devised a water source to make sure the milkweed inside stays fresh and green.

The caterpillars increase roughly 2,000 times in size due to their constant eating over a span of two to three weeks. The metamorphosis continues when the plump caterpillars climb to the top of the cages and spin a chrysalis, or pod, from which a butterfly emerges a week or two later.

Among the three of them, they have released hundreds upon hundreds of butterflies over the years. Recently, Brown released some at nearby German Protestant Cemetery as a tribute to Sandra Thieman, who gave the butterfly presentation all those years ago that originally sparked his interest. Thieman’s family was present for the occasion. He has also released butterflies to the oohs and aahs of children attending various camps and vacation Bible schools during the summer.

Wolters has made releases at a local park as well as in her backyard — much to the delight of neighborhood children. Metz usually heads to the Kuenning-Dicke Natural Area near New Bremen.

“I like to think I’m making the world a better place when I release those little guys,” Metz says. “They are eager to spread their wings and get out in the world.”

Brown stresses that anyone can play a part to help the vibrant visitors thrive. “We can plant milkweed and sweet red clover,” he says. “We can limit the use of herbicide and pesticide around their habitat.”

How to raise monarch butterflies

Make sure your yard includes host plants like milkweed, on which butterflies lay eggs and caterpillars feed.
Collect caterpillars from leaves of the host plant using a stick or twig from the plant. Do not touch them with your hands, as any bacteria could cause them infections.
Place caterpillars in a clean and well-ventilated container but do not overcrowd. Ideally, the container should have fine wire mesh sides to allow the caterpillars to cling.
Make sure to provide plenty of fresh milkweed as caterpillars are voracious eaters. They do not like dried or wilted leaves.
Clean the cage frequently to remove waste known as frasse.
Wait while the caterpillar forms a chrysalis, taking care to protect it from predators and weather conditions.
Release butterflies when they emerge from the chrysalis, preferably on a sunny day in the backyard. a park, or a nature center.

Tags

nature

wildlife

insects

Hops to it

sbradford — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 19:05:52 +0000

Hops to it

August 1, 2024

Margaret Buranen

Co-op People

According to the Ohio Craft Brewers Association, there were 434 craft breweries in the state of Ohio at the end of 2023. More are opening all the time.

And that gigantic growth curve has created an equally growing opportunity for a number of Ohio farmers: Those breweries need hops.

Hops add bitterness to balance the sweetness of malt in beers. Different varieties of hops contain varying levels of oils and acids, and those are what give beers their distinct flavors.

“Different breweries want different varieties of hops,” says Amy Berridge, a member of Kenton-based Mid-Ohio Energy Cooperative. Berridge, her mother, Rubiana Berridge, and her sister, Lori Tucker, own Three Chicks Farm in Morral, in Marion County. In 2014, Three Chicks added hops to its lineup of crops, which also includes soybeans, wheat, alfalfa hay, and Christmas trees.

“When we were considering growing hops, they told us that it would be easy and make a lot of money,” Amy Berridge says. “It is neither.”

Logan Minter, associate professor and extension and field specialist for specialty crops at Ohio State University’s South Center, says hops grew wild in Ohio until Prohibition, but then hop production shifted to northwestern states. Part of Minter’s research now involves finding and cultivating wild hop plants. He hopes to find strains that are more resistant to insects or have other beneficial properties.

Minter confirms that, while hop acreage in Ohio has increased in the last 10 years, the number of those growing the stuff has declined despite the demand. “First, it’s a labor-intensive crop,” he says. “Then there is a relatively high installation cost, and a significant annual operations cost after that.”

Minter says with all that initial investment, it takes about three years for a farmer to break even, and only then will most farmers begin to make a profit from their work; Berridge says that was her experience as well.

The hop yard at Three Chicks Farm measures three-quarters of an acre. They began with small, established plants their first year, and those plants took about three years to develop enough roots to produce a full crop. They’ve since added a second variety. Once established, Minter says, hop plants will produce a crop for 25 years or more, though they are susceptible to various diseases and pests and require a certain vigilance.

The plant itself is referred to as a hop; its flowers are the hops that flavor your brewski. Hops flowers are referred to as cones, because they look like small green pine cones. The cones grow on bines (bines, not vines) that are supported on strings. Some growers use strings made of coir from coconuts, but Three Chicks uses special hop strings made of paper. Metal cables hold the strings to wooden poles or trellises that stand 16 to 20 feet tall.

For the September harvest, “we cut off the bines close to the ground and untie them from the trellises,” Berridge says. “Then the bines and strings go through a mechanical harvester that separates the cones and sends them out the side.”

Berridge says that most breweries want the cones in pellet form for efficiency and consistency. So after the cones are removed from the bines, they are sent away to be dried, converted into pellets, and then put in bags to be sold.

While breweries are the major customers for hops, there are other uses. The citrus-like scent of the cones makes them suitable for some cosmetics. Tea made from hops (Berridge’s verdict: “not bad”) can promote sleep. Hops can be used to flavor food as well.

“We made some macaroons with hops,” Berridge says. “They were really good and won first place at the Marion County Fair.”

As labor-intensive as it is to grow hops, Berridge says, selling them is even harder. “You have to sell directly to your customers, to build relationships with them, because there is no central marketplace for hops,” she says. To that end, Berridge is also a member, and treasurer, of the Ohio Hop Growers Guild, which has about 70 members who can lean on one another for help with everything from pest control to sales and marketing. The guild connection led Three Chicks to an arrangement with another hop farm to sell its hops.

And even with cooperation among the guild, Minter sums up hop growing and beer production: “It’s a lot easier to drink beer than it is to make it.”

Tags

farming

agriculture

Destination: Everywhere

sbradford — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 14:51:55 +0000

Destination: Everywhere

July 1, 2024

James Proffitt

Co-op People

No one could have known when Brad Ryan’s parents divorced years ago that it would result in a long, record-breaking, heartwarming journey.

“There was some grievance that I was holding onto,” Brad says, recalling matter-of-factly his decade-long estrangement from his grandmother, Joy Ryan. He began letting go of that grievance when they ran into each other at a family wedding in 2008. “She was 80 and she told me she regretted never seeing a mountain in her lifetime. I’ve traveled around the world a little bit and when she told me that, it kind of jarred my heart.”

Joy lives in Duncan Falls, a sleepy town nestled against the rolling hills along the Muskingum River southeast of Zanesville, where she’s a longtime member of New Concord-based Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative. When they finally reconnected, Brad noticed she was suffering some health issues, and clearly needed a change.

Brad was in veterinary school when he took Joy, at the time 85, camping in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. That was the beginning of an odyssey that grabbed national attention — and spurred his realization that something had been sorely missing in his life for years: his grandmother, Joy.

Inauspicious start

That first trip was rough. It was the first time Joy had ever slept in a tent, and she fell off the air mattress — twice. But it was perfect.

“Yeah, that didn’t bother me at all,” Joy exclaims with energetic defiance. “It was raining cats and dogs, but a little rain doesn’t hurt anybody.”

Undeterred by torrential downpours and mud, and inspired by their ascension to the top of the miles-long Alum Cave Trail, Brad wondered if she’d like to visit all 63 U.S. national parks. She replied with a phrase remembered from his youth: “Let’s give it a whirl!”

And so they did. Beginning in 2015, they began hitting more national parks. Zion, check. Shenandoah, check. Cuyahoga, Rainier, Denali, Yosemite, Everglades, Yellowstone, Badlands, check-check-check-check-check. You get the idea.

It took eight years to check them all off the list. The final one was also the most distant — they ventured the 7,000 air miles from Muskingum County to the National Park of American Samoa in May 2023.

They chronicled their adventures with plenty of cool photographs via their Instagram account, @grandmajoysroadtrip. Along the way their account attracted more than 107,000 followers.

Active participant

When Joy travels, she doesn’t simply sit in a seat looking out a window; Brad stresses that she gets involved. “I want people to really know what Grandma Joy is actually made of,” he says. And while Joy won’t come out and say she put her grandson to shame on the hiking trails, Brad isn’t bashful about spilling the beans. “If I stopped on the trail to take a picture of a butterfly, I’d look up and she’d be half a football field in front of me,” he says, laughing. “That’s true.”

There are more examples. Like the time when Joy, alone, rolled down a towering sand dune at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado. What else? “Well, we went whitewater rafting in Alaska,” Joy says, “and we went zip-lining at New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia, and we walked the New River Gorge Bridge.”

In fact, she set the record by a decade as the oldest person to complete the zip-line course, which includes launching off 10 different platforms. The bridge is the third tallest in the U.S. and the longest steel span in the Western Hemisphere. A small wrinkle: Brad’s not so keen on heights. “I’m telling you, when we had to go underneath that bridge, it took him a lot of courage to do that,” she says. “They said, ‘Who wants to go first?’ and of course my big mouth — I said, ‘I’ll do it!’ and I forgot Brad had to go, too. He’s a pretty good guy.”

Gaining fame

The duo’s mission did not go unnoticed. In addition to Insta-fame, the Today show featured them in the Rocky Mountains National Park, and Rachael Ray surprised the pair with trips to national parks in Alaska. They twice appeared on David Muir’s America Strong, and twice on the Tamron Hall Show. They’ve been featured on CNN, on NPR, and in magazines and podcasts too numerous to count.

But once they finished their list, they realized they didn’t want to quit traveling together, and now they’ve gone international. After jaunts to the African nation of Kenya and to the Galapagos Islands (gifts from Hall and National Geographic), they’ve now set their sights on visiting all seven continents. Recent trips have included Ecuador and Chile — so check Africa and South America off the list, along with North America, of course.

“Right now we’re in the early stages of planning a trip to Australia and a fall trip to Antarctica,” Brad says. “That will be five out of seven continents.”

Joy says that everywhere she’s gone during her adventures, she’s felt at home. “As soon as you say, ‘Hi! How are you?’ strangers become friends for sure. That’s how everybody is all over the world,” she says.

Now 94, Grandma Joy has earnest advice: “If somebody asks you to go somewhere, do not say ‘No,’ because the next day you’ll regret it. If you don’t go when people ask, you can’t complain because you have to sit there in a chair on the porch.”

Give Grandma Joy a follow @grandmajoysroadtrip on Instagram!

Tags

nature

outdoors

Yard to table

sbradford — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 17:34:17 +0000

Yard to table

June 1, 2024

Margie Wuebker

Co-op People

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.

Gardening has been a part of Banks’ life as far back as he can remember, but ever since he retired from AK Steel in Middletown, he’s had lots more time to spend on the enjoyable activity. The result has been a cornucopia of vegetables and fruit for the dinner table, and Woodland’s residents have been the beneficiaries.

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.”

Banks eyed the inner courtyard at Woodland as an ideal garden site for residents, and the management agreed.

He initially procured fill dirt from an area pig farm, ensuring a fertile place for plants and seeds to take root. At first, residents watched from their windows as he carefully worked the soil and then started planting. They soon came outside for a closer look. Many shared their memories of days gone by when they had their own backyard gardens.

The circular garden is bordered by wide concrete sidewalks and umbrella tables with comfortable lawn chairs. Vegetables like peas, lettuce, kale, and radishes go in early in the season since they tolerate cool temperatures, and other fare, such as green beans, cucumbers, spinach, squash, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes, fill out the space as temperatures get progressively warmer through the spring and summer. Brightly colored zinnias and statuesque sunflowers border the neat rows.

“People often ask me about secret ingredients to promote healthy growth,” he says, with a mischievous air. “There is nothing like cow manure to enrich the soil. Also, I am a real fanatic about weeds — get them out before they have a chance to take over. Hot, dry summer days bring a need for frequent watering and periodic doses of Miracle-Gro.”

Banks does not keep track of the time he donates for Woodland’s garden, because he considers the response of residents more than enough compensation. Although he purchases all the seeds, plants, and other supplies, the bountiful harvest stays on-site with head cook Karen White planning menus around whatever happens to be in season. Impromptu “snapping parties” take place when the garden yields buckets of green beans. Residents enjoy the activity, knowing their handiwork will make a tasty addition to their dinner plates.

“The garden gives our residents so much joy,” Woodland owner/administrator Lori Auer says. “They enjoy watching everything grow — especially the tomatoes, because they will tell you there is nothing like a homegrown tomato.”

Banks chuckles when he recalls how residents come out with wheelchairs, canes, and walkers to supervise his work and offer words of advice. Gatherings quickly turn into parties with cold lemonade and snacks. One resident even brings his harmonica to provide music.

“I have been blessed in my life,” Banks says. “This is something I can do to give back and so I’ll continue doing it as long as I’m able.”

Tags

Butler Rural Electric Cooperative

gardening

vegetables

flowers

Pole position

sbradford — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:23:21 +0000

Pole position

May 1, 2024

Randy Edwards

Co-op People

The pole barn — as familiar a fixture on modern farms as a pickup truck — is an architectural innovation born in the 1930s, the result of a marriage of necessity and opportunity. Cash-strapped farmers of the Depression needed an inexpensive way to keep tractors and motorized equipment under cover, while the electrification of rural America led to the easy availability of utility poles. The earliest pole barns were rudimentary structures with dirt floors and poles planted directly into the soil around the perimeter, topped with trusses and a sheet metal roof. These post-frame structures could be built quickly and at far less expense than timber-framed barns, and while the continued mechanization of agriculture drove demand for more covered area on the farm, space for a tractor didn’t need to be as fancy and complicated as you’d need for, say, a team of horses.

For decades, the pole barn has reigned supreme on American farms. But the pole-frame structures of today have come a long way from the simple pole barns of the Depression, says Caleb Miller, owner and president of MQS Structures in Lancaster. Pole framing remains a popular design for farm outbuildings, but these days, Miller’s company, a member of Lancaster-based South Central Power Company, may just as likely be using pole-frame construction to build the shell for a far more complex structure.

“When Dad started, a pole-frame building was an agricultural building,” says Miller, who began his training at age 12 by helping his father, John, build barns. “It has evolved into a lot more than that. These days, we’re building event centers, a lot of residential garages. We build ‘shouses’ (a combination of workshop and house) and that’s evolved into the ‘barndominium.’”

Barndominiums, or “barndos,” are built on precast concrete columns to support upright poles, creating a solid but inexpensive shell that can cover almost any kind of interior finish. The term was popularized by the HGTV show Fixer Upper in 2016. That was the same year that Miller, who had been building barns most of his life with his father and brothers, found some investors and struck out on his own with MQS Structures.

“In 2016 I was the owner, the CEO, and the salesman. It was me by myself in a pickup truck. That’s how I started,” says Miller, now 47, who lives in Perry County with his wife, Dorcas, and their three sons.

In that first year he hired a second salesperson, put together a crew, and built 51 structures. In 2023, with 10 office employees and seven construction crews, the company built 330 buildings over a five-state area. “We have been blessed,” he says. “I never dreamed we could be so blessed.”

Miller credits his company’s success to honesty and hard work, values instilled in him by his Amish-Mennonite father, who moved his family from Geauga County to Perry County in 1966 and raised 11 children, including eight sons. John Miller worked well into his 70s and died five years ago at 83. “We had to work hard, but it didn’t hurt us,” says Caleb, the youngest of the eight sons. “My dad taught me honesty and to take care of the customers, and the good Lord will take care of the rest.”

Caleb married Dorcas, the daughter of Mennonite dairy farmers from Tennessee, 15 years ago. The couple lives in a house built by his father on Amish Ridge Road (renamed after his family after they moved there). They farm 180 acres, mostly for beef cattle. Miller jokes that he has two vices: “farming and golf, but farming is what gets me up in the morning.” The couple’s sons — 11-year-old twins Carter and Colton, and Cayson, 7 — all help out, Miller says, caring for the chickens and keeping up on yard work.

Miller also credits MQS’s employees, nearly all of whom are Amish or Mennonite, for the company’s success. “Our employees make MQS stand out,” he says. “Without them, we could never achieve what we have achieved.”

Tags

South Central Power

family business

Mind, body, and goats

sbradford — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 19:42:56 +0000

Mind, body, and goats

April 1, 2024

Jill Moorhead

Co-op People

On Katherine Harrison’s farm in Groveport, every animal has a job. The chickens offer eggs. The cats provide comfort. And the goats help teach yoga.

Later this month, Harrison Farm will begin its ninth season of Goat Yoga, an outdoor beginner-friendly vinyasa yoga class paired with curious goats, a chance to explore the farm, and plenty of opportunities for goat selfies.

The idea for the program arose organically, says Harrison, owner and operator of Harrison Farm. (Her secondary title, she says, is “chief minion” to the goats.) She met yoga instructor Dana Bernstein in 2016 while she was planning Bernstein’s wedding, and the two hit it off.

A working farm

Harrison Farm, which primarily raises sheep, goats, and chickens, has a mission to connect people to both animals and farming. Beyond Goat Yoga, the farm features agritourism programs and educational opportunities, often hosting interns who take on their own projects, such as raising ducks, rabbits, pigs, and honeybees.

“I knew nothing about goats,” says Helen Cosner, a teacher at South-Western City Schools near Columbus who has taken more than 10 classes. “Now I’m obsessed.” Cosner hosted her 40th birthday party on the farm, and called it “epic.”

Of the 150 goats on the farm, 30 are “yoga goats” — primarily goats that were bottle-fed by humans when they were young, a result of a mother not being able to care for them. The human-to-goat bonding that happens during the bottle-feeding period allows the young goats to look to people as a source of food, comfort, and attention. “Because of [the bonding], they’re perfect for yoga, because they know when they’re around humans, good things will follow,” Harrison says.

And some goats self-select into the program.

Ruth, for example, is one of Bernstein’s favorite goats. At the age of 10 (a goat’s average life span is about 8 years), the geriatric goat, who had always been nice to humans, decided that she would take part in the weekly festivities. “She does make a whooping sound when people get around her food,” says Bernstein, “but she’s really sweet to the yogis.”

Harrison prefers a 1-to-3 goat-to-human ratio for yoga classes, though it’s not always predictable. Goats, in general, are hard to predict, and Bernstein and Harrison have learned to let them take the lead during the classes. “Sometimes they cause chaos and run across mats and bump into people,” says Bernstein. “Other times, they’ll chill, relax, sit, or even fall asleep during class.”

Outdoor asana

Bernstein teaches several types of yoga in studios around Columbus, including vinyasa, power, and ashtanga, but she holds Goat Yoga near to her heart.

“I love teaching outdoors; it brings a different element to the class,” Bernstein says. “Goat Yoga is a low-pressure introduction for beginners, but it also is a fun adventure for experienced yoga practitioners, and it offers a direct connection to nature.”

That connection is what makes the class attractive, says Cosner, who had dabbled in yoga for a few years before attending Goat Yoga. “It was completely different than what I expected. I thought I would be jumped on by pygmy goats. I had no idea that I would be experiencing a refreshing mindfulness experience and feel so connected to the land.”

Cosner enjoys the unexpectedness of the class. “The goats might come sit on your mat, and you can pet them when you’re doing downward dog. Or they might come up right next to your friend while they’re doing a sun salutation.” Cosner has plenty of photos of these encounters, and says that they all contain the best smiles.

“It’s a full body and mind experience, and a break from the racing mind,” she says. “I love it.”

The details

Harrison and Bernstein invite their Goat Yoga guests to the farm half an hour before the one-hour class begins, and afterward, visitors are welcome to explore, meeting animals and feeding bottle babies, says Harrison.

Most guests bring their own outdoor-worthy mats, but the farm does have a few extras for folks who come empty-handed. And usually, they won’t leave with empty stomachs. When time allows, Harrison provides homemade chocolate chip cookies alongside coffee and tea. Farm goods, including fresh eggs and honey, are always for sale.

Goat Yoga classes run from late April to early October and cost $26 per person. Registration opens a month before each class, and dates are listed at www.facebook.com/harrisonfarm13. Email harrisonfarm13@gmail.com for reservations. In case of rain, classes are moved to the farm’s airplane hangar.

Tags

Ohio attractions

Ohio activities

outdoors