Feb. 8, 2024
Not all teenagers have a clear image of their careers, but a young Rodney Boll knew his would look like the view of a hayfield from the seat of a tractor...


Oct. 16, 2023
If you are familiar with the television series, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” you will recall how every episode begins with a team of carpenters, painters, and plumbers gutting a dilapidated house from the inside out. In 2018, Nick and Annie Rodgers found themselves starring in their own version of the show when they acquired a 70-acre farm in Montrose, Mich...


Sept. 6, 2023
The hills of Wisconsin’s Driftless Region were masked in a smoky haze from wildfires burning much farther north. Earlier that morning, it had rained. It wasn’t the best of hay drying days. Even so, by late morning, Ray called and said it was a “go.”...


June 6, 2023
Louis Nippert was a successful big-city lawyer by any measure, but he also had a love of the land...


May 2, 2023
It's not Idaho’s Magic Valley, nor is it Washington’s fertile Columbia Basin. Rather, it’s the land in between, located on the western edge of Idaho in the far eastern Palouse region. Here, in Idaho’s Panhandle, is where Wade Simons and his wife, Edie, have built a successful farm business, leasing land that, by their own admission, “most farmers don’t want.”...


April 3, 2023
When the summer sun sets over northwest Illinois, the crew members of Silver Streak Ag Services LLC cut their engines and climb down from their tractor cabs. Their job might not be done — in fact, it may have just been getting started — but they submit to their growling stomachs and pause for a paper plate meal in the middle of the field. This is a nightly tradition for John and Monica Osterhaus, owners of the custom forage harvesting business near Chadwick, Ill...


March 31, 2023
Soap Lake borders Highway 17 to the east and a town by the same name to its south. Basalt cliffs define the lake with water that is said to contain 23 different minerals. Going back to when Native American tribes inhabited this area of Washington’s Columbia Basin, people have come to soak in the healing waters and lather themselves in the lake’s mud to cure what ails them...


March 7, 2023
Macey Wessels (sitting) and Shelly Boshart Davis own and operate Boshart Trucking in Tangent, Ore. They also manage two other vertically integrated businesses. (submitted photo)Oregon’s Willamette V...


Feb. 1, 2023
Most farm fires are created by accident. Electrical sparks fly, engines run too hot, and wet hay spontaneously combusts. However, there is one instance when fires are planned for and set intentionally...


Feb. 1, 2023
As the son of two sharecroppers, Jim McClain grew up picking cotton and cutting tobacco in the sticky heat of South Carolina...