(From Harvest Public Media – November 21, 2014) Mike Lee steers his plane over the Missouri-Arkansas state line, checking out a checkerboard of green and brown fields of rice, cotton, corn and soybeans. Lee is the owner of Earl’s Flying Service, a crop dusting business in Steele, Mo., and he’s scouting some farm fields that…
(From Weekend Edition Saturday – October 25, 2014) The anger of Illinois Republican state Rep. Mike Bost is spontaneous and raw. In 2013, for example, he raged against a floor amendment to a concealed carry gun bill. “Once again, your side of the aisle is trying to make ploys instead of dealing with the real…
(From Here & Now and Harvest Public Media – October 15, 2014) Fair-goers pack the stands at the East Perry Community Fair in Altenburg, Mo., on a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon. They aren’t here for the blue ribbon pigs, the truck pull or the beauty contest. These people are here for the fair’s biggest attraction…
(From All Things Considered – September 23, 2014) Language lovers and locals of an isolated mining region of the Ozarks are scrambling to preserve what’s left of a dialect known as pawpaw French before it fades. The dialect once dominated this comm unity in southeastern Missouri, but now, it is barely a whisper. Kent Bone…
(From Harvest Public Media – July 8, 2014) As a young man, Elisha Pullen never imagined he would spend his days on the farm. Growing up near rural Bell City in southeastern Missouri’s “Bootheel” region, Pullen longed to leave the farm and get an education. “I grew up in the day and time when we…
(From St. Louis Public Radio – May 2, 2014) Principal Glenn Carter cracks open the door to an Algebra II class at South Pemiscot High School in rural Steele, Mo., where teacher Linda Crawford shuffles four reluctant students into different configurations. Students chuckle as Crawford gleefully moves her volunteers from place to place. One student,…
(From Harvest Public Media – April 16, 2014) Water experts worried about Asian carp may have new hope. They’re turning their eyes to China, where a carp-hungry populace may be the key for stemming the tide of the invasive fish. Asian carp are taking over U.S. waterways, including the Mississippi River and tributaries like the…
(From KRCU – March 28, 2014) Imagine a bird that is eleven feet long and five feet tall at the hip. Like many birds it has a small head, feathers and long spindly legs. But it also bore some resemblance to reptiles, like long arms tipped with sharp claws and a long bony tail. Weighing…
(From KRCU – February 16, 2014) Rally car racing is popular in Europe and Canada, but it has a much lower profile in the United States. It is a dangerous sports in which racers thrash through rural, gravel roads at high speeds in street-legal cars as they try to score the fastest time. Chris Hrabik,…
(From KRCU – January 31, 2014) The Mars rover Opportunity just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and the scrappy vehicle keeps chugging along. The rover landed on Mars on January 24, 2004. Scientists expected Opportunity and its twin Spirit to work on the Martian surface for three to six months. Fast-forward ten years, and Opportunity is…
(From KRCU – December 18, 2013) Kris Pirmann and a handful of other Johnson County residents stand outside the county commission office in Vienna, Ill., a town of about 1,400 people tucked into southern Illinois’ rolling hills near the Shawnee National Forest. “Southern Illinois. I grew up as a Navy brat. I moved all over…
(From Harvest Public Media – August 22, 2013) Feral hogs are a big, expensive problem. The prolific procreators are responsible for $1.5 billion in damages and prevention each year —$800 million in damages to agriculture alone from destroying land and rooting up crops,according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But trapping them is no easy…
(From Harvest Public Media – July 30, 2013) As a child, Robert Harris Jr. worked the cotton fields of southeastern Missouri’s bootheel. Like many sharecroppers’ children, he fled that life. Now, four decades later, the harvest is calling him again, this time to grow food for the needy in a bunch of community gardens in…
(From KRCU – June 2, 2013) Jason Smith and Steve Hodges are sprinting to the finish line of a relatively short campaign for Missouri’s Eighth Congressional District. A special election will be held on Tuesday. The winner will replace Jo Ann Emerson, the long-time Congresswoman who announced her resignation shortly after Election Day. Jo Ann…
(From Harvest Public Media – March 1, 2013) Kentucky is trying to bring back hemp, the close relative of marijuana that is used in a seemingly endless number of products like textiles, car parts, lotions and paper. But like its cousin, it’s illegal to grow hemp in the United States. Some Kentucky politicians and farmers,…
Jacob McCleland 