(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…