Writing Clips

Daily Yonder,  November 2, 2022

https://dailyyonder.com/trees-bring-hope-healing-and-a-look-to-the-future-for-western-kentucky-tornado-victims/2022/11/02/When two massive tornados ravaged rural west Kentucky on the evening of December 10, and the morning of December 11, 2021, aid was immediate. Thousands of volunteers, millions of dollars of donations, and support poured into the counties—many with irreparable damage.  

As the families began to pick up the pieces of their lives, many suffered a total loss, including decades-old trees; replacing them wasn't foremost in their minds. But it was for Ashley Short.

In January 2022, Short began formulating an idea to provide trees to homeowners affected by tornados.  

"I wanted to do something to help.", Short said. Short wanted to help locally but found plenty of volunteers already helping out.  But trees were something he could do. "

Trees he would grow himself at his Highlandbrook Nursery, and not just a few trees – 4000!

“My attitude toward this comes from my heritage, my parents, and even my Cherokee ancestry. If you take care of the Land, it will take care of you and always leave the world a better place than you found it.” Short said.

Short began by contacting Christian County Extension Agent for Horticulture, Kelly Jackson. If Short grew the trees, could Jackson get them distributed? “Of course,” was Jackson’s immediate response.

Jackson had actually been thinking about trees. Extension Agents in the area attended training on how to provide tornado relief. One training told of a tiny town in Kansas, leveled by a tornado, but when rebuilt, had no tree-lined streets and didn’t feel like home. Jackson thought Short’s donation would help develop that feeling of “home.”

Farmer's Pride  August 2020 

With the theme "Eat Fresh Eat Local and Eat Out, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture Kentucky Proud program celebrated restaurants using Kentucky Proud products during Farm Fresh Days August 13-22. The recognition emphasized the only thing better than enjoying a great meal made with fresh-from-the-farm ingredients is when someone else handles the cooking.  

A perfect place "to let someone else do the cooking" and enjoy the Farm Fresh Days or any Kentucky Proud influenced meal is the Red Hog Restaurant and Butcher Shop at 2622 Frankfort Avenue in Louisville.

Red Hog began in 2016 as a way for owner Kit Garrett and Bob Hancock to use the meat produced from Red Waddle and Mule Foot hogs, both heritage swine breeds. 

This dual-purpose establishment is one of a kind whole animal butcher shop and a restaurant committed to using Kentucky Proud products. Garret would say the menu at Red Hog has "matured" since it began to include Kentucky Proud beef, lamb, chicken, duck, turkey, and shrimp in its culinary offerings.  

Through management changes, the pork is now raised just across the river in Indiana. Much of the pork becomes a value-added Kentucky Proud product as cured, smoked, and deli meats in the butcher shop and sandwiches and a charcuterie board on the restaurant menu. 

Aaron Portman serves as the head butcher and manages the butcher shop. He and head chef Noah Bitizer work closely to determine the needs of both the butcher shop and the restaurant when it comes to the meat. The retail shop serves as a meat market and small grocery for the Crescent Hill community. 

Daily Yonder  April 22, 2020

https://dailyyonder.com/locally-owned-rural-telcos-establish-hotspots-to-meet-demand-during-pandemic/2020/04/22/

The portable sign in the parking lot says FREE WiFi HOTSPOT and shows the WiFi symbol. 

A vehicle pulls up, but no one gets out. The car sits for several minutes, then the driver pulls out.

This scene is repeated daily in 10 rural counties in Eastern Kentucky because of the community-mindedness of three small communications companies.  

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mountain Rural Telephone, Peoples Rural Telephone (PRTC), and Thacker-Grigsby Telephone are providing free hotspots for families that do not have broadband at home.

The hotspots are primarily for school, community college, and GED students to complete their nontraditional instruction while face-to-face instruction is on hold. But the hotspots are available to anyone. 

Each of these telecommunications companies began business over 50 years ago, bringing much needed telephone service to these remote, sparsely populated areas with descriptive names such as Possum Trot, Hard Shell, and Wheel Rim. 

Mountain Rural and Peoples Rural Telephone (PRTC) are cooperatives, and Thacker-Grigsby is privately owned, and originated, as Marketing Director Monica Miller noted: “by my granny and my great uncle.”

Clustered in the western edge of the Eastern Kentucky coalfields, these small companies serve mountain communities with some of the lowest median household incomes in the nation.

Mountain Rural, based in West Liberty, has 11,000 members in Wolfe, Elliot, Menifee, and Morgan counties. 

Farmer's Pride

Scottsville KY. "Welcome to Maple Madness', 'Nance Taylor's voice booms as he welcomes visitors to South 4  Farms and the third Kentucky Maple Day.   On February 5th, eleven maple syrup producers across the state opened their operations to allow visitors to watch maple syrup production from sap, of course, taste samples, and purchase locally produced maple syrup products.

Taylor was bitten by the maple syrup bug in 2010 when he read an article in Kentucky Living magazine about how to make maple syrup. Taylor said he figured he had a maple tree on his property and didn't know what one looked like "naked," but he found a tree using photos of bark and tapped 5 gallons of maple sap. He engineered an evaporator from a turkey fryer and roasting pan, used a gallon of propane, and cooked the sap for six hours to make 12 ounces of syrup. 

"And I was hooked! I'll never read another article in Kentucky Living", he joked as he stoked the fire of his new 50-gallon evaporator, and the aroma of maple syrup filled the air in his newly constructed sugar house.

From 2010 to 2013, Taylor worked to perfect his syrup-making ability. He built a sugar house between two slopes full of red and sugar maple trees. Using tubing, the sap gravity fed into the sugar house and his self-constructed evaporator. He carried the finished syrup weighing 11 pounds per gallon up the steep hill to sell at Farmers Markets and Festivals.  

     Farmer's Pride

Keith Shepherd Fscouts his crop, checks growth and looks for disease and insect damage. He watches market prices and utilizes USDA Farm Agency programs. He worries about weather conditions affecting his crop over the next 30 years.

Thirty years? Shepherd is a Master Tree Farmer.

"I'm just like any other farmer when it comes to producing an agriculture commodity; I have the same pressures; my harvest schedule is just different," Shepherd remarked.

In 1982, fresh from the University of Kentucky with a bachelor's degree in Forestry Science, Shepherd received his parents' blessing to turn their 1200-acre North Christian County farm into a tree farm. Shepherd's parents, his mother, a prominent Hopkinsville doctor, and his father, an insurance fraud attorney, purchased the abandoned acreage in 1954 and set about bringing the farm back to a crop and livestock operation, but the farm was predominately woodland. Shepherd began his tree farm management with the entire farm in 1993. His mother's estate settlement reduced his tree farm to 660 acres.. 

Shepherd's first hurdle in developing the tree farm was timber stand improvement. He divided the woodlands into 30-acre sections managed for certain species of trees 

"When you manage woods and do any type of harvest work, it should always be geared toward improving the quality of the timber, either by improving the quality of the stems themselves or the species composition."

Flower Farmers

Farmer's Pride 

Simpsonville KY; The sun hasn't risen above the tree line on the east but, Aral Michalow and Jessica Bush are already busy harvesting their crop.   They raise fresh-cut flowers at Phoenix Hill Flower Farm.

The Kentucky Horticulture Council concluded month-long celebrations of cut flowers during July, but the cut flower season is long from over. Phoenix Hill and other fresh-cut flower farmers begin their season in late March with tulips and will still be cutting blooms until the last frost.

According to the Kentucky Horticulture Council Executive Director Cindy Finneseth, more than 125 commercial fresh-cut flowers are increasing by 20% from 2021. An interactive map shows flower farms across the state.  

Aral and Jessica do not have a horticulture background. Aral was interested in plants, especially hydroponics, but they never intended to become flower farmers after graduating from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.