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Local News

Farmers plant while facing a harvest of worries

Farmers are used to a lot of uncertainty. Will the rains come at the right time, in the right amount, or will they not come at all? Will the sun burn up the crops in July? Will thunderheads drop hail in August? But farmers are used to worrying about the weather. There’s a whole new world out there, and a new world of worries. Will the Strait of Hormuz open? Will there be more tariffs? Will they be able to afford diesel fuel, fertilizer, or health insurance? The Iowa Farm Bureau Federation (IFBF) noted earlier this year that the Midwest had seen the greatest increase in the ...

Feenstra salutes House passage of Farm Bill

You’d think that the three extra years Congress has taken to update the 2018 Farm Bill might mean it stumbled upon solutions to today’s falling farm income, sagging ag exports, the need for ...

Columns

Horsing around

My wife and I recently went horsing around. And no, it didn’t involve traveling to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. We are much too cheap to make a special trip like that. Some years ago, when we were in Kentucky for business, my wife and I visited Churchill Downs. There weren’t any ...

Hometown Cookin' Favorites

Celebrating mothers

This year Mother’s Day will be observed on Sunday, May 10. It is a holiday that is observed yearly on the second Sunday of the month of May. Mother’s Day was first officially observed in the United States on May 10, 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial service for her mother at Andrews ...

Editorials

Use of wind power must be encouraged

Spend any time outdoors in Iowa and one thing becomes immediately apparent — the wind is always blowing. We Iowans are accustomed to the corn stalks rustling in the summer breeze. And we complain when the wind chill factor makes a cold January day feel even colder. But wind is a fact of ...