Why did you start writing for Farm News?

Honestly, my vocational ag teacher at Webster City High School, Denny Harding, recommended me for the job. This was with the original rendition called Monthly Farm News, with The Messenger’s Larry Bushman as publisher and Keith Carlson, a one-time vocational ag teacher-turned farmer, as editor.

It was 1977 and I was a sophomore in high school when I started with Monthly Farm News. I wrote a column called “Fair Plans,” profiling 4-H and FFA members as they prepared for the county fair. I also came into the Daily Freeman-Journal office and helped with paste-up for a few hours after school once a month. I learned so much from the late Jean Buzick and many others who ran the Composition Department at that time. And, of course, Keith Carlson was a wonderfully patient editor with this very young reporter.

In the 1990s, I returned to The Daily Freeman-Journal after earning a degree in journalism and mass communication at Iowa State University. I became editor afterward and continued in that position until 2009. During that time, the current version of Farm News was born and my stories in The Daily Freeman-Journal would sometimes cross over into Farm News.

I came back as a freelancer several years ago. Everything about Farm News, The Daily Freeman-Journal, and The Messenger feels like home to me, and I love it when my stories, again, cross over into the various publications.

What is the most memorable story you covered in 30 years with the paper?

There are many, but one of my favorites is one of the early ones from the early to mid-1990s. The Yungclas family of Ellsworth was hosting a plowing match, and I covered the event for both The Daily Freeman-Journal and Farm News.

The late Bill Yungclas was the patriarch of the Yungclas family, which is very well known for a variety of civic activities in Hamilton County. Yungclas was a good friend of legendary WHO Farm broadcaster, Herb Plambeck.

Both Plambeck and Yungclas were getting on in years by that time and were mostly retired. I had the great pleasure of visiting with them while standing on the freshly-plowed black furrows of the Yungclas farm. They were both such joyful men, always smiling, laughing, and seeing the best in life. I could have soaked up the sunshine of their lives for hours as they relived the glory days they had both known in this world. Nothing got these two men down for long, and to see the twinkle in their eyes as the plows turned the soil again was an honor and a privilege.

How have you experienced agricultural changes in 30 years?

Hmmm … So much of the equipment has gotten almost too big for our secondary roads. There are fewer farms, older farmers. Commodity prices are still too low and input prices are still too high.

I have also worked in agricultural sales and, during the times when profits were high for us, I thought about my Dad, and the many changes he had seen living through both the Great Depression as a farm kid, and then steering our family farm safely through the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. That’s when it dawned on me, good times never last forever; those days of big profits wouldn’t last forever. Fortunately, Mom and Dad both also taught me that bad times never last forever, either. Are tough times coming? Maybe, but we’ll get through them again.

Agriculture is bound to change. Some changes we may like, some we will not, but I have great confidence that farmers will get through them. I am a firm believer in traditional, production agriculture. Bring on the GMOs; we have a hungry world to feed!

What has kept you writing for Farm News?

Ummm … I need to eat, and I like a paycheck! But I also love talking to farmers. They are fun, trustworthy people. I was not made to sit in an office for eight hours a day. My best day is always out and about, visiting with people where they live and work.

I actually get paid for doing such things as spending a long day at the Farm Progress Show, taking pictures of kids showing a pig at the fair, or talking with a retired farmer about his time in the service. Is that awesome, or what?

A reporter who sits behind a desk all day is not going to learn much about the community he or she serves. News happens out there, and I have often been known to drive onto a farmstead sight unseen, explain myself as a reporter, and ask if I can’t do a story about a person’s farmhouse, or garden, or whatever peaks my interest from the road. Believe it or not, almost no one says no. Rural Iowa really is a very friendly place.

Our families — 30 years ago and now.

When my husband and I married in 2006, I received the gift of a grown stepdaughter and eventually two stepgrandchildren. They are a blessing in my life, and our granddaughter is even a redhead. My husband just can’t get enough of redheads, apparently. OK, my hair isn’t as red as it used to be, but I’m still as feisty as any redhead ever.

We also have a flock of chickens, and a very spoiled and wonderful dog. My husband also has a cow/calf herd with his dad in Webster County. It keeps all of us very busy, but being busy is a very good thing in life.

My mom always enjoyed working and said she would “go crazy” without a job. It’s the greatest compliment I can hear to be compared to her, so I think I will keep on working while all those around me retire.