My Farm Roots

As a kid growing up on his family’s farm in Louisburg, Kansas, David Wayne Reed just wanted to perform.He wore his mom’s heels, a cinched-up shirt as a…

They say you can’t go home again. But what if you bring drones, quilts and a marching band?On a warm, sunny Saturday last October, David Wayne Reed was in…

Mitch Schieber got into the shrimp farming business by chance.He does remodeling for a living, but he had been looking at different careers. Then, a…

Jeff Siegfried knows just about anything you’d ever want to find out about a 50-acre corn field in northern Colorado.The 24-year-old easily rattles off…

As the agriculture industry changes, what it means to grow up on a farm is changing, too. Our panel talks chores, the cycle of life, the dangers of…

In the Midwest, agriculture can be such a strong lure that there are some farm kids without farms.Ally Babcock lives with her family in a modern…

The Matthew family farm, M&M&m Farms, outside of La Harpe, Illinois, looks different from the farms surrounding it. It’s not filled with neat rows of…

Show day at the Pierce County Fair in Nebraska starts early and goes fast.I arrived around 9 in the morning, but Emily Lambrecht had already spent an hour…

Every year on my birthday I know there’s a thin, flat package waiting for me to open. It’s wrapped with neat corner folds and held together perfectly with…

Farmers are used to waking up with the rooster’s crow. But having grown up a suburban kid, John Curtis was used to a more conventional alarm clock.As a…

Emily Robbins is a city girl now.Well, I’m using that term as a cliché. Robbins, 27, lives in Kansas City and works as an engineer at a large firm. She is…

When they heard Dan Hromas’ truck rolling in, the chickens came strutting. The auburn-feathered Rhode Island Reds stood out, even in the tall, green brome…