Country Lifestyles
Profile on Amanda Stevens: Horses, good for the heart and good for healing
By staff writer Jessica Bartel
On a warm, spring day I met Amanda and Steve Stevens at their home and training facility in Weatherford, TX. The couple train horses using natural horsemanship techniques. Steve was originally from California and Amanda from Arizona. The couple met 11 years ago. Steve grew up in rodeo and was a PRCA card holder for 13 years riding bucking horses. Amanda had no experience with horses prior to meeting Steve.
Both agree horses soon became a common passion, one that would drive their life to dedicating it to horses. The horse industry is what led the couple to Texas to stay, build a training facility and raise a family. As life would have it, the inevitable happened: change. The subject of my visit that day was not entirely about horses, but rather how horses had an impact in Amanda’s life, so much that she believes it’s saving her.
The date was April 25, 2014. On this day Amanda and Steve celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary. With them to celebrate were son Ryder James, two years old, and Violet Rose, seven months old. The perfect picture of a young, growing family, the Stevens family was faced with staggering change-of-life events in January of this year.
After having given birth to her daughter, Violet in September of 2013, Amanda discovered a lump in her left breast. To read more pick up the May 2014 issue of North Texas Farm & Ranch.
By Martha Crump
That old adage, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.,” may have some basis in truth when applied to minor situations. However, when what you don’t know is presented in the form of a “Trojan Horse” and is what amounts to an incredible attempt to fleece American property rights, it becomes a different story altogether.
To put this unbelievable tale together, we need to step back to Joe Biden’s 2021 Executive Order which pledged commitment to help restore balance on public lands and waters, to create jobs, and to provide a path to align the management of America’s public lands and waters with our nation’s climate, conservation, and clean energy goals.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Lacey Vilhauer
Ingredients:
1 whole lemon, seeded and roughly chopped
2 cups sugar
2 pounds strawberries, hulled
Juice of 1 to 2 lemons
¼ cup water
Directions:
Place the chopped lemon and sugar in a food processor and pulse until combined. Transfer to a large bowl. Puree the strawberries in a food processor and add to the lemon mixture along with juice of one lemon and water. Taste and add more juice as desired.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Nicholas Waters
As winter plods along – come Spring and gopher mounds – homeowners and farmers find themselves playing a familiar song – fiddling while Rome is burning.
Let’s make a mountain out of a molehill. Those mounds on your lawn and pasture could be moles, but they’re more than likely gophers; Plains Pocket Gophers to be pragmatic – Geomys bursarius to be scientific.
These rodents dig and chew, and the damage they can do goes beyond the mounds we mow over. Iowa State University cited a study in Nebraska showing a 35 percent loss in irrigated alfalfa fields due to the presence of pocket gophers; the number jumped to 46 percent in decreased production of non-irrigated alfalfa fields.
The internet is replete with academic research from coast-to-coast on how to curtail gopher populations, or at least control them. Kansas State University – then called Kansas State Agricultural College – also published a book [Bulletin 152] in February 1908 focused exclusively on the pocket gopher.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
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