Country Lifestyles
***November profile**** The Art of Living – Jack Stevens
By Jessica Crabtree
Jack Stevens of Iowa Park is best known as an artist. His life-size sculptures can be seen around local schools, universities, and cities in the Wichita County area. Stevens’ uncanny ability also allows him to direct detail and life-like characteristics into each painting and drawing. His pieces typically showcase the western lifestyle from bucking broncs to wagons, Native Americans and horses.
All of the artist’s work comes from ideas, images and experiences throughout his life. As early as Stevens can remember, he had an admiration for horses. As he grew, that fascination was enhanced, becoming an understanding, possibly because as a young boy, he related to the young colts. He understood their fear.
You see, Stevens never formally took art classes, or was ever given an art set as a child. His art ability started back on the banks of Holliday Creek with charcoal embers from a fire and creek mud. His upbringing was of the most modest kind. Stevens’ parents, Margaret Olley and Cliff Stevens, lived in a small 16X16 tent north of Holliday Creek in Wichita Falls. Times were hard for the Stevens family— indescribable if not witnessed. Not knowing how she was able, Stevens said his mother worked cultivating cotton and still cooked three meals a day. Margaret, the caring, nurturing kind, would take in multiple other mouths to feed. Stevens, the youngest of nine, was born in 1934. To read more pick up the November 2015 issue of NTFR.
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.
By Annette Bridges
Everyone needs a room with a view that makes their heart happy. My honest favorite panorama would be either the mountains or the ocean. I have yet to convince my hubby to make permanent moves to either, although he does enjoy the visits as much as I do.
The location of our house on our ranch does not provide the expansive field of vision of our land that I would enjoy. So, I have created a room decorated and furnished in a way that gives me smiles, giggles, and a wonderful peace-filled feeling when I am hanging out in it. I am in that place right now writing this column. I am in a lounging position with my computer in my lap on the chaise that was once my sweet mama’s. I had it reupholstered this year to give it a fresh look.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
Local celebrity dancers of the greater Gainesville area brought the house down recently at the second annual “Dancing With Our Stars” contest in Lindsay. The event raised more than $200,000 as the sponsored dance teams did their best to take home the grand prize.
The money raised will go to the “Heart of NTMC” Campaign for the purchase of a cardiac capable CT machine for the Gainesville hospital. Rodolfo “Rudy” Martinez and Sherry Sherriden took home the Mirror Ball Trophy.
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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